DaveMc

Specifics: I am in Utah. Hopefully that doesn't matter.

Utah has a "free-range parenting" law that prevents parents from being charged with neglect for letting kids walk home from school or otherwise being out alone.(Google "utah free range parenting law".)

This is a charter school. Hopefully that doesn't matter either.

If the public sidewalk is on the private land this makes sense to me, like weed control laws, tree maintenance laws, etc. But if the sidewalk is on public land then forcing a neighboring resident to care for it sounds to me like conscription or forcible quartering of troops. It just seems unamerican to choose a victim and compel them to some public service.

If the public sidewalk is on the private land this makes sense to me, like weed control laws, tree maintenance laws, etc. But if the sidewalk is on public land then forcing a neighboring resident to care for it sounds to me like conscription or forcible quartering of troops. It just seems unamerican to choose a victim and compel them to some public service.

The new company has a pretty good match but to get it I would have to contribute over the $19k limit. What are the consequences of this? What if I then take the money out of my old employer's 401k account before year-end? Would that work?

This global warming skeptic blog shows a simple experiment of CO2 in air being absorbed VERY QUICKLY by water. He argues that this models atmospheric, anthropogenic CO2 being absorbed by ocean water, thus maintaining atmospheric CO2 at a good level.

What are your opinions of the experiment and its conclusions? See http://www.co2web.info/ Scroll down to 'WATCH my "CO2 Experiment"'.

I'm interested in repeating this, but I don't know where to get the calcium hydroxide yet. I wish he had turned on the light earlier so we could see the CO2 diffuse and bond with the Ca++ ions.

But my main questions are what concentration of atmospheric CO2 is required for this absorption rate? My non-chemist guess is that in the experiment the concentration was several hundred thousand ppm, vs. 400 in the atmosphere.

And finally, why does the Mauna Loa data show a steady CO2 rise if the ocean is really absorbing it all?

A commenter on here said, "Anyone who claims that scientists don't know what they're talking about should be ignored." That got me thinking.

My concern with taking "the scientists" at face value is that over the last twenty years the climate change infrastructure has become a freight train moving at mach 5. There is massive money being poured into climate science, but this will only continue AS LONG AS there is fear of humans changing the climate. If the fear goes away, much of the money goes away.

This seems quite likely to bias much of the academic community's research, no? I can imagine papers being more favorably reviewed if they support climate change, grant proposals being more likely to be funded for research that would support climate change, and tenure decisions being made with consideration for whether the researcher is doing work that funding agencies approve of.

That is, people commonly act as though the science of today is indisputable truth, while scoffing those in the past for thinking the opposite, all without realizing that a future will come in which the thing they currently "know" may be overturned and become the silly thing that the people in the past "thought".

What is the name of the cognitive bias / syndrome / whatever that causes us to behave this way?

Granted, science is generally headed in the right direction, but there are plenty of "truths" getting overturned all the time. For example, "We used to think the earth was flat but now we know that it's round." The top minds for hundreds of years thought the earth was flat. They were just as confident about it as we are that it's round.

What are some examples of this thinking that show that it's a pitfall, i.e. First we thought X, and then Y, but then X'?

I'm pretty skeptical of it based on characteristics that it shares with other fads I'm familiar with, but I really don't have a lot of knowledge on the topic. Could you help me out by linking me to good stuff to read? Is it possible to read the basic information alone without also reading the dogma from both sides?

Can I get links to actual data, such as temperature over time, carbon in the atmosphere over time, etc.?

Send me any links, but it would be helpful if you said how dogmatically alarmist or doubting they are.

Thanks.

We're in the market for a baby grand. We found a new Kawai and a new Pearl River at the same price, $7000. Both are polished ebony and the same size. Which would you go with and why?

Answers like "Choose the one with the voice/sound you prefer" don't work for us. That's just not a factor right now.

I want to get an internet connection with wifi at our vacation home at a resort. I'd like to charge other resort guests $7 per day or whatever for wifi, like a lot of hotels do. I'm looking for a service that will handle the whole DNS and payment processing part of this and just split the proceeds and send me a check. Are there online services that have this business model or something similar?

I know paid wifi is annoying, but it's better than no wifi, which is what we have now at that resort. If I get enough money to afford it I can solve the problem for everyone.

We don't need to worry about broadcast range. There are plenty of users in range. The only issue is connecting the networking part of it and the payment part of it.

I want to get an internet connection with wifi at our vacation home at a resort. I'd like to charge other resort guests $7 per day or whatever for wifi, like a lot of places do. I'm looking for a service that will handle the whole DNS and payment processing part of this and just split the proceeds and send me a check. Are there online services that have this business model or something similar?

I know paid wifi is annoying, but it's better than no wifi, which is what we have now at that resort. If I get enough money to afford it I can solve the problem for everyone.

There is a nearby wifi access point, but not near enough. I want to configure my wireless router to sit in the middle and wirelessly be on the existing wireless network and extend its range so that my laptop can be on that network, too, even though it would otherwise be too far away.

I have a Linksys WRT54AB with Linksys firmware, though I'm happy to install other firmware if it would help.

Mitt Romney, one of the main republican candidates is a Mormon. Some people say this fact will matter a lot to voters and others say it won't. Does it matter to you? Why?