Re: Take that, Iowa!!

2008-01-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: You didn't parse my e-mail address. Do it now. There's plenty of suitable land for sugarcane here... :-) Sure, and if it's not already cleared for planting, I'm sure you folks can figure out how to slash and burn a couple of million square miles of the planet's lungs to

Re: Take that, Iowa!!

2008-01-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: You didn't parse my e-mail address. Do it now. There's plenty of suitable land for sugarcane here... :-) Hasn't it got rainforest on it? No, the rainforest is 1000 km away from the sugercane area. Check... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Brazil ... namely:

Re: Take that, Iowa!!

2008-01-10 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Jim Sharkey wrote: I'm sure some of you knew this, what with your big brains and all, but I found it interesting: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn _Scientific American_ is saying grass as a source of ethanol has the potential to be vastly more

Re: Archbishop says nativity 'a legend'

2007-12-22 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William T Goodall quoted: The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend'. (...) In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said:

Re: Turning religion on and off

2007-12-13 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: A drug to cure those afflicted with religion might not be far off! Considering that this is about genetic links to *disorders*, quite a few people in addition you would have to agree to redefine religion as such first. I'd wish you luck with that, but it wouldn't be

AI dolls?

2007-12-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
I saw a scary toy in brazilian TV: it's a doll that _learns_ the name given by its slaveowner, and replies with a I love you mama (in Portuguese: Te amo mamãe). AI dolls? Maybe AI will come to us not in the form of intelligent cars that drive, or intelligent refrigerators that detect when milk

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: Most people is stupid _and_ most stupid people have an instinctive drive to mindlessly obey the orders of those that they believe are more intelligent - and this is what prevents extinction. This is an interesting pair of claims and I'd be intrigued to know what

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: Emergence has applications in ecosystems, crowd control, city design, animal behaviour, surveillance, neural nets, and so on. Economics. Must not omit economics. The implications for economics are, in my mind, too interesting to make a list and leave it out. Just a

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: For instance, CNN reported today that Bush was told back in August that Iran had dismantled its nuke program -- yet he continued pushing the panic button and beating the war drum, *exactly as he did with Iraq*. And yet no one is commenting on the obvious inability he

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship wrote: It might help to define what you mean by stupid As opposed to common working definition used by many people of disagrees with me . . . ? ;) It's not true that everybody that disagree with me is stupid! There are those that are really smart, but disagree because they

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Julia Thompson wrote: The datum can't be refutted: YEC would consider non-YEC as evil, stupid or satan's paws. I don't know how to connect this to the argument, namely, the measure of how many people are stupid. Do you mean satan's *pawns*, or have I just been exposed to something new? Ok,

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: Which decision? That people are stupid. The argument you offered suggests you decided that people are stupid, and were doing an after-the-fact expansion on the point of view. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but that the structure of what you wrote seemed to

Re: Weekly Chat Reminder

2007-12-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William T Goodall wrote: It works on (...) Linux (...)( No, it doesn't. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-05 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: (2) Most people are stupid, and forced to think for themselves will opt for the most stupid and evil choices No. It's a mischaracterization -- and unfair -- to assert that most people are stupid. Most people are not stupid. They make the best operational decisions

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-05 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William T Goodall wrote: Corollary: Religion is not evil, because it prevents most people from being evil. It may prevent most people from being evil some of the time but it also makes most people evil some of the time too. Catholic ideas about birth control are evil whenever applied.

Re: Correlation v. causality

2007-12-04 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: And people who think like that are dangerous to themselves and others. Hence religion is evil. I don't agree that religion is evil. It just opens a large door to evil by fostering unquestioning obedience. Facts: (1) Most religions tell people to obey the higher

A Call to Arms!!!

2007-11-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Legions of Terror! Strike at Will!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_books There's NONE by Himself!!! Let's update and edit this list Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Need an artist?

