Slashdot Mirror

If you are in the Metro-Boston area, or trust your child in Cambridge for the summer, Harvard Summer School admits high school students and has 2 good courses this summer: "Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java" and "Intensive Introduction to Computer Science Using Java." The later sounds like a better match if you're worried about courses that are too simple or slow-paced. "Building Mobile Applications" may be more compelling than more traditional programming courses, but has a higher barrier in terms of prerequisite programming experience and required hardware.
http://www.summer.harvard.edu/courses/subject/computer-science
http://www.summer.harvard.edu/programs/secondary-school

Unfortunately, if he is not near or cannot get to Cambridge, MA, USA, there does not seem to be any good distance courses offered this summer.

Also, Harvard's CS50, Introduction to Computer Science, is available online. This includes lecture video, hand-outs, problem sets, and quizzes. This is a good option if he is truly a self-starter and will allow him to work at his own pace. This is not the usual online tutorial. This is the same lectures and materials presented to students of Harvard College and the University Extension.
http://cs50.tv/

At one point the CS50 lectures were also available on iTunes. I don't know if this is still true.

I work for Harvard (but not FAS, another school), but getting into FAS is no longer strictly about having money or connections. A large portion of the students that go there get some sort of financial aid, and a family making less than $120k gets a massive amount of financial aid if they are accepted.

FAS Financial Aid Office

You can take this course on line. for $1,045 to $2000. At Harvard, I would have expected "Introduction to Congress" to be taught by an former member of Congress, but it's just an ordinary instructor.

I'm watching the first video. At the beginning, the instructor says that all you need to know to start this course is that "Congress" exists. At 00:02:35, he's talking about the proposal to change the rules to prevent filibusters from stalling Congress (only the Senate, actually). The speaker is interesting, but if you don't already know a lot about American politics and the structure of Congress, you'll be totally lost.

Yes, they did and, yes, they (and we) did.

Yes, they did and, yes, they (and we) did.

Glad to see that others are noticing that in Physics we are still willing to entertain questioning of the foundations of modern Physics by those outside the field. Another great thing about our field is that most every paper is openly available on one of the abstract services. The original article noting the apparent paradox can be found here. While the subsequent discussion can be seen by looking at the papers citing the original, found here. Some of the commentaries have yet to be released from their embargo and are thus not yet available but will likely be so soon.

Glad to see that others are noticing that in Physics we are still willing to entertain questioning of the foundations of modern Physics by those outside the field. Another great thing about our field is that most every paper is openly available on one of the abstract services. The original article noting the apparent paradox can be found here. While the subsequent discussion can be seen by looking at the papers citing the original, found here. Some of the commentaries have yet to be released from their embargo and are thus not yet available but will likely be so soon.

Given that he's at Harvard, the practical resolution is that he'd have to get the experiment approved by Harvard's Committee on the Use of Human Subjects in Research, and their likely answer is going to be "no".

You dont see scientists flying planes into building, commiting suicide bombings, mutilating women, bashing gay people

You may want to investigate what the 9/11 terrorists studied in school before they hijacked those planes.

"We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering."

Source: New York Times, The Madrassa Myth

cock blocking helpful advances like stem cell

You are, I assume, referring to the infamous Bush position that federal money would not be used for stem cell research? Bush simply witheld federal dollars for stem cell recearch on new stem cells, he did not limit study on pre-exisiting stem cells, nor did he prevent any private funding of stem cell research.

In fact, George W. Bush was the first President to provide ANY federal funding for stem cell research.

The slashdot summary is totally inaccurate. It makes it sound as though the paper calculates what would be seen by an observer going faster than c relative to the stars, but actually the paper calculates what would be seen by an observer going at v=0.9999995c.

There is also basically nothing new in this paper. The effects they describe (relativistic aberration and Doppler shifts) have been well understood for a long time. ANU has made a nice educational video showing these effects.

