Future Regrets?

[Peregrinator]

In a way we are our memories.

Maybe it's not so much about avoiding regret as being the best possible collection of memories.

Same basic concept. Slightly different skew.

Interesting thought. I hesitate to use pharmacology to alter my memories. Reality is still there. I prefer to work on accepting it rather than manipulate my perception of it.

 

[Peregrinator]

I am having a flare right now and it's affecting some of my spatial memory among other things.
It comes and goes like when you have a fever. I keep losing things, losing lists.
It's only been a couple days and it's driving me insane. It's no fun at all.
Plus I am flushing, and despite what my friends say, it's not cute!
Nor is my losing things, not cute, it's disturbing!

On the plus side I get steroids! I can open jars.

Sorry to hear it. I wonder though; is there a part of this that you'll regret?

 

[Peregrinator]

Indeed.

Maybe those who tend to experience regrets simply aren't able to manipulate their set of memories, to associate a different meaning to them as they gain more wisdom with years.

So they experience the same event in the same way, over and over again. (Like the first example).

There's some validity to that idea, I think. It also has given rise to many different ways of saying "stop reliving the past." A million philosophies, religions, self-help curricula, therapeutic models...

 

[Peregrinator]

It is only a sticking point if you are not willing to bend when presented with data that does not fit your agenda. Global warming is shit because I like the cheap energy from coal fired plants. Do we know why the ice caps are turning to slush? No. We gather bits and pieces. We make assumptions and prove those to be true or false. Go back to the table and repeat. That is what real science is about. Open to whatever you see under the microscope might change everything. Failure drives realignment and reconsideration.

There is a ton of politics involved in real, big scale science. It is not the picture that the science haters paint. Obama is not calling the people in lab coats and telling them where to point the telescope. It does not work that way.

Exactly. Every time I meet someone who does government-funded research in any field, I ask them if they've ever felt any compulsion to get particular results. The answer is always no. What does happen is one political side or the other cuts funding to programs they don't like because they don't want the question to be asked in the first place. Those are very different things. Every administration makes priority decisions about funding and research. I have a close relative who works for DOE (energy, not education), and he says that Republican admins tend to be more supportive of basic research, while Dems tend to prefer applied research. Or maybe it's the other way around, I can't remember. Doesn't matter; the point is that if the funding is granted for research, the results are what they are. No administration says "you need to prove this frog is really a salamander."

It's interesting to note that private funding often does come with such baggage, though. Maybe the most egregious examples are pharmaceutical research, in which private agencies do clinical trials...and if they "fail" too many drugs, they suddenly can't get contracts any more. The other, of course, is so-called "think tanks" that pay for "research" that supports their ideological positions. Gun politics is a great place to see examples of this, as is the obvious global warming nonsense.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

No regulation ever stopped an accident. Period. Regulation is a reaction, as have have said, a political reaction that cannot provably stop any further accident but does raise the cost of doing business which is passed on to the consumer in the form of lower spending power which hurts all sorts of economic activity that is then not engaged in by the consumer, who always has to make choices of how to spend his money.

John Stossel writes and talks about "all those bad corporate players." They are rare, rare indeed. As he relates, he started at the local level as an investigative journalist busting bad players. When he became a national reporter he thought he was going to tear through corporate America, but he learned quickly that actual malfeasance was rare because at the national level most corporations derive their power in the marketplace from their brand and they will do everything they can to protect their brand and reputation.


You keep repeating the damage due to fracking. I have yet to see you relate this damage due to fracking.

 

[Peregrinator]

It tastes like good meat. Seems to be common here in Japan. Bread crumbs on FB.

Ah. For some reason I've been missing that. I shall look.

You learn a lot more at science conferences than by reading the newspaper. And after conference, in the bar, you learn even more.

I am due at the bar in 2 hours.