2007-10-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
These guys scare the hell out of me. This is not human, they must have sold their sold to the Evil One. Art gallery (safe for children too, despite the site's name): http://balduf.deviantart.com/ He's a friend of a friend of my daughter (which says nothing; 90% of humanity is a friend of a

Brin: Fires in California

2007-10-22 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
I heard about the fires. I hope nobody here is in any danger. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: SuperStorm Worm

2007-10-07 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: Of course, this worm depends on the idiocy of people who open attachments in emails from people they don't know. Those people should have their computers confiscated, the hard drives erased and Linux installed to be given to people who are worthy of them. I thought so some

Brin: Uplift at Star Trek

2007-09-29 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Watching a Deep Space 9 episode, something caught my attention. Quoting from: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Vorta#History_and_Politics The Vorta believe, perhaps apocryphally, that they previously existed as small, timid, ape-like creatures living in hollowed-out trees to avoid the

Re: Why so little renewable energy 30 years after the sweater speach?

2007-09-04 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Robert Seeberger wrote: Here we would be a bit less likely to use LPG and a bit more likely to use LNG for vehicles. You mean natural gas, not liquified natural gas, right? There's still no commercial technology to use LNG in vehicles (it must be kept at -162 deg, sort of). Here in Brazil,

Re: Why so little renewable energy 30 years after the sweater speach?

2007-09-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dan Minettte wrote: It varies from about $2.55 near Houston to $2.90 in the upper-midwest to over $3.00 in California..according to my daughter Bethbut the California contingent would know better. My suggestion is to drive the price up to $8.00/gal to cut consumption. Don't say such

Re: Why so little renewable energy 30 years after the sweater speach?

2007-09-02 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: So, the argument goes, Global Warming due to human activity is either true or false, and we can choose either to take action to mitigate those effects or not. Each spot in the resulting truth table has an expected outcome. As it has been discussed here many times, there are

Re: Engineers Perfecting Hydrogen-Generating Technology

2007-08-28 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship quoted: Not quite Mr. Fusion . . . http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/news/2007/08/28/engineers-perfecting-hydr ogen-generating-technology/ This is probably one of the most perverse forms of energy generation I have ever heard. It takes water and _aluminium_ and gets hydrogen

Feeling a k'chu-non :-(

2007-08-26 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
If this is Brin's list, why nobody mentioned Sky Horizon as His new book? :-( Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Am I married to a terrorist?

2007-08-18 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Today, when we [me + wife + 3 kids] went to watch the Pseudo-Para Pan American Games, my wife was barred at the door. She was hiding a WMD inside her purse, so hidden that she herself wasn't aware of it. It was a very lethal small left-handed scissors covered with rust and with a no-longer sharp

Re: Evolution or creationism?

2007-07-31 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: Science is not open to referendum. What that means, of course, is that the technological success of the US is doomed. I doubt that. If the USA survived not using the Metric System for more than 100 years, it can survive another 100 years in creationism, babelism,

Re: Religion is Destructive: Why it Must Be Discouraged

2007-07-27 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: The idea that we can think as God does is hubris... No, it's not. Either God does not exist, and there is no such thing as hubris, or he created us with the tendency to think about what he does, so we are just obeying his orders :-P Alberto Monteiro

Re: Mama cat . . .

2007-07-02 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dan Minette wrote: Try it again: . ___ . Horza's state can best be described as |git + |git .__ . sqrt(2) . The joke was lost in the way e-mail

Re: Brin listee not smarter than a 5th grader (blush)

2007-06-24 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
PAT MATHEWS wrote: Yup. I watch Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader and write down my own answers just for fun. And I missed a question onthat anyone who has read Startide Rising should have been able to ace. An orca, often called a killer whale, is a species of dolphin. True? Or False?

Re: Legislative floor fight . . .

2007-06-09 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Is this an argument for arranged marriages and harsh penalties for infidelity? Reproductive Strategies Maru It's a much better argument for mandatory retroactive abortion of politicians . . . It's an argument for the Chinese-Empire model: politicians should be

Re: Legislative floor fight . . .