The question of how things would look if you could go faster than c relative to the stars is a whole different issue. Special relativity doesn't forbid relative motion faster than c, but it puts a bunch of constraints on it: (1) it can't be achieved by a continuous process of acceleration from velocities less than c; (2) if it exists, it violates causality; and (3) although special relativity is consistent with the existence of faster-than-light particles (tachyons), it is not consistent with the existence of faster-than-light observers in a universe with 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension, a.k.a. 3+1 dimensions. Result #3 (no tachyonic observers in 3+1 dimensions) has been known for a long time, but it seems to keep getting rediscovered.

Yes, I was trying to use the hexagram to philosophically illustrate an idea. Which I think I failed at. I realize what I posted may not make much sense. The idea, is that the all the observable processes in the universe are governed by a universal force (I know thats cliche). I will try and elaborate.

To a degree. Most real world systems that have fractal structure have limits at both the upper and lower end, at least when talking about physical structure and not something more abstract.

I agree. However, there may be evidence of a neural map like structure to cosmic radiation. The evidence comes from computer simulations, observations from the Chandra-X-ray observatory, and Hubble Space Telescope. Much like a donut and tire share the same shape. The cosmos and the neural maps of our brains may share some very close similarities after all. Though two structures that are similar may be shaped by entirely different processes. I would say that if there is a universal theory of everything or unified theory, that it would underlie all the more complex processes we view. So two dissimilar processes could be indirectly influenced to produce similar results. This is because both processes obey the same rules of the universe. A good example would be dripping water freezing into icicles and a dripping minerals solution accumulating into stalactites. I suppose this would actually support the idea of The Cosmological Principle. Of course I cannot cite any direct evidence of such a force or physics model. But I would like to point out an article from chandra.harvard.edu Dark Energy Found Stifling Growth in Universe which illustrates the neural net like structure of the universe. This is originally were I got this idea. As above so below.

I don't want to loose you in theological or pseudo-scientific debate, but the simplest article I can give that explains this philosophical idea I was trying to get at is this page: http://www.2012spiritual.info/star-tetrahedron-merkaba.html. The idea that some universal force permeates the universe is a very old one. There are more complex arguments for the holographic nature of the universe, but I really cannot even begin to fathom debating them.

Thank you very much for your reply. I hope I was able to make more sense.

If you want so good statistics, see the Kleck and Gertz study

Reading that article you refer to (which is on a pro-gun web site, as I'm sure you are aware), it seems Kleck disputes studies which show lower use of firearms in self-defence, while other people dispute Kleck's studies. What this proves remains unclear. There seems to be a lot of argument about how often guns are used to protect oneself.

There are studies which dispute Kleck's claim that over a million people use guns in "self-defence" each year, such as:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/
"Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal"

"Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective."

"We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime; other weapons are far more commonly used against intruders than are guns." Hear that? Guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime.

So "self defence" in studies like Kleck's gets in to very dodgy territory. It includes assholes who can't resolve an escalating argument without one of them pulling out a gun (or threatening to use one) to shut the other person down. This would tend to happen a lot when people have, for instance, been out drinking. I bet Kleck didn't determine how often alcohol was involved in these so-called "self-defence" situations.

That's unscientific conjecture!

Something like 90% of murders, the two people know each other because because of previous criminal involvement with each other. If you can be bothered to educate yourself, here's a paper from the harvard journal of law and public policy which has a section dealing with those claims. Click Here for PDF

In Australia after law changes banning semi-automatic firearms, suicide with a firearm fell somewhat, but suicide by any method just followed the trend, indicating method substitution. It's clear that having a firearm doesn't change suicidal tendencies, and this conjecture that firearms are more deadly and therefore suicides are more likely to occur is completely unproven and not backed with any evidence at all.