I remember learning a shit ton from the scientists as the Gordon conference...where I was a bartender. Also, in conversations with my relatives, a married pair of DC scientists. And even the lister we both subscribe to. I envy you, being at those regularly.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Exactly. Every time I meet someone who does government-funded research in any field, I ask them if they've ever felt any compulsion to get particular results. The answer is always no. What does happen is one political side or the other cuts funding to programs they don't like because they don't want the question to be asked in the first place. Those are very different things. Every administration makes priority decisions about funding and research. I have a close relative who works for DOE (energy, not education), and he says that Republican admins tend to be more supportive of basic research, while Dems tend to prefer applied research. Or maybe it's the other way around, I can't remember. Doesn't matter; the point is that if the funding is granted for research, the results are what they are. No administration says "you need to prove this frog is really a salamander."

It's interesting to note that private funding often does come with such baggage, though. Maybe the most egregious examples are pharmaceutical research, in which private agencies do clinical trials...and if they "fail" too many drugs, they suddenly can't get contracts any more. The other, of course, is so-called "think tanks" that pay for "research" that supports their ideological positions. Gun politics is a great place to see examples of this, as is the obvious global warming nonsense.

Um, yeah they say no to people outside of their community they are going to be sweet innocents concerned only with pure research. However when we get a glimpse into their private correspondences, we get a different, cynical story and when we get to see their code, we see the dishonesty there too.

Now an honest Scientist who gets results that contradict his theory would go back and reexamine his theory, but these guys never do, never back down and never admit to being wrong. Instead, they proclaim that they have an excuse, such as the heat is hiding in the ocean.

WHAT??? Are they oceanographers now too???

Are bad players the exclusive purview of business?

 

[Peregrinator]

No regulation ever stopped an accident. Period. Regulation is a reaction, as have have said, a political reaction that cannot provably stop any further accident but does raise the cost of doing business which is passed on to the consumer in the form of lower spending power which hurts all sorts of economic activity that is then not engaged in by the consumer, who always has to make choices of how to spend his money.

John Stossel writes and talks about "all those bad corporate players." They are rare, rare indeed. As he relates, he started at the local level as an investigative journalist busting bad players. When he became a national reporter he thought he was going to tear through corporate America, but he learned quickly that actual malfeasance was rare because at the national level most corporations derive their power in the marketplace from their brand and they will do everything they can to protect their brand and reputation.


You keep repeating the damage due to fracking. I have yet to see you relate this damage due to fracking.

I didn't say it would stop accidents. I said it would stop damage. In the early 1900's you could buy heroin over the counter. Guess why you can't now?

In the 1970's a 100 000 people a year died on the roads. Guess why that slowed down to around 40 000?

In the 1970's, the air in Manhattan was visible and filled with particulate matter. Guess why that cleared up?

Lead paint.

Asbestos.

Wetlands preservation.

Beaver population.

Acid rain.

Kids' toys with parts that cause choking.

Thalidomide babies.

I can keep listing bad stuff that was made illegal and thus slowed down or stopped. So can you, with a moment's thought. This idea that regulations don't prevent bad stuff from happeningnis ridiculous, and has been proven wrong over and over and over and over.

Stossel may be correct, and I hope he is. There are easy to find counterexamples, though. I would hope you incorporate them into your position. Protecting brand and reputation is an interesting exercise, though, innit? It doesn't necessarily involve a devotion to truth or ethics.

Here's an example: there is a method of blade creation called san mai, a Japanese term (pardon if you know more Japanese than I think) meaning three layer construction. This term has been used since sometime around 1300. The Cold Steel company designed and marketed a line of such blades, and trademarked the term "SanMai III" or something close to that. They then started sending letters to small, independent smiths who were making blades using this ancient technique and marketing them as such, saying cease and desist. Cold Steel claims they were just protecting their copyright, their branding. The rest of the blade world knows that this is a term for a kind of blade construction that's been around for over a thousand years, and moreover is a general term in Japanese used to describe three flat objects.

So is there a bad actor here? I think so. I'd be interested in your thoughts on the controversy.

