DrTodd13

For the "our government could not and would never do something like this" crowd, Jones is a quack and no matter what he writes his quack status will negate it.

1) I think a case can be made that you should always ask about every alert even if your hand would never bid. In this way, your pd is not placed in an ethical bind like he would be if you only asked when your hand was potentially relevant. The only way I would consider this "unethical" is if you had some agreement with pd as to what asking a question meant versus not asking. If you consistently ask then I wouldn't consider that "unethical." Leagues may frown on it as it would slow the game down a little. 2) I think the fact that he asked a question is authorized information to the opponents. Use at your own peril though. Perhaps the first question they should ask is, "does your pd always ask even if they would never bid?" 3) If pd always asks then you have no ethical problem here. Assume he only asks selectively. Now, what would a pass of the XX normally mean with the unauthorized information? 1N guy thinks 1N-XX will score better than 2 of partner's suit. I think this should imply some super-strong and potentially off-shaped hand 1N. Hard to construct a normal 1N hand that has confidence that 1N-XX is better then 2Z. I think that just by partner passing the X that he has a relatively flat hand, with length he'd be likely to bid regardless of his strength. Given this information, you can assess whether you can improve the contract by running. Pass is always a LA here though and unless the X'er is shapely then it might be hard to make an argument that pulling is near mandatory.

:) I did a couple of searches before posting, but I guess I searched for the wrong things. A search through DrTodd13's previous postings uncovered this thread: http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=21012 Evidently there was an even earlier request for this feature, but I can't find it. :) In the bridge system I wrote for fun, this was the only way of playing. You had to find someone you wanted to play with first. Then you had to find a pair that wanted to play against you. I could add a feature in my system to pair up people who don't care who they play with but what I hate is look at the tables, see someone sitting I'd like to play with, play a couple of hands then that person has to leave and somebody sits down who I definitely don't want to play with. I also had a special lobby where people looking for a partner could hang out and you could search by ratings, system, etc. I think if people have even a little invested in a partnership then they'll be nicer and the table churn due to bad results any total anonymity will be lessened. I also allowed two pairs to form a team and then search for other teams to play team games against.

I've already patented all these ideas. Now, you all owe me money. Please deposit the money in my BBO account or you'll be hearing from my attorney.

If you admit that there are papers from neutral parties that question the link between CO2 and global warming then you contradict the belief that there is a consensus. Some say CO2 has a stronger effect than others. My point is that from what I have seen and heard, the debate is now restricted to how much of an effect rather than is there an effect. I apologize if my post wasn't clear but if I understand what you're saying then your point is not in conflict with mine. Do I have evidence? Well, it is hard to quantify and qualify how many independent sources I got my views from. I haven't talked to climatologists so this is all third party. I recognize the potential unreliability of these sources so I'm open to new information. The more independent sources you have that agree the more likely it is that something is true. Unless I know from personal experience that something is true, I'm not going to dogmatically condemn those who disagree with it.

I do think that there is a difference between the two sides. Most researchers on the subject are funded by sources like Universities and the NSF and foreign equivalents. They almost universally claim that it is clear that GW is happening and it is caused by humans. I naively think that most of those researchers are honest (I can explain why I think so in more detail but this would distract from the topic). Those who argue against GW warming are for a significant part funded by sources like the oil companies. The oil companies will pay only if they like the conclusions. The universities will pay salaries no matter what the conclusions are. So you think that NSF is neutral in this debate? You can't get a grant from any source you would consider neutral to study _if_ CO2 is causing GW. You can only get grants to determine how much warming can be expected. To say that a group is neutral that will only give grants to those who going in accept a certain position is putting blinders on. They certainly believe they have a good reason for this bias but it is a bias nonetheless. Whatever you subsidize you get more of. The more they subsidize their bias the more they will get of it. If an untenured climatology professor doesn't accept the bias, they will likely get no grants (from places you would consider unbiased) and won't get tenure. If they are tenured and buck the flow then the grants will similarly dry up and their career is most likely effectively over. Universities can revoke tenure but even if they don't they can cut-off your non-salary university funding, reduce or eliminate your teaching load, you won't get any graduate students, etc. Could someone submit a paper that attempts to prove that high LDL cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease and not be committing career suicide? If their paper was well researched then I think the answer is yes. I don't think this situation is true for GW. Well researched or not, it seems much more likely this is career suicide. In this case, the system has been politicized to the point where it won't be able to recognize a true contrarian result if one ever comes along.