Here goes a link to an article about a research reaching the exact opposite conclusion as I mentioned:

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Empirical%20analysis%20of%20the%20gender%20gap_final%20manuscript.pdf

The article is very short on explanations. For instance:

1/ When they say 'Martian meteorite' do they mean that it actually came from the surface of mars or rather than it's general origin was near to the orbit of mars?
2/ What guarantees are there that this rock is actually from mars?
3/ If so, how can you explain the parent meteor escaping the gravity well of mars? If this piece of rock is about a kilogram, then its entry mass must have been be quite large. The meteorite in California that was tracked with radar (the Sutton Mill's meteorite in 2008) and later collected had an estimated mass of 40,000 kg but only about 1 kg was recoverable from pieces much smaller than the one in the story.
4/ Following this, it would seem an improbable event that a/ there would be some impact on mars that would send ejecta as large as 40000 kg out of mars orbit and that b/ this orbit would be towards the earth. Any impact that could send ejecta into escape velocity would almost have to be tangential to the surface, and even then it is difficult to see how such an impact could even produce large ejecta as the impact would skim more across the surface rather than into the interior of the planet.
5/ usually dating of the material and its mineral composition leads to a supposition that it is of planetary origin. And yet this rock has a different material composition than martian rocks, as per the article. Thus it seems that the entire hypothesis that it came from mars should actually be questioned instead of inferring that mars had more water than because of the composition of this meteorite.

Just how can they actually prove that the rock came from mars? It seems Occam's razor needs some sharpening.

I remember not long ago that they were saying that the Corvid meteoroids were ejecta from the Giordano Bruno impact. This was proven false: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993JGR....98.9145H

While not the right fit for everyone Harvard Extension School.

http://www.extension.harvard.edu/

At the bachelor's level they on offer a Bachelors of Liberal Arts (ALB), but they offer a great deal of flexibility in selecting courses including many interesting computer science courses. A considerable number of courses can be taken on-line, but there is a residency requirement. Although it is fairly common for people to commute from quite a distance to attend courses to meet the residency requirement, personally commuted from Virginia to complete my ALM degree.

Thats kinda the point of Anon. It has never been this is the leader and here is what we are gonna do. It was more of a bunch of angry people, or stupid, or bored, or someone just looking to hide behind the mask of anon, trying to do something. Good? Bad? Logical? Every time its something different. Its not a collective as much as a revolving door to a community room.

If that is the point of Anon then it's time to replace it. Autopoeitic symbiosis within and between social systems can be achieved but the main thing Anon in particularly has to do is decentralization. Also the Anon banner has been in my opinion permanently diminished as a resource as it's now associated with hackers, with thugs, with criminals.

Anon itself isn't bad conceptually but the implementation was like giving a bunch of children rocks and baseball bats and sending them to go against the mafia and other bigger older thugs with guns. These children weren't even the best and brightest in many cases, creating the perception among the best and brightest that Anon is populated by people who are incompetent. Conceptually if you understand what Anon is on a philosophical level then you understand it's a collective autopoeitic system with the intent of PROMOTING security and symbiosis between systems. The problem is it doesn't do this.

Anon ultimately breaks down to moralist cock shuffling. Those who think their morality is better than the morality of another so they have the exclusive right to break the law to enforce their feelings, afterall they believe their feelings are right simply because they feel more passionately than everyone else or they are louder or more willing to break the law. But that does not mean their feelings are any more correct or are of any more value than anyone elses.

Anon is at this point in time too adapted to moral realism and has not yet adapted itself to the more accurate yet more complex which is moral anti-realism (More can be found here on the problem of moral bigotry in Greene's Dissertation). Moral realism is the problem with Anon in it's current form and in my opinion if Anon is ever going to be effective as an organization it has go under a different banner as Anon is now toxic due to FBI arrests etc, and it would have to adopt moral anti-realism. This way it could actually promote security for everyone or at least the vast majority of people rather than worry about niche issues like West Baptist.

Quite the contrary. It hits close to home, but there is strong correlation that that creativity and mental illness are hopelessly linked. The implication is that those who can reason outside of accepted boundaries are those who create revolutionary thoughts

This crock of shit argument needs to be put to rest because it's an outright lie. Harvard study.

"One study asserts that Americans are more likely to be shot to death than people in the world’s other 35 wealthier nations. While this is literally true, it is irrelevant—except, perhaps to people terrified not of death per se but just death by gunshot. A fact that should be of greater concern—but which the study fails to mention—is that per capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent."