Regarding fracking, I'll dig around for you, though I suspect you're just going to dismiss or ignore anything I find. My primary objection to it is that it's yet another way of keeping alive an industry I wish we'd look beyond. I know you're a huge fan of innovation and technology solving problems; you don't have to believe in the issues around greenhouse gas emissions to see problems with fossil fuel burning. I'd like to see us encourage all the alternatives and minimize ff use. Fracking is just avoiding doing that.

 

[Peregrinator]

Um, yeah they say no to people outside of their community they are going to be sweet innocents concerned only with pure research. However when we get a glimpse into their private correspondences, we get a different, cynical story and when we get to see their code, we see the dishonesty there too.

Now an honest Scientist who gets results that contradict his theory would go back and reexamine his theory, but these guys never do, never back down and never admit to being wrong. Instead, they proclaim that they have an excuse, such as the heat is hiding in the ocean.

WHAT??? Are they oceanographers now too???

Are bad players the exclusive purview of business?

Broad brush.

There are over 10 000 studies, all pointing in the same direction. At least six different lines of evidence. Have you gone through all of them and found flaws? Somehow, the entire scientific community hasn't, but you have? You really should publish that.

Is who an oceanographer?

No. People like Fred Singer get called out all the time. Andrew Wakefield. That's why peer review works so well. In fact, if you want to really make a name for yourself in science, publish something that disproves the currently-accepted models. Einstein. Darwin. Newton. Copernicus. Fracastoro, Pasteur and Koch. The current understanding of agw has yet to be disproved, despite the absurd level of opposition to it. Luntz succeeded.

 

[Peregrinator]

No, I'm talking about how it is possible to model systems where you can code all of the known inputs/factors as compared to a chaotic system, which I'm not even sure you understand the exact mathematical meaning of at this point, where the inputs cannot all possibly be included, so the researcher who attempts this nonsense tires to account for the one he thinks are important and then ignores everything else. This produces a flawed model. Economics has the same problem and it is why people who model economies of the past and then try to apply them to the future and create policy to manipulate the economy fail.

Don't get me started on the corruption and inflation created by government money in academia. It's like this, my teacher was visiting my school, a very busy place. He looked at me and said, in my day, our school had six good fighters, this place is full of women and kids.

"Sensei, I have six good fighters, you know them. Did you enjoy the shower and sauna after your workout?"

"Yes."

"Did you enjoy a cold drink in the lounge while you watched all the flat bellies around you?"

"Yes."

"All of that is thanks to those women and kids who want to get their black belt just to have another accomplishment on their resume."

Sensei nods, he sees the light.

We are producing all sorts of PhDs and while all of them might be hard-workers and every other positive attribute that you have lauded them with, but praise alone does not create brilliance. This Climate Science that you so fervently believe in is in its infancy and has yet to produce any result other than warning and fear, every single one of its "models" have failed for exactly the reasons I have been patiently outlining, but in your religiosity, your basic premise is, the Priests are right, so everyone else must be wrong and must hate Science. You are arguing from an emotional position which is why you have to keep constantly trying to put me down and twist what I am saying into something dark and menacing, a real threat to "Science."

You know that I was also trained in meteorology. They have been modeling hurricanes for far longer than than Climatology has even been a "discipline." That too is a chaotic system which is why there are at least six well-known models each of which has had its failures in predicting the path of any individual hurricane.

It's not that they can't account for all of the known factors, but there are also clearly some unknown, unaccounted for factors that all those hard-working, intelligent, well-trained, highly educated minds have yet to discover.

You keep talking about how the rest of that post was "interesting," but clearly you are only focused on one aspect of any discussion; how it affects your faith.