This is either a very clever distraction from the valid point irdoz was making or an very stupid post. Irdoz was talking about science, you are talking about what political decisions should be taken. The reason go against you so strongly is not that you disagree. It is because you bring us crooked arguments from obviously corrupt sources, and I think you know this very well. That is why I strongly doubt your integrity. Is anything that disagrees with GW an obviously corrupt source? Look, I posted a link and asked "Does anybody know anything about the veracity of these sources?" I don't recall anyone having any information that the sources were not trustworthy. I went to the external sites with the raw satellite temperature data and later posted saying that this year-on-year anomaly had corrected itself by the end of February. I said that one data point doesn't mean much of anything but it was just an interesting drop. The article exaggerated the possible significance but many articles on many topics do this to attract readers. I obviously have my doubts that anthropogenic GW is true. If you can point me to a corrupt source that I quote then I'd be happy to recant it but I doubt it will change my overall skepticism.

Hmmm...$10,000 grant money offered for papers against GW. Doesn't surprise me but I also see little difference between this and the grants totaling millions which you will lose if you aren't pro-anthropogenic GW. I don't think there's much outright fraud just to obtain grant money though. It may cause some results to be squelched but what is published is likely not intentionally fraudulent. Those who don't believe it will seek the $10,000 but I don't think it will convince a pro to become con. Recent research has said that the authors in around 20% of papers accepted to refereed publications outright manipulated data so as to produce a preconceived outcome. I agree with Mike and Han that it does seem silly sometimes that we non-specialists are debating the merits of the science. But if we don't feel qualified to debate the science then why are we qualified to have any opinion? Maybe we couldn't make it through the day without something similar but the vast majority of people when asked why they believe anthropogenic GW is true would say "TV told me a bunch of scientists agreed." To me, this is a pretty frightening basis for accepted truth. In the absence of other information then it is reasonable to lean that direction based on one source but what I don't like is the dogmatism that people have developed who have insufficient reason to be dogmatic and how they demonize others who disagree.

I've heard that M3 has increased 40% in the last 2 (or was it 4?) years. Does that sound like a "reasonable" level of inflation?

Could someone summarize what questions are left unanswered? It seems there's a lot of confusion of cause and effect. Inflation is by definition an increase in the supply of money. Combine inflation with a wide variety of other occurrences and you can many different results. Hold everything else the same, increase money supply 2x and you'll get 2x price increases. I don't think the SS or Medicare (Medicare 5x worse than SS) "obligations" have been factored much into anything. The government doesn't list them as debts because they claim they can eliminate them tomorrow and thus not incur them, despite the fact that politically this will never happen. Winston, I don't think that thinking in terms of ratios will help you here. Also, I don't think that it is possible to talk of interest rates and money supply separately.

The process is not slightly different. It is totally different. Read the wikipedia page on the greenhouse effect.

So, hypothetically if everyone in the US got a billion dollar loan, you're suggesting that prices would not rise?