She had 2 handguns, completely reasonable for self defense. A standard .223 carbine... standard rifle you can get at walmart, fun to shoot and then a shotgun, pretty typical for hunting small game.

You do realise that to most people in most parts of the civilized/first world, this sounds completely insane, right?

Two handguns for self defence? Insane. Guess what I have for self-defence in the first world country where I live? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a bat or knife. Times I have been violently murdered or robbed so far: 0.

A "standard" .223 carbine... that you can buy at a neighbourhood variety store. Insane.

A shotgun, "pretty typical for hunting small game". Insane.

Even more insane, though, is this idea that your hobby/paranoia (which are the two reasons you implicitly think people should have guns) outweighs other people's safety.

Where I live, you actually don't see guns, other than small handguns, in holsters, carried by the police. That's it.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns just make people way more effective at killing each other. That's what they are for. Take up archery, buy a can of mace, and stop being so completely ridiculous about your weapon-infested society.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

But apparently they grew "hands" (which is apparently what pseudo-journalists call autopods) not hands (sans quotes)...

However, from the truth is stranger than fiction department, a possible reason that it didn't really work might be the lack of a mediating factors like Sonic Hedgehog expression signalling (yes, that's the name of a real gene, which was named after the video game character by the Harvard researchers who discovered it) which has to something to do with making limbs from autopods, but is mostly used in the formation of scale structures in zebrafish.

2 - If anybody actually thought that the eqyptian government was going to be all good now because of the uprising clearly has not been paying attention. Id love to visit but not until there is another revolution there.

There's a few things about Egypt you should probably know. For one thing, the poverty rate there isn't much worse there than the United States (15% versus 20%) despite the radically different size of the economy and median income ($6k versus $40k). And before you jump down my throat on "proving that", I sourced that information from the CIA World Factbook. They have a significantly lower violent crime rate than here as well -- almost four times less (and yes, I can back that up too from a reliable source, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime. And when it comes to jailing people, the United States ranks #1. Egypt? #165. (Oh yes, sourced that too).

So when you get all uppity about how they're jailing a blogger for three years for publishing something anti-muslim, I want you to remember the terror watch lists. I want you to remember Guantanamo Bay. I want you to think of the hundreds of political prisoners (Citation? Got you covered. I assume Harvard Law School is prestigious enough?) we ignore. You talk about media control and manipulation in other countries like Egypt like they're somehow worse than those of the west.

The truth is... they're better. Three years for pissing off the government here is a comparatively light sentence: We put people in jail for at least a year for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't ask for a revolution before considering visiting Egypt. Chances are good, your country needs one more.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/

http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/

Enter the following info:
Citizenship: USA
Place of residence: TX
Number of children in college: 1
Number of members in family: 3
Gross wages & salary: $130k (no other income)
Student assets: $0
Parent assets: $0 (excludes primary residence and assets held in retirement accounts)

Result: $17,600 (estimated net price), broken down as follows:

Cost to parents: $13,000
Student summer work: $1,600
Student asset contribution: $0
Student term-time work: $3,000

So if the student took on 100% of the cost to parents (i.e. $13k/year) he'd graduate with $52k in debt. That's a far cry from $200k. The net price estimate is for tuition, fees, books, room, board and health insurance where applicable.

You realize that the design decision that you're complaining about here is in fact a legal restriction placed on Apple by the RIAA, right?

See: RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc.

"On appeal, the ninth circuit upheld the lower court's decision to deny injunctive relief but found that the lower court had erred in holding that the Rio was a covered device under the AHRA. The court noted that in order to be a digital audio recording device, the Rio must be able to reproduce, either "directly" or "from a transmission," a "digital music recording." 17 U.S.C. 1001(1)."

If there's no supported method for copying the audio files off the device, then it is not a "digital recording device" under the definition in the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, thus the law does not apply.

Without that court decision, we wouldn't have portable MP3 players without paying the RIAA a shload of money for the privilege.