2007-06-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship wrote: even more cynical How lucky you are. Here in Brazil, politicians don't cater to the needs neither of the poor not the wealthy, they only cater to the needs of themselves :-/ /even more cynical And from which of those two economic groups do the politicians come?

Re: Heroes (with spoilers)

2007-06-05 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
*** Heroes - with spoilers *** Robert Seeberger wrote: And I like the fact that some of the characters are ambiguous, like the cheerleader adoptive father. He seems Evil, but maybe he is not. Same for Niki, Matt, Nathan, DL, Micah, and Peter. Only Claire and Hiro seem to be even close to

Re: Heroes (with spoilers)

2007-06-04 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
*** Heroes - with spoilers *** Robert Seeberger wrote: I think I missed these episodes, unless they are in (my) future. Last week's episodes were the 12 and 13 (and on Saturday there was a mini-Takei marathon, with him in Psych and Heroes). OK...I'm going to be more careful about what I

Re: Flatulence

2007-05-21 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Robert Seeberger wrote: One of the hard learned lessons learned by longtime listmembers here is that it does more harm than good to use any kind of language that is politically inflammatory. One has to consider that there are people here who GASP actually voted for Bush in one or more

Re: *Of course* it's all about talent . . .

2007-05-20 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
In today's music industry, Plain Janes need not apply. Sex appeal was once considered a bonus for a woman; now it's practically a requirement. A few things are getting better now than they were in the past. If new music is crap, at least the videoclips are nice to watch in mute. Alberto

The Decadence of Western Civilization [was: Sci-Fi Channel to add Anime Block]

2007-05-07 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship wrote: What was wrong with the Evangelion movies? Damon, has a vinyl statue of Rei on his desk... Which may be more acceptable to admit on-line than having a life-size vinyl statue of Angelina Jolie in one's bedroom . . . Is Angelina Jolie still the hottest sex symbol you

Re: Re Cost of conservation

2007-05-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dan Minette wrote: Let me focus on one particular country where I know something about the infrastructure: Zambia. My daughter Neli is from there, has worked as an IMF intern there, and her family is fairly well connected to the church structure there. We've talked about AIDs prevention, a

Re: This is not a False Alarm...

2007-04-20 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Deborah Harrell wrote: Maybe we should boycott Chinese-made goods unless their government embarks on some plan to reduce coal use...we got MacD's to ditch styrofoam burger-holders, and Burger King is going free-range for some of their protein... If nobody did boycott Chinese-made products

Re: This is not a False Alarm...

2007-04-09 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Deborah Harrell wrote: Well, with the latest consensus report on anthropogenic global warming, will the poo-pooers finally be convinced? I doubt it. I was alarmed enough, especially WRT 'a third of all animal species at risk of extinction' within the next century, that I walked around my

Re: Not reading statistics gets a Drubbing

2007-04-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Richard Baker wrote: So far as I can tell, Dawkins is talking about his friends at universities in the UK and US, his point being that there are at least some people for whom religion doesn't seem to be an innate part of existence. I'd imagine that his friends tend to be more atheistic than

Re: Pernicious Evil Nonsense gets a Drubbing

2007-04-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William T Goodall wrote: Easter is named after 'Easter Eggs' which are made of chocolate and eaten at this time of year. And what the origin of 'Easter Eggs'? Ok, I know! They are called Easter because they are all Made in China, that is East for almost everybody. Or were they inspired in

Re: This actually was in my medical newsmail...

2007-03-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Deborah Harrell wrote: At the start of the movie 300, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) bids farewell to his beautiful wife, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) as he heads out to lead the Battle of Thermopylae. In it, 300 Spartans fought to their death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army in 480

Re: Ten years ago . . .