Ah, once again the Biblical literalist dons the mantel of the professional skeptic... I find your pretensions of skepticism out right offensive. You exhibit as much of an absolutist mentality as anyone on this forum. Even if we ignore your political discourse, quotes like the following are incredibly telling http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...ethuselah&st=15 The only time that I've seen you exhibit any skepticism is when you're attempting to undermine arguments that violate your own absolutist world view. You happily regurgitate all sorts of ridiculous crap without anything remotely resembling research... Believe me or not, I don't care. My absolutism on this topic is only to the degree that virtually no one has any reason to claim to _know_ that anthropogenic GW is true. We've got a bunch of laymen claiming that they know it to be true but all they have is someone else's word filtered through a biased media and political system regarding one of the most complex systems on the planet. Anyone who doesn't accept their view is considered to be a shill or a moron even if they present evidence and try to have a scientific discussion. When you claim you know something, you transcend from the probable to the definite and this requires a leap of faith. What I find offensive is that leaps of faith in science are praised and ridiculed in religion. I don't believe things that are contrary to evidence. My faith only operates where evidence stops. I readily admit I choose to believe in the existence of the Christian God through faith but not blind faith because I believe there is evidence that the resurrection was a historical event and I choose to listen to someone who has that sort of power. This is fortunate for if I believed that the universe and everything in it were deterministic with no intrinsic value or purpose and that I was condemned by determinism to have these meaningless discussion with you I'd be truly miserable.

If you're so damned sure that human-caused GW is true then what odds will you give me that 20 years from now that premise will still be accepted? Someone with your level of conviction I'd think would be willing to go at least 1000:1. Put your money where your mouth is.

It is my understanding that the oceans are continually near saturation with CO2. If the oceans get warmer they can hold less CO2 and so there is a net outflow. If the oceans get cooler they absorb more CO2. So, I don't know how your author came to those conclusions but they are not what I have heard. I love this selective quoting of the wikipedia page re that H20 is only 4x greater greenhouse effect than CO2. The page clearly states that this is only true if cloud cover remains constant and the page says this is an unrealistic assumption if what you are testing is a decrease in water vapor.

If there is scientific fact, there is no need for consensus opinion. Studies have shown that experts are no better than laymen at prediction when it is purely a matter of a guestimate. If you have facts then you just run the numbers and get an answer. If they just have an educated opinion then I don't think that is worth much and I certainly wouldn't throw the world into financial disaster based on opinion.

Hang on a minute. You are asserting here that humans are not responsible for any global warming gas that isn't CO2. I don't believe it. That's not what I'm asserting. My understand is that water vapor contributes about 97% of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is maybe 2% or so. Methane and others are even less. Humans may be adding some methane. What are humans doing to water vapor? I don't know but I suspect that directly they aren't doing much. We certainly don't hear about calls to restrict human influence on water vapor. Temperature has a big effect on water vapor concentrations but that interaction is fraught with feedback loops that I don't think the scientists have a complete grasp on.

If a 100% increase in man-made CO2 is only a 0.3% increase in all greenhouse gases then yes it does seem to be pretty insignificant. The only thing that matters is the absolute increase in greenhouse forcing, not the relative increase of the constituent gases. In any case, this story is just one data point. It is interesting, nothing else. It doesn't prove anything. The story pointed to some websites with up-to-date satellite temperature measurements and it seems like they have rebounded to 2007 levels by mid-February. What I still don't fully understand is why people feel they must be either 100% "deniers" or 100% "acceptors." Shouldn't the default position be "I have no idea"? This isn't an area that most people can research, experiment, solve and form their own opinions. As such, if they have an opinion they must borrow it from someone else. What criteria are they using to determine truth. Get X number of Ph.D.'s to agree on something and you'll believe it? I saw a statistic at some point that upwards of 30% of all academic papers are shown to contain fundamental errors. These papers slip by as truth because reviewers and committees are not rigorous enough. And you want me to believe that models are evidence?