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/admissions/financial_aid/tuition/

How would your kid pay $15k/year? And how would he pay rent and eat? Transportation? Clothing? I mean, it's fine when mom and dad are there to pitch in, but there are many folks out there who don't have mom and dad to fall back on.

But the other point is well taken, State Schools are much more affordable and can provide the same quality of education, if it's the education that's important. I'm a firm believer in Community College->Four Year route for savings (the last degree is the only one that matters), but I will also tell folks that if they can help it, stop working full-time jobs to go to school. If you can survive on beans and rice (and Milwaukee's Best) for a couple years, I would absolutely recommend that and deal with a little more debt than missing out on what helps even more than the degree: the network you build. I know a bunch of guys who are still in regular contact with many of their friends from college, in various industries. that social net will prove to be invaluable, especially if you work hard to get it. And I'm not talking about the drinking buddies, they help, too, but I mean more like folks you hatch schemes with. Wanna shoot films? Work on other people's films, be reliable and dependable and study your craft and they'll help you on yours. Wanna write games? Be reliable and dependable and study your craft and help others and they'll help you. Wanna start a business? rinse, repeat. And through those ventures, coupled with the education, will carry you much further than just slogging through classes, barely retaining anything because you work 2 jobs trying to stay out of debt, etc. Been there, done it, don't have the net I should have had when I graduated making my post-college life much much harder than it should've been. When they hire a bunch of college grads and say "who do you know that you might could bring in..." and your name's not on that list because you never bothered to talk to those guys.. well.. Consider that.

One planet is almost entirely sugar, and there's some sort of nebula that is basically alcohol.

Where are these wonderful places, and how soon can I get there?!!?

The Orion Nebula has alcohol. It will take over a thousand years to get there, assuming you're a photon (are you?). Sugar is closer, less than half as far.

"European crap"?

From https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2012/01/25/more-crap-from-the-e-u/

"Now that the European Union’s member states are flailing around attempting to implement their miserable cookie directive, the European Commission has decided it’s a good time to retard the Internet some more. Today the European Commission will release an already-leaked new version of the Data Protection Directive which firmly establishes a European right to data erasure, or “right to be forgotten.” Article 17 will give EU residents an unprecedented inalienable right to control and delete facts that were once voluntarily communicated by the subject. Moreover, the right to erasure covers all publications of the personal information."

It's not all bad in the E.U., hence it must be African.

Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.

It is easier to get a fatty liver from consuming sucrose or fructose (or alcohol for that matter), than from consuming starch (which is still harmful in excess). http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Letter/2011/September/abundance-of-fructose-not-good-for-the-liver-heart
You are more likely to get gout too: http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7639/309

If you don't have an active lifestyle consuming lots of starch is likely bad for you, but consuming lots of sugar or fructose is a lot worse.

For a similar serving, spaghetti has about the same glycemic index as apples, for double the carbs, and pasta is low fructose. So if it weren't for the other nutrients eating al-dente spaghetti (GI goes up if you over-boil ;) ) would be healthier than apples- especially since you only need to eat half the amount for the same calories. And if you can get similar nutrients from other sources (berries) you can skip the apples. Apples aren't that nutritious a food. Even potatoes are more nutritious. If you want a lower glycemic index for your potato - consume them cold ( https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25731/1/Kinnear_Tara_S_201011_MAST_thesis.pdf ). Then you end up with more resistant starch (however that may make you fart more ;) ). Or switch to yam/sweet potatoes.

For reference: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm

Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.

It is easier to get a fatty liver from consuming sucrose or fructose (or alcohol for that matter), than from consuming starch (which is still harmful in excess). http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Letter/2011/September/abundance-of-fructose-not-good-for-the-liver-heart
You are more likely to get gout too: http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7639/309

If you don't have an active lifestyle consuming lots of starch is likely bad for you, but consuming lots of sugar or fructose is a lot worse.