2007-03-27 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: . . . the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate techno-religious cult who had committed suicide were found inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. A few blocks from David Brin's house, for those who don't know that. So, He did it. And nobody has ever caught

Re: Pluto

2007-03-10 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn! Blankenship quoted: A JOINT MEMORIAL DECLARING PLUTO A PLANET AND DECLARING MARCH 13, 2007, PLUTO PLANET DAY AT THE LEGISLATURE. (...) Here in Brazil, the codename Friends of Pluto was used in a recent Congress investigation about money transferred to an equally irrelevant NGO.

Re: Brin: Actuarial Science Fiction

2007-03-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Gwern Branwen wrote: Is there any serious attempt to apply Science Fiction methods to Actuarial Science? It amazes me that Actuarial Science takes a cohort of people in their 20s and then projects their economical future until they die - which may happen 100 years from now. Not really

Re: Kangaroos

2007-03-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: On the other hand, ain't it wonderful that nearly anybody can publish an encyclopedia-ish thing these days? Without a license! And remember that Brin, in His page, urged His Legions of Terror to start wikying!!! It's a pity that there's so little information about the

Re: Kangaroos

2007-03-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William T Goodall wrote: http://www.conservapedia.com/Kangaroo The 'origins' part deserves to be copy-and-pasted to the uncyclopedia :-) Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: NASA Goes Deep

2007-02-21 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
In hindsight, maybe the pace of progress was predictable. Humans first explored Antarctica in the early 20th century. Decades passed before we had the technology that would allow us to establish a permanent presence. History will indicate the same for our interplanetary forays. Our initial

Re: Digital Rights Management is evil

2007-02-04 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Gary Nunn wrote: I'm finding out that Digital Rights Management - DRM - isn't just a Microsoft conspiracy. No, it's not. It's an Adobe conspiracy. Adope is so much more Evil than Micro$oft, that it makes M$ look like a Charity Company. But I guess under Vista those things will acquire a new

Re: What science fiction writer are you?

2007-01-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
http://paulkienitz.net/skiffy.html I got Hal Clement. I don't remember I ever read anything by him. Is he the one who wrote Mission Gravity or something like that about a heavy planet with high rotation, with normal g at the equator and high g at the poles? This planet was mentioned in a sf

Re: What science fiction writer are you?

2007-01-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
I tried to get Brin, but I got Hal Clement again. Then I tried to get Heinlein and got him (some of the answers seem Heinlein-oriented... Do you consider what you do to be art? It's a nice scam -- I wonder how much longer people will pay me to do this?) Alberto Monteiro

Re: What science fiction writer are you?

2007-01-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: Posted to a friend's blog... who discovered that he is David Brin. Stay away from this friend!!! Did you _read_ the stupid answers that the javascript assigns to Him? The herectic scum must believe He is a militaristic, egoistic asshole: Question(What is the grand theme of

Re: Week 16 NFL Picks

2006-12-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
JDG wrote: After a disastrous 6-10 week last week, my hopes for prognostication glory this season are just about shot. Stick to what you are best. Make only prognostics about big disasters. When will the the next killer earthquake? Alberto Monteiro

Re: Energy Independence

2006-11-28 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
JDG wrote: As another example, there is the famous quote from a former Secretary-General of OPEC that the stone age didn't end because the world ran out of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.When the oil age does end, however, I'd be willing to bet that

Re: It ain't the genes that are different, it's the number of copies . . .

2006-11-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: Not so much. What's being discovered over the last decade or so is that the system is prone to some pretty spectacular errors, but the ways in which it can still produce a viable and often fertile organism. In about 1/900 people, for example, a chromosomal fusion occurs

Re: Someone Must Tell Them

2006-11-19 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
JDG wrote: This is something I and others were saying in late 2001/early 2002. The panic from the world's most powerful people was baffling. It was like watching a giant weightlifter get bitten by a tiny ant and acting as if a shark had taken his leg. Yes, it was a spectacular and horrific

Re: Gay marriage in the closet

2006-11-05 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Andrew Crystall wrote: I haven't heard a good argument why marriage, a religious concept, should be involved in civil partnerships. Tradition. That's the strongest and probably the last-to-fall argument, when all other arguments fail. If half the Earth's GNP still use feet and pounds, how can

Re: Silent oceans?