Your objection based on chaos math has been duly noted, debated, discussed, explored, examined, studied, amd mostly resolved by people doing the actual work. I would think you'd be satisfied that people like Lorenz and Fermi were on the case. Neither of whom are or were dependent on political pressure for their results.
American Institute of Physics:

http://history.aip.org/climate/chaos.htm

Most scientists agreed that climate has features of a chaotic system, but they did not think it was wholly unpredictable. To be sure, it was impossible to predict well in advance, with any computer that could ever be built in the actual universe, that a tornado would hit a particular town in Texas on a particular day (not because of one guilty butterfly, of course, but as the net result of countless tiny initial influences). Yet tornado seasons came on schedule. That type of consistency showed up in the supercomputer simulations constructed in the 1980s and after. Start a variety of model runs with different initial conditions, and they would show, like most calculations with complex nonlinear feedbacks, random variations in the weather patterns computed for one or another region and season. However, their predictions for global average temperature usually remained within a fairly narrow range under given conditions. Critics replied that the computer models had been loaded with artificial assumptions in order to force them to produce regular-looking results. But gradually the most arbitrary assumptions were pared away. The models continued to reproduce, with increasing precision, many kinds of past changes, all the way back through the ice ages. As the computer work became more plausible, it set limits on the amount of variation that might be ascribed to pure chance. (In physics language, weather is an "initial conditions" problem, where everything depends on the precise values at the start of the calculation, whereas climate is a "boundary values" problem, where the system eventually settles into a particular general state regardless of the starting point.)

What if you just refused to believe computers? The fact remained that climate over millions of years had responded in a quite regular way to variations of sunlight (Milankovitch cycles). And when gigantic volcanic outbursts had massively polluted the upper atmosphere, weather patterns had reverted to normal within a few years. This set strict limits on how far the climate system could drive its own variations independent of outside forces.

Just about any decent computer model, run repeatedly with just about any plausible initial conditions plus a rise of greenhouse gases, predicted a global warming. As the world's average temperature did in fact climb, it seemed less and less likely that the match with the models was mere accident. However, different models got different results for the future climate in any particular region. And a given model for a given region might come up with a surprising shift of the weather pattern in the middle of a run. Some of these regional fluctuations might be fundamentally chaotic. Occasionally a run of an entire global model would diverge widely for a time, for example if an unusual combination of factors perturbed the delicate balance of ocean circulation. But these divergences were within limits set by the overall long-term average global warming. In fact, it had become a test of a good model that it should show fluctuations and variations, just as the real climate did. For predicting future climates, it became common practice to run a supercomputer model a few times (usually three to five), with slight variations in the initial conditions. The details of the results would differ only modestly, and the modeller would confidently publish an average of the numbers.(35)

To be sure, the models were built to be stable. When a new model was constructed it tended to run away into implausible climate states, until the modelers adjusted parameters to make it resemble the actual current climate. Meanwhile researchers kept turning up possible triggers for a change beyond anything known in recent centuries. Could freshwater from melting Arctic ice abruptly shut down the circulation of the North Atlantic? (Evidently just that had happened some ten thousand years ago.) Could the warming caused by emissions of methane gas make warming tundra or seabeds emit still more methane in a runaway feedback? (There were signs of something like that during a cataclysmic climate shift 55 million years back.) What about a runaway mechanism nobody had even imagined, as the planet warmed beyond anything humanity had ever experienced? The odds against a sudden catastrophe seemed long, but it was impossible to be certain that the planet was not approaching some fatal "tipping point."

Until the future actually came, there would be no way to prove that the modelers understood all the essential forces. If an unlucky combination sent the real climate temporarily into one of the unusual states found in some model runs, that could confuse people about what was happening. But it was not likely to change the eventual outcome. What was no longer in doubt was the most important insight produced by the half-century of computer experiments. Under some circumstances a fairly small change in conditions, even something that seemed so slight as an increase of greenhouse gases, could nudge climate into a seriously different state. The climate looked less like a simple predictable system than like a confused beast, which a dozen different forces were prodding in different directions. It responded sluggishly, but once it began to move it would be hard to stop.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I just finished cleaning the pool. It is not 100% clean. That would have a waste of time. 90+% is good enough for me.

"Another example: the Exxon Valdes spill. Decades of litigation and the beach is still a mess. There are multiple reasons for this, but the beach is still a mess. Exxon's limitless wealth and its team of corporate lawyers successfully prevented Exxon from having to clean up the mess they made. This is how your system plays out. Without regulations in place, as well as inspectors and enforcement, you get Love Canal and the smog problem of the 1970's. With them, those issues are prevented, rather than responded to after the fact. Wetlands, raptor populations, cancer-causing food additives...the list is endless. Drug safety regulations. It just goes on and on."