Why don't you explain how the CO2 concentration 100 million years ago was a 100 times higher than now and yet the temperature was only one degree higher. I may not be remembering the numbers completely accurately but the gist is that in the past CO2 concentrations were very much higher (how they know this I don't know) but the temperature was not. We have a very complex climate system that most measurements show is warming. If you have a theory why it is warming then it is your responsibility to prove it. Even according to the global warming people, CO2 is less than 3% of all global warming gases. Human production of CO2 is dwarfed by natural production of CO2. Again, I don't remember the exact numbers but I'll be generous and say that humans are responsible for 10% of all CO2 (I think the actual number is even less). Thus, humans are responsible for 0.3% of all global warming gases. Your position is that doubling this contribution to 0.6% would lead to global catastrophy. Prima facie, believing that a 0.3% increase in CO2 would lead to disaster seems to put the burden on you to prove this seemingly outrageous claim. You probably don't believe me but I read both sides and I am unconvinced either way. I'm particularly unconvinced that all the feedback systems are understood. You can't modify a small part of an interconnected complex system and say you are going to hold the rest of the system constant and predict its behavior. Writing complex programs has taught me that small changes can cause unpredictable behavior and sometimes ends up doing the opposite of what you would have predicted. I have seen small changes lead to catastrophy so it is possible that anthropogenic GW is true. Whereagles, the data says that temperature changes precede changes in CO2. Historically that is what the data says. Just from this, if you want to believe anything it should be that temperature causes changes in CO2. The GW people will admit this but say that they don't know why the temperature started to go up but the reason for the 4/5ths of the increase after the initial temperature increase is due to the CO2 released from the oceans. Why does this process stop if CO2 is such a powerful cause of global warming? Repeat after me, correlation is not causation, particularly when the supposed cause happens after the effect.

Widespread global cooling. Anybody know anything the veracity of these sources?

I seem to recall hearing that some states had already tried what you suggested. I could be wrong but I think they've all subsequently abandoned those plans for the reasons you suggested. These plans inevitably end up costing 3 or 4x what the original estimates are. I was reading Obama's webpage and he shares this delusion. There's all this stuff on there about reforming government and making it more efficient, reducing waste, getting more done with less. Are there any examples of this ever being done? Huge government efficiency seems to be an oxymoron. No amount of good wishes and empassioned speaches are going to make it otherwise.

This is the 4 millionth time this has been suggested. Some online bridge systems allow the option of single click or something like you suggest. People find the "confirm" option so tedious that they turn it off. In my experience, I'd estimate that 90% of time people ask for undos illegitimate reason. If you want to minimize undos, have people concentrate and become ethical and stop asking for illegitimate undos.

even if this is true, and i think it is, todd's point is that this service should not be coerced, it *can't* be coerced (for long, anyway) I don't think that's todd's point. He seems pretty clearly stuck on very Randian, objectivist views...and Rand couldn't stand uncompensated service to anyone. But of course you can't coerce it. The fact that coercion of service constitutes slavery does not mean that the service isn't a moral good. Service being my obligation is not remotely similar to slavery. I'm not an Objectivist. Just because I may agree with them on one particular issue does not mean I buy the whole hog. From what I know of Rand, I think she would say that even voluntary altruism was wrong. I don't believe that. I think that service is a moral good but it loses it's moral goodness when it is forced, either by the person doing it or by the people doing the forcing.

Because I didn't see it. :) I agree an advanced civilized society has many benefits. What I reject is that civilization is equivalent to government. I would prefer civilization without government but that isn't available to me. Just because I prefer civilization with government to lack of civilization with no government does not mean that I lose my right to lobby for what I think would be a better system. It's like a guy given a choice between getting beaten with a tire iron or a baseball bat and then told to stop complaining during the beating because he was given his choice of form of torture.

I do not know what a right is. I only know that I would greatly prefer to live in a country where everybody has health care. If you want everyone to have health care then you buy it for everyone personally. What you are saying is that you want to live in a country with systematic theft so that you can feel good about people having health care. A right could be said to be something that is wrong to violate even if everyone on earth thought it was ok to violate. A privilege is something that is bestowed upon others by some group. I think these days most people don't believe in any objective morality but strangely they still claim to believe in right and wrong. The masses decide that something is right or wrong with ultimately no reason for that decision.