2006-11-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Deborah Harrell wrote: I'd already stopped eating shrimp some years back, because of large by-catch loss (undesirable marine animals caught in the nets and tossed back, usually dead), (...) Shrimps are created in farms now - that's what make them cheaper while other fish products become more

London

2006-10-27 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
I am going to London from Sunday 2006-10-29 to Thursday 2006-11-02. Any good suggestions? How cold is it? Remember that I am Tropical, anything below 20 Celsius is f freezing! Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: Apostates!

2006-10-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Deborah Harrell wrote: I recently re-watched a DVD with 'Buffy The Musical' --bloody brilliant, that. It was the first complete Buffy Episode I ever watched. Until then, I had the idea that Buffy-the-series was as idiot as Buffy-the-movie. The humour surprised me. I could never get rid of the

Re: Apostates!

2006-10-17 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: Chicken soup? Is that a reference to my cold of over a month ago? :-D Thanks Ronn for bringing up (ewww) old material... What cold? Cold fusion? Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: Paradox, or, Breaking the mind of logic

2006-10-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
JDG wrote: Maybe I'm exhibiting my ignorance here, but if N(blue) = 4 then all the natives *know* that there is *not* only one blue-dotted native before the anthropologist even arrives. The problem is that you are not assuming that _all_ natives are omniintelligent. *But*, if N(blue) 2,

Re: PC Software - prices high, little choice

2006-10-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Damon Agretto wrote: Coincidentially I got a release version of Vista yesterday, and was considering installing it (on mu XP it has been running buggy, crashing both Mozilla AND Firefox, as well as a number of other eccentricies (Eudora stopped working FREX). May wait now... Please stop it!

Re: Infinities large and small

2006-09-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
William Taylor wrote: Infinity - (Infinity -1) = Infinity No. Infinity - (Infinity - 1) = Undefined To the infinity and beyond Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: Infinities large and small

2006-09-28 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: No... some infinities are smaller than others, as is easily demonstrated. There are an infinite number of even numbers and an infinite number of odd numbers. Those two infinities are the same size. However, there are an infinite number of even AND odd numbers and that

Re: Brin: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

2006-09-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Maru wrote: The Wikipedia entry for R is under GNU-S :-) I hate to play the pedantic resident Wikipedia expert here, marudubinski, I presume :-) but it's actually at [[R (programming language)]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29), like it should (since

Re: Bïrn: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

2006-09-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn Blankenship wrote: So we now have R which comes from S, and C which comes from B. Anyone starting to miss the good old days when the name of a programming language actually stood for something? It makes it very hard to google search for help in anything. For example, if I want to know

Re: Brïn: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

2006-09-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn Blankenship wrote: I hate to play the pedantic resident Wikipedia expert here, but it's actually at [[R (programming language)]] (...) Oh, boy, a whole new language to learn . . . :):):) R is so simple that any computer geek that knows C can get the basics in 10 minutes - after reading a

Re: Researchers Identify Human Skin Color Gene

2006-09-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Warren Ockrassa wrote: Oh good. Soon we'll be able to cure blackness as well as homosexuality. Let's hear it for progress! If the destruction of the ozone layer is not a myth, maybe it's time to seriously consider curing _whiteness_. Here in the tropics, just going for lunch at noon is enough

Re: Brïn: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

2006-09-23 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn Blankenship wrote: R is so simple that any computer geek that knows C can get the basics in 10 minutes - after reading a quick tutorial. Unfortunately, I didn't have this quick tutorial, so - in the spirit of Wikipedia - I wrote one :-) Is it available? (I downloaded R last night.)