I call bullshit. Exxon was up against an entity with "TRULY" limitless wealth. They paid billions for four years of cleanup and the end of which, everybody including the EPA decided the expenditure was not worth the effort because of the isolation of the pockets of oil and the inability to access them.

Love Canal was a problem based upon the flawed Science of the time that said the activities there were safe and contained.

The Exxon wreck was not due to lack of regulation, but human behavior, human error and we don't know, for sure, why the error occurred. The navigator might simply have been concentrating on events in his life. The Navy is a highly, HIGHLY, regulated enterprise, but it did not account for the human error of two weeks ago, now did it?

Regulations are created by politicians who have little, if any, business acumen. If they did, they would not be heavily in debt, printing fiat money and always be demanding that I pony up more of my money to fund their regulatory bureaucratic nightmare in order to purchase more votes by never letting a crises go to waste.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"I didn't say it would stop accidents. I said it would stop damage. In the early 1900's you could buy heroin over the counter. Guess why you can't now?"


I'll blow that shit out of the water right now. That's why we have an opiode-induced crises of death by overdose. The Junkie never knows what the purity is of that which he purchases on the black market so dosing is a fucking crap shoot. We would save a ton of money not fighting the idiot war on drugs and putting it into treatment and counseling and letting it be a legal product for now. Why do you think you have the right to tell me what I can do with my body?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Bad actors?


How about some on your side of the aisle.


Warren Buffet worked hand-in-hand with Barack Obama to stop the construction of Keystone.

Warren had purchased a ton of rail stock and wanted to ship the oil by rail for a profit. Rail is more conducive to spillage than is pipeline. You need to add him and Obama to your list of bad players...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Oh good lord.


That last one about chaotic theory proves my point.


"Some" scientists think that they can still predict? How is it that when Ish introduced the Science of Chaos over in the gun nuts thread and the unpredictability of a round at a certain velocity, that it could end up almost anywhere, you said, oh yeah, I get that and not that, well I think that if you think about it, you can probably predict where it will go a good percentage of the time...




And please quit assuming that I do not follow the topic. Do I obsess over as much as you? No. It is not my passion, my belief system, my religion. I've given you numerous examples of the herd instinct when it comes to academia to give you some reason as to why you should be a bit more skeptical.



Furthermore, every instance you gave where you claimed government did the trick, most of the time, like seat belts, it was actually consumer demand for better, safer products. Trust me, when government stepped in and made car manufacturers put in seat belts, it didn't mean you had to wear them. It took government some years to realize that they had to make you wear them by threatening you with the police. Then, in its wisdom, the government demanded that manufacturers raise the gas mileage of their fleets which resulted in lighter and more unsafe cars...

 

[Peregrinator]

I just finished cleaning the pool. It is not 100% clean. That would have a waste of time. 90+% is good enough for me.

"Another example: the Exxon Valdes spill. Decades of litigation and the beach is still a mess. There are multiple reasons for this, but the beach is still a mess. Exxon's limitless wealth and its team of corporate lawyers successfully prevented Exxon from having to clean up the mess they made. This is how your system plays out. Without regulations in place, as well as inspectors and enforcement, you get Love Canal and the smog problem of the 1970's. With them, those issues are prevented, rather than responded to after the fact. Wetlands, raptor populations, cancer-causing food additives...the list is endless. Drug safety regulations. It just goes on and on."

I call bullshit. Exxon was up against an entity with "TRULY" limitless wealth. They paid billions for four years of cleanup and the end of which, everybody including the EPA decided the expenditure was not worth the effort because of the isolation of the pockets of oil and the inability to access them.

Love Canal was a problem based upon the flawed Science of the time that said the activities there were safe and contained.

The Exxon wreck was not due to lack of regulation, but human behavior, human error and we don't know, for sure, why the error occurred. The navigator might simply have been concentrating on events in his life. The Navy is a highly, HIGHLY, regulated enterprise, but it did not account for the human error of two weeks ago, now did it?