For a similar serving, spaghetti has about the same glycemic index as apples, for double the carbs, and pasta is low fructose. So if it weren't for the other nutrients eating al-dente spaghetti (GI goes up if you over-boil ;) ) would be healthier than apples- especially since you only need to eat half the amount for the same calories. And if you can get similar nutrients from other sources (berries) you can skip the apples. Apples aren't that nutritious a food. Even potatoes are more nutritious. If you want a lower glycemic index for your potato - consume them cold ( https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25731/1/Kinnear_Tara_S_201011_MAST_thesis.pdf ). Then you end up with more resistant starch (however that may make you fart more ;) ). Or switch to yam/sweet potatoes.

For reference: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm

"The simplest application is when you want bulking," Mooney explains. "If you want to introduce some material into the body to replace tissue that's been lost or that is deficient, this would be ideal. In other situations, you could use it to transplant stem cells if you're trying to promote tissue regeneration, or you might want to transplant immune cells, if you're looking at immunotherapy."
Consisting primarily of alginate, a seaweed-based jelly, the injectable sponge contains networks of large pores, which allow liquids and large molecules to easily flow through it. Mooney and his research team demonstrated that live cells can be attached to the walls of this network and delivered intact along with the sponge, through a small-bore needle. Mooney's team also demonstrated that the sponge can hold large and small proteins and drugs within the alginate jelly itself, which are gradually released as the biocompatible matrix starts to break down inside the body.

What's really really obvious is that if you take a human and raise them in isolation or in a primitive tribe, they might have a much lower IQ than if the exact same human was raised by the finest minds and educators in the modern world.

Oh really? I've never seen that. Only studies which suggest that if you separate twins and raise them in different circumstances on other sides of the country, they tend to end up having the same prospects.

http://twins.wjh.harvard.edu/more_about_expt.html

Just how much are you willing to wager on that?

http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2010/03/31/red-states-blue-states-and-the-distribution-of-federal-spending/
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/apr/22/rachel-maddow/msnbc-host-rachel-maddow-says-texas-routinely-rece/

I wonder if devices on this scale are relevant to antimatter storage and production? When dealing with masses significantly smaller than a nanogram, it seems virus-sized lasers may be of the correct scale for experimentation.

Why was this modded down? You know it took a lot of republicans to get the civil rights act passed in 1964? There seems to be some serious role reversal if anybody believes the democrats are on the side of civil liberties. Even the (in)famous John Ashcroft was on the right side of some issues as the democrats attempted to spy on us all. And some Supreme Court justices appointed by a republican turned out to be a pleasant surprise (though I'll grant that was totally unintended.. serendipity at its best).

Let there be no doubt, Obama is a traitor to the cause. I couldn't expect much, if any, worse from Romney. Neither get my vote. Let the chips fall where they may.

Facts don't match my ideology so FACTS MUST BE WRONG!!!

If the "facts" were derived according to a competing ideology, they may in fact be wrong. This is especially true if they were created to disprove their competitor. Of course, no chance of that happening here. After all, aren't government bureaucrats apolitical and sworn to uphold only the truth?

Just because something is labeled "scientific" doesn't necessarily make it scientific, useful, or safe for humanity in quantities above imaginary.

If you read the article, you will find that "NASA's Curiosity rover is poised to settle the question as early as this week." No findings have been released as no data has been acquired (at least nothing acknowledged in the article). In any case, the presence of methane is of less interest than the concentration; it is found in interstellar space http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991ApJ...376..556L

> You know, there are a lot of idiots (and otherwise smart people) going on
> about how the ITU is terrible and the UN will ruin everything, and such.
> You know, like how the ITU really ruined international phone calls,
> and the UPU (IPU) has totally fucked up handling of international mail.

The ITU is an international body of PTTs (Postal, Telephone, and Telegraph authorities). These outfits see the internet (VOIP and email and IM) as a threat to their communication monopolies. And they do what they can to fight it in their jurisdictions... https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/05/05/blocking-voip/

> we noted in our study on Internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates,
> for example, that two people who used VoIP to bypass the state telecom
> company's monopoly were imprisoned. Now, it turns out that the UAE
> blocks Skype's Web site as well (to protect Etisalat's position).
> Who blocks VoIP? Belize (which held a hearing), Mexico, Israel, China
> (with help from Narus), Qatar, Oman, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia... It
> even happens here in the States, although the FCC cracks down on this.