Re: Researchers Identify Human Skin Color Gene

2006-09-21 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
(...) Are mixed-whiteblack couples going to abort the kids that have too much melanine? :-/ Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: Whose Ox is Gored?

2006-09-19 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: Comes now the case of the IRS vs. All Saints Church. Yikes. The IRS is the Absolute Evil everywhere. I side with whoever is against it, be it a pedophile, a taliban or Al Capone. Alberto Monteiro ___

Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper

2006-09-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Jonathan Gibson wrote: Who's arguing absolute pacifism? I operate on the Fight end of the Spectrum and not Fear, but that doesn't mean I need to reduce everything to fisticuffs. I simply face my fears head on. It's the only way that works for me. I don't understand your ref to atomic

Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper

2006-09-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: Brazilian's current drug civil war may have a body count of this magnitude. If there was a way to trade 100,000 and solve the drug problem, I think I would accept this price. Easy for you to say. Make sure you're number 1 of 100,000, if you want your bravado to mean

Re: unholy OS wars

2006-09-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
John W Redelfs wrote: And tomorrow, Google will be forced to turn over all our search history to George Bush just so he can make sure he approves of where we visit on the web. If you think Bush is an Evil Dictator, you should know that here in Brazil the Justice is trying to _close_

Re: unholy OS wars

2006-09-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Andrew Crystall wrote: I do dual-boot windows 2k and linux, but I don't feel that Linux is ready for most home users, unlike projects like OpenOffice, which I've recommended for some years... it's a shame that I can't move away entirely because of some of the more arcane Excel spreadsheets

Re: Religious freedom

2006-09-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
WTG wrote: And no, I can't spell. I'm dyslexic. Your point? It's harder to read your incoherent babbling when it's full of spelling mistakes. Thta's rude, William. Yuo can't bunr peopel at the steak for things they are born with! Ablerto Monteiro

Re: unholy OS wars

2006-09-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as

Re: Religious freedom

2006-09-03 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Maru Dubshinki wrote: Clearly that the pink unicorn is actually an Invisible Pink Unicorn, as no one can see it. It surprised me that so many of you believe in this Pink Unicorn Myth. The ammount of people that believe in this is a strong evidence that They(tm) didn't disable the Orbital Mind

Re: U.S. Wind Energy Capacity Reaches 10,000 MW

2006-08-16 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
U.S. wind energy installations now exceed 10,000 MW in generating capacity, and produce enough electricity on a typical day to power the equivalent of over 2.5 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced today. Praise George W. Bush, whose policy of high oil prices

Re: Question for Charlie

2006-08-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Richard Baker wrote: An alternative and more science-fictional version of the same sort of situation. Suppose we have a time scoop that can pluck ancestors of modern humans out of the past and into the present (after they've performed their role as ancestors!). Let's suck up enough such

Re: Since planetary science has been ruled on-topic :)

2006-08-05 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Dave Land wrote: If that's the case, I suppose that lunar orbital dynamics Long time ago, I used to work on this topic... are not entirely off topic, so you may enjoy reading about 3753 Cruithne, Earth's second moon, with its very unusual compound kidney bean/horseshoe orbit with a period

Re: Prehistory

2006-07-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Richard Baker wrote: We do now know that if Neanderthals interbred with modern people, there are no traces of Neanderthal genes left in modern populations. Neanderthals have no genes in common with modern populations??? Are they from an entirely different biological line? Silicon-based

Re: Prehistory

2006-07-30 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
The Fool wrote: Well if you mean writing. The sphynx is estimated as being 8000+ years ago. About 1-2000 years after the domestication of the cat. Most egyptologists think that the Sphynx was build at the same time as the Great Pyramids. If you want to conjure non-official opinions, then

Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex

2006-07-15 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
JDG wrote: Let me ask you again. Do you think we should tailor our laws to remedy the shortcomings of the Chinese social system? I still have no idea what you mean by this. I merely think that if the Chinese Communists think that a certain procedure is too gruesome to allow in their own

Bigotry is evil, why it must be eradicated

2006-07-15 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Bernardo, 6 years old, examining a magazine about the countries that took part in the world cup. This one is horrible, this is where terrorists live Can you guess which one was that? :-) Alberto I didn't teach this! Monteiro ___

Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex

2006-07-12 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: Many animal species have a disequilibrium. Such as? One way is by polygamy. In mammals, that just leads to lots of unmated males, with fierce competition. The overall ratio, if you're talking lions or deer or something, is 50-50, The end result is disequilibrium.