Regulations are created by politicians who have little, if any, business acumen. If they did, they would not be heavily in debt, printing fiat money and always be demanding that I pony up more of my money to fund their regulatory bureaucratic nightmare in order to purchase more votes by never letting a crises go to waste.

So you think that without any new regulations, just the recommendation of some scientists would have convinced all those companies and people to clean up Love Canal? I can see why you think so, given your record of promoting the advice of scientists as a policy driver.

Regulations are also created by scientists with experience in the field who work for the government. There's a guy called Steven Chu you might have heard of. That was in the last administration, where people's qualifications were in fact sometimes related to their jobs.

 

[Peregrinator]

"I didn't say it would stop accidents. I said it would stop damage. In the early 1900's you could buy heroin over the counter. Guess why you can't now?"


I'll blow that shit out of the water right now. That's why we have an opiode-induced crises of death by overdose. The Junkie never knows what the purity is of that which he purchases on the black market so dosing is a fucking crap shoot. We would save a ton of money not fighting the idiot war on drugs and putting it into treatment and counseling and letting it be a legal product for now. Why do you think you have the right to tell me what I can do with my body?

It was also unregulated back in the 1930's. I agree, as you know, that recreational drugs should be legal...and regulated. Which is what would be required, were we to actually benefit from their legalization. Without regulation, we'd just have the same people selling their shit laced with fentanyl and carfentanil. Or do you propose legalization without any regulation of purity? How does that even make any sense? You are correct that black market shot is dangerous; what would make it less dangerous if it were legal? Something along the lines of the same way we know that our sausage doesn't contain human excrement? Something like the way we know our cigarettes don't contain plastic?

 

[Peregrinator]

Bad actors?


How about some on your side of the aisle.


Warren Buffet worked hand-in-hand with Barack Obama to stop the construction of Keystone.

Warren had purchased a ton of rail stock and wanted to ship the oil by rail for a profit. Rail is more conducive to spillage than is pipeline. You need to add him and Obama to your list of bad players...

I'm no fan of Buffet, and Obama is a bitch for the way he refused to do anything about the DAPL. "We're going to let it play out for a few more weeks." A bitch.

Stop tossing me in some imaginary pile. It's the dumbest kind of straw man. I voted for Barr and Johnson against ObamaRomneycain, and then Johnson against Trumplinton. I voted for Kasich in the primary, hoping against hope that sanity would at least glance in the direction of the Republican party, and knowing that Vermont was going to go Sanders even if there was video of him eating a baby.

You sound as dumb doing that to me as all those people do who call you a Republican and accuse you of supporting Trump.

 

[Peregrinator]

Oh good lord.


That last one about chaotic theory proves my point.


"Some" scientists think that they can still predict? How is it that when Ish introduced the Science of Chaos over in the gun nuts thread and the unpredictability of a round at a certain velocity, that it could end up almost anywhere, you said, oh yeah, I get that and not that, well I think that if you think about it, you can probably predict where it will go a good percentage of the time...




And please quit assuming that I do not follow the topic. Do I obsess over as much as you? No. It is not my passion, my belief system, my religion. I've given you numerous examples of the herd instinct when it comes to academia to give you some reason as to why you should be a bit more skeptical.



Furthermore, every instance you gave where you claimed government did the trick, most of the time, like seat belts, it was actually consumer demand for better, safer products. Trust me, when government stepped in and made car manufacturers put in seat belts, it didn't mean you had to wear them. It took government some years to realize that they had to make you wear them by threatening you with the police. Then, in its wisdom, the government demanded that manufacturers raise the gas mileage of their fleets which resulted in lighter and more unsafe cars...

Ish didn't say there was a chance the bullet would go twice around the world and then hit his long-dead Aunt Mary. The bullet would still wind up somewhere in the vicinity of the target. The rough direction can be predicted; "the direction the barrel is pointed." This is why your objection is so silly, and what my link says. No, we cannot predict with 100% certainty the precise location and timing of an individual rain drop. We can with a very large level of certainty predict what will happen if a very large increase in a known greenhouse gas occurs. We've known that since the 1930's at least. Your fly shit and pepper routine is just that. The downside of diversifying our energy portfolio is what, exactly?