The ITU membership would dearly love to kill VOIP. Putting the ITU in charge of regulating the net is like putting the horse+buggy industry in charge of regulating cars. They would attempt to destroy the net.

I'm having a hard time believing that the cops are the instigators. I've heard what goes on in San Jose for example, when a local sports team wins a game. Bonfires in the middle of the street and destruction of private property aren't uncommon.

I can't think of any sane reason that the general populace would be this way, except maybe one. I keep hearing this fear mongering about people owning assault rifles and politicians wanting to ban them, yet statistics have always shown that the more you restrict the ownership of firearms, the higher the rate of weapons violations. DC saw a 25% decrease in firearms offenses after SCOTUS ruled their restrictions were unconstitutional. Chicago has some of the tightest firearms laws in the US, yet their crime rate per capita is more than double that of Phoenix, which has some of the most lax weapons laws in the US (anybody can conceal carry - no permit required, although they are available if desired.)

California has a ton of firearm restrictions (though not quite as bad as Chicago.) Are we seeing a pattern yet? Harvard Law does:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

Also note that everywhere in the world where firearm ownership is reduced, murder rates AND suicides go up. US vs Europe is an anomaly, because its murder rates were very high, high even before Europe started restricting the ownership of firearms, as noted by Harvard. When people say guns are the reason America has more murders, that isn't accurate at all. Look at Canada for example, whose laws are very similar to ours, yet their murder rates are similar to Europe. Also note that in England, police don't investigate burglary and minor assaults unless they catch the perp in the act, and even then they often let them go with a warning and no prosecution. So you get crime rates reported lower than they actually are.

I would never ever wish C-Diff on anyone, not even my worst enemy. After the wife was put on broad spectrum antibiotics for an ear infection, then came what we thought was a bit of the flu or stomach virus (a.k.a. the trotts). Never-ending trotts. After exploratory colonoscopy & cultures to verify, & several different rounds of antibiotics, what finally worked for us was one last round of antibiotics combined with an insane intake of yogurt & probiotics (as we were finishing off the antibiotics). I think it was the combination that worked for us. We now start a (paranoid) regimen of yogurt & pro-biotics whenever someone is on antibiotics. Would we have gone for the "shit enema" (as unappealing as that sounds)? Perhaps. Let me put it this way, after weeks of the most debilitating pain (doubled over in pain), not eating for days, and blood literally pouring out your hind end, you are ready to grasp at anything that might work. Wife said that child birth had nothing on the C-Diff pains (& she went through 2 births with not so much as an aspirin -- another story. . .). I'll joke about a lot of things, but not this. So if this works (faster), more power to it. Oh yeah, cases of C-Diff are on the rise -- yay ( http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Health_Watch/2010/June/clostridium-difficile-an-intestinal-infection-on-the-rise & http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/06/148072242/deaths-from-dangerous-gut-bacteria-hit-historic-highs ).

After living for many years in Cambridge, I have become accustomed to this attitude. I want to make a T-shirt "I act like I am smarter than you because I am. I go to MIT".

"...and can't read." :-)

The full joke from which that came involved somebody in the "10 items or less" line in a supermarket in Central Square (roughly halfway between Harvard and MIT, although a bit closer to MIT), where somebody's explanation was "either they went to MIT and can't read or went to Harvard and can't count". Not entirely fair, as you can get a literature degree from MIT and you can get an engineering degree or a science degree from Harvard.

After living for many years in Cambridge, I have become accustomed to this attitude. I want to make a T-shirt "I act like I am smarter than you because I am. I go to MIT".

"...and can't read." :-)

The full joke from which that came involved somebody in the "10 items or less" line in a supermarket in Central Square (roughly halfway between Harvard and MIT, although a bit closer to MIT), where somebody's explanation was "either they went to MIT and can't read or went to Harvard and can't count". Not entirely fair, as you can get a literature degree from MIT and you can get an engineering degree or a science degree from Harvard.