Re: An Inconvenient Truth

2006-07-11 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Robert G. Seeberger wrote: But yes, you are correct. If enough alternatives to fossil fuels are used to generate power, then supply should increase and prices should lower to whatever degree. I think any oil we don't buy will just go to some other customerIndia or China frex. So it may be

Re: Roots of human family tree are shallow

2006-07-08 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Julia Thompson crawled under my throne: [I can't trace back to Charlemagne, AFAIK, but I know some relatives who are doing research, and they are struck in 1500 or 1600. But now I don't care for this, I want to trace me back to JESUS and claim that I must inherit the Earth and be its EVIL

Re: Roots of human family tree are shallow

2006-07-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
David Hobby wrote: If so, one who wanted to prove that everybody was descended from a Eurasian of 5000 years ago would have to show that all of the native peoples of the Americas had picked up some European blood in 20 to 25 generations. Even tribes deep in the Amazon jungle... Those

Re: Roots of human family tree are shallow

2006-07-06 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Julia Thompson wrote: At the generation where you'd expect me to have 128 ancestors, I have 122. (There was a first-cousin marriage at one point, and a second-cousin marriage at another. And on top of that, I know someone whose closest degree of relation to me is third cousin -- but he's

Re: Roots of human family tree are shallow

2006-07-04 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
The Fool wrote: Genetically, I think it was that chinese people are about 8% decended from Khan. At least that is what the last thing I read about it said. No, it's stronger than that: 8% of some oriental folk [not chinese, probably mongolian but also other places] descend from Gengis Khan in

Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples

2006-07-01 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Damon wrote: The History Channel occasionally runs its 9/11 special. (...) My cable TV recently added THC to the line-up. I have enjoyed most of its programs. Alberto Monteiro, who will be echeloned for mentioning tetrahydrocanabiol and WTC in the same message...

Re: Peaceful regime change

2006-06-15 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Nick Arnett wrote: On this general subject... a while back, in the context of options for Iraq other than war, I offered examples of non-violent regime changes, with some on the list arguing that they are rare. I recently came across a compilation of recent non-violent regime changes, which

Re: Myers-Briggs

2006-05-07 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Fool, I'm just curious. Most of the articles you post are ones claiming that there are problems with this, that, and the other. Can you give us some examples of something concrete (not abstractions like the truth or rational thinking and behavior) that you are _for_?

Re: Myers-Briggs

2006-05-07 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell escreveu: I'm no Fool, but he admires Windows 2000 and NTFS. I also think he admires one religion, fundamentalist atheism. *wry smile* How can one be fundamentalist to a lack of belief? By rejecting any possibility that God [or gods, or The Devil, etc] exists. Alberto Monteiro

Re: Myers-Briggs

2006-05-07 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Charlie Bell wrote: *wry smile* How can one be fundamentalist to a lack of belief? By rejecting any possibility that God [or gods, or The Devil, etc] exists. So? Non-belief in the supernatural can't be fundamentalist, there's no scripture or dogma. Yes, there are. Das Kapital and the

Re: Linux suckz

2006-04-14 Thread Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro
Maru Dubshinki wrote: Both uses are possible. But _after_ I have installed the system, there's no safe way to create a partition. Well, not easily. I'm pretty sure the Reisers and Ext2 and up support resizing. I could use parted, but I guess it has some dangers. I tried Kubuntu, but I

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