I will stop assuming you don't follow the topic when two things occur: you demonstrate an understanding of it, and you stop with the ridiculous religious nonsense.

The government is responsible for speed limits, seatbelt regulations (and education; remember "The Convincer?"), headrests, the emergency medical system, ems training, ems funding, trauma studies and funding, drunk driving enforcement, driver education, car safety inspections, insurance requirements for cars, driver licensing, road repair/maintenance, airbag requirements, crash test requirements...all of which were acxomplished through government regulation/mandate.

National Academy Of Sciences (created by an act of Congress in 1863 and approved by President Lincoln): http://www.emt-resources.com/ems-white-paper.html

Wikipedia, "NHTSA:"

In 1964 and 1966, public pressure grew in the United States to increase the safety of cars, culminating with the publishing of Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader, an activist lawyer, and "Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society" by the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1966, Congress held a series of highly publicized hearings regarding highway safety, passed legislation to make installation of seat belts mandatory, and enacted Pub.L. 89–563, Pub.L. 89–564, and Pub.L. 89–670 which created the U.S. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966. This legislation created several predecessor agencies which would eventually become NHTSA, including the National Traffic Safety Agency, the National Highway Safety Agency, and the National Highway Safety Bureau. Once the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) came into effect, vehicles not certified by the maker or importer as compliant with US safety standards were no longer legal to import into the United States.

Nader and "the white paper." Solution: regulation, education, enforcement.

My other examples stand.

 

[Noor]

Ah. For some reason I've been missing that. I shall look.


I remember learning a shit ton from the scientists as the Gordon conference...where I was a bartender. Also, in conversations with my relatives, a married pair of DC scientists. And even the lister we both subscribe to. I envy you, being at those regularly.

I remember Gordon conferences... no wonder you have always looked familiar

 

[Noor]

Sorry to hear it. I wonder though; is there a part of this that you'll regret?

Thank you! My mind is improving. Steroids make you gain weight and all sorts of other bad things, but they have benefits too! Strangely, phone sex is not one of them, I regret I actually turned down hot sex phone from a known partner. Well only 13 more days to go on them.

I think I also regret the 1/2 bag of Lindt chocolates that may have pushed my flare to this level, also that I did not cough up the $480 for a medication for this month that insurance refused to pay and I was too slow ordering said medication from Japan, since it is not here yet.
Of course, non of the previous things may have had any bearing on the flare as no one really knows, but I like the idea that I still have some control over my body

None of these are future regrets, I am not sure what I will regret in the future...

 

[Lunation]

Interesting thought. I hesitate to use pharmacology to alter my memories. Reality is still there. I prefer to work on accepting it rather than manipulate my perception of it.

I'm not sure how pharmacology entered the conversation but, sure, I'll agree with that.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

So you think that without any new regulations, just the recommendation of some scientists would have convinced all those companies and people to clean up Love Canal? I can see why you think so, given your record of promoting the advice of scientists as a policy driver.

Regulations are also created by scientists with experience in the field who work for the government. There's a guy called Steven Chu you might have heard of. That was in the last administration, where people's qualifications were in fact sometimes related to their jobs.

No, I think law suits would have forced them to clean it up.

But the history of it tells us that the original polluters went out of business, if I recall and the land sold because the best SCIENCE at the time told them that it was safe. You keep viewing the past with perfect 20-20 hindsight, as do we pretty much all do, but you don't even thing about the advances in automobile technology that made cars, and car frames better and it was not done because of regulations, but because of market share.