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/novels/ My favorite from these nine math novels is Arturo Sangalli: Pythagorean Revenge.

Morality has been tied to religion in the West, and defined it, for the overwhelming majority of people for thousands of years. Yes, you can have a moral system apart from religion, and there have been many fine, upstanding individuals who were atheists. But in the last 100 years, experience with officially atheist governments have not produced happy outcomes, by and large. Indeed, they have been terribly bloody.

As to the concept of God, you help make my point: you cannot disbelieve in what you have not as yet conceived, the question would not even occur to you. How could it?

Because those fluctuations do exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative. The attractive force implies negative energy between the plates because force is the negative gradient of potential energy.

A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. The coordinates are arbitrary according to vector calculus. There are circumstances in which energy can also be considered a vector, but this is not one of them. The Casimir effect is definitely a measurable vector in a particular direction, and he clear implication then is positive energy. [Jane Q. Public]

Good grief, you're arguing with the definition of potential energy. I was referring to the fact that all conservative forces can be described as the negative vector gradient of a potential energy function. Many of your statements on this topic are confusing:

A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. [Jane Q. Public]

Yeah, forces are vectors...

Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. [Jane Q. Public]

The force vector points from a region with high potential energy to a region with lower potential energy. That's why an attractive force implies that the Casimir vacuum has less energy than the standard vacuum. No energy is "directed" anywhere because we're talking about potential energy, not calculating Poynting vectors.

"Because those fluctuations do exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative."

You're trying to get my goat. Haha. That isn't what it says. According to the article, the force is negative, in relation to the chosen physical framework, which (as it clearly says in the article) merely implies that the energy is lowered when the physical substrates come together. [Jane Q. Public]

The Casimir force between two parallel conducting plates is negative/attractive. Period. More complicated geometries can have repulsive Casimir forces, but that doesn't affect the attractive force between parallel plates any more than your meaningless caveat does. Perhaps you meant to say "According to the article, the energy is negative..."

The same phenomenon can be demonstrated with magnets. No "negative energy" is implied. [Jane Q. Public]

In my

Orbits outside the ISCO are slowly inspiraling into the black hole, under the effects of gravitational radiation (and in the real world also other things, like tidal deformations and accretion disk drag.)

Inside the ISCO, the orbit becomes unstable to perturbations and there is a "plunge" into the black hole. However, these objects are visible to the outside as long as they haven't crossed the event horizon. The thing is, that won't take long, and so they won't be visible for long.

For more details, see this paper : http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993PhRvD..47.3281K

If you're too lazy to cut and paste. :)

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/10/point-of-no-return-found/

Wikileaks isn't censored. Try its many mirrors here: http://wikileaks.info/

Internet Gambling is probably one where I agree with you somewhat, but it was a business decision (preventing money laundering for other crimes), not a ideological decision. See the many cities and states where various forms of gambling is legal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_States

DeCSS isn't censored (although COMPANIES, not the US government, have tried to censor it) http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/DeCSS

Under 18 porn may be offensive to some, but it's mainly banned out of a sense of humanity and empathy for its victims, there is no commonality between it and banning cartoons (cartoons are not abducted or abused)

Why do you tell lies and half-truths? Is it because you think telling lies will help get your point across? Well it doesn't.
Whoever modded you up needs his privilege reexamined

In short, yes:

From the abstract of "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright’s Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment" by Wendy Seltzer
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v24/24HarvJLTech171.pdf

If this takedown procedure took place through the courts, it would trigger First Amendment scrutiny as a prior restraint, silencing speech before an adjudication of lawfulness. Because DMCA takedowns are privately administered through ISPs, however, they have not received such constitutional scrutiny, despite their high risk of error.

The actual article argues that although the takedown notices are carried out by private entities, they are being done "in the shadow of the law". However, until a court accepts this, prior restraint does not apply.