And, in this morning's news, a little gift for A_J which goes to some of his earlier contentions:

Duke University has admitted that one of its lab technicians falsified or fabricated research data on respiratory illnesses that were used to get large grants from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The admission came Sunday in legal filings that respond to a federal whistleblower lawsuit, which the school tried to get dismissed, by former lab analyst Joseph Thomas, according to the Durham Herald-Sun. Thomas claims in his lawsuit that the allegedly fake research data of Erin Potts-Kant, who worked eight years at a Duke medical school lab, was used by the prestigious university and some of its professors to fraudulently obtain federal grants. Thomas also claims Duke tried to hide the alleged fraud.

Potts-Kant told a Duke investigation panel, which reviewed 36 of her reports, her fake data was “included in various publications and grant applications.”

Thomas alleges that all or nearly all the work Potts-Kant did during her eight years at Duke compromised grants worth $112.8 million to Duke and another $120.9 million to institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, the Herald-Sun said.

Money does seem to be the root of all evil...

Competition is tough out there for the mother's milk of the governmental-educational complex.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Ish didn't say there was a chance the bullet would go twice around the world and then hit his long-dead Aunt Mary. The bullet would still wind up somewhere in the vicinity of the target. The rough direction can be predicted; "the direction the barrel is pointed." This is why your objection is so silly, and what my link says. No, we cannot predict with 100% certainty the precise location and timing of an individual rain drop. We can with a very large level of certainty predict what will happen if a very large increase in a known greenhouse gas occurs. We've known that since the 1930's at least. Your fly shit and pepper routine is just that. The downside of diversifying our energy portfolio is what, exactly?

I will stop assuming you don't follow the topic when two things occur: you demonstrate an understanding of it, and you stop with the ridiculous religious nonsense.

The government is responsible for speed limits, seatbelt regulations (and education; remember "The Convincer?"), headrests, the emergency medical system, ems training, ems funding, trauma studies and funding, drunk driving enforcement, driver education, car safety inspections, insurance requirements for cars, driver licensing, road repair/maintenance, airbag requirements, crash test requirements...all of which were acxomplished through government regulation/mandate.

National Academy Of Sciences (created by an act of Congress in 1863 and approved by President Lincoln): http://www.emt-resources.com/ems-white-paper.html

Wikipedia, "NHTSA:"



Nader and "the white paper." Solution: regulation, education, enforcement.

My other examples stand.

Same thing with the chaotic system known as the earth. We know the bounds of our climate which includes ice ages. What we do not have is the computational power to do (and clearly the brainpower) to predict the future. Anyone who believes in that is adopting a faith-based political science. There are too many elements of the earth, sun and moon and the interactions are so complex that no model could be built based on today's technology to predict where that bullet will land, and that's a simpler, like the six hurricane models, model and we can't even solve that.

What you are left with is a group of people with an agenda a goal and a political science that produces nothing but fear and relies upon largely government grants for its survival. If they were doing something truly useful to man and his knowledge base, the private funding would be there betting upon profitable results. Since this will never produce anything profitable, then it has to rely on public largess and being a benign researcher of climate is a tough sell went it comes to grants, but being a prohet of doom and gloom who cannot be questioned because ot the degree and lofty position of expertise seems to pay off quite handsomely...

 

[Peregrinator]

I remember Gordon conferences... no wonder you have always looked familiar

Plymouth, NH in the late 80's.

Thank you! My mind is improving. Steroids make you gain weight and all sorts of other bad things, but they have benefits too! Strangely, phone sex is not one of them, I regret I actually turned down hot sex phone from a known partner. Well only 13 more days to go on them.

I think I also regret the 1/2 bag of Lindt chocolates that may have pushed my flare to this level, also that I did not cough up the $480 for a medication for this month that insurance refused to pay and I was too slow ordering said medication from Japan, since it is not here yet.
Of course, non of the previous things may have had any bearing on the flare as no one really knows, but I like the idea that I still have some control over my body

None of these are future regrets, I am not sure what I will regret in the future...

Lol. There's always more phone sex.

I think the idea of future regrets is sort of like asking, "What do you wish was different in your life right now, and what can you do about it?"

 

[Peregrinator]

I'm not sure how pharmacology entered the conversation but, sure, I'll agree with that.

Apologies! I think I conflated the conversation with you and the one with Eternal.