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"Worse"? Both capitalism and communism can be, and often are, terrible.

For example, economist Amartya Sen, who won a Noble Prize, did a comparison of India's democratic capitalist experiment with that of the Chinese famine, and the Chinese communist experiment. His work "Hunger and Public Action" estimated the deaths caused by the famines in China to be around 16.5 to 29.5 million. Most estimates regarding the total deaths from the Chinese communist experiment are said to be around 100 million.

Although India didn't have a famine similar to China, Sen notes that "as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India", and that "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame".

In other words, the democratic capitalist experiment in India from 1947 resulted in more deaths that the entire Communist track record since 1917. By 1979, there were an estimated 100 million deaths in India already.

And before we forget, the Russian capitalist experiment that was prescribed by advisers such as the IMF and World Bank resulted in approximately 3.4 million Russian deaths until about 1998, while others put the figure up to about 15 million premature deaths, with a projected decline of 30% in the population over the coming decades.

The fact is, both systems have had terrible track records.

References?? I was only going on what the original poster cited, after all, which doesn't seem to have been cited very much itself. You must also admit that the three observations of c (one of which made in the 1600s, when time-keeping was not exactly top-notch) as described in the post do not provide firm evidence.

If there's a broader body of work out there, please point me towards it as I'd be interested to read it. At first, I must admit, your name calling made me feel a little foolish, so I took some time off to check out your link. As far as I can tell, the "deBray" you refer to is Gheury de Bray, who published a number of Nature papers on the subject between 1927 and 1931. However, the ISI Web of Science only has three articles that cite any of these papers (and Google scholar none at all). Of these three papers, one of these was published in 1929, one on 1940 (and which does not appear to relate at all to the supposed decrease in the speed of light), and the final one in 1981 (which is entitled "THE LORE OF LARGE NUMBERS - SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE" -- unfortunately, I can't get this paper online through my Uni, since it sounds rather amusing!)

Now, this isn't exactly encouraging, is it? First, you got your own reference wrong (the first article by this chap was de Bray (1927), not deBray (1931)), and secondly, this landmark body of work has been cited three times by other authors in peer-reviewed journals, and none in an apparently favourable context.

None of this, of course, means that c is not decreasing. But I retain the right to be sceptical until proven otherwise, and you've done nothing so far to concince me. And I'll leave the final word to Mr. de Bray, who -- in the only article of his I could obtain online (in Isis in 1936: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-1753(193609)25%3A2%3C437%3ATVOL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B), and referring to the observed decrease -- notes:

"To those physicist who attach some significance to the fact, it may be pointed out that the probable errors of the observations are greater than the amplitude of the variation." (p.441)

Excuse me, but any scientist who blatantly disregards sampling error merely because the raw data points fit a trend that he wishes to see, is nothing but a hack.

two fried cities were substituted for the years of war that had been expected to be necessary to end the Japan part of WWII

• "During the days before that fateful August 6, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur learned that Japan had asked Russia to negotiate a surrender. "We expected acceptance of the Japanese surrender daily," one of his staff members recalled."
• "The bomb had not been necessary either to end the war quickly or to avoid an invasion of the Japanese home islands; morever, 'Truman and his advisers knew it.'"
• "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." (as stated by Dwight Eisenhower)
• "From April to August 1945 the Japanese made a number of official attempts to secure a negotiated peace settlement and an end to the war."

Actually no, it is not "ok" to do this, even during war it's potentially a violation of the Geneva convention. In a nutshell it's fine to kill your enemy but not to deliberately target them with weapons designed to cause permanent disability.

There is a gray area however where so-called "Dazzlers" can be used, however it's really one for the lawyers.

Obviously it depends a great deal on the laser, however high power lasers are now becoming cheap and available. Anything ~3B or higher - even at a distance of a few hundred meters in a fast moving vehicle does present a very real hazard to vision.

The main conclusion of this study is that, although point estimates of reliability are still in the "comfort zone," it is advisable to plan for replacement of the pressure vessels well before the expected lifetime of 100 missions per Shuttle Orbiter.

The linked article states:
"In the 1990's the UN's World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told. "

A quick search on google for "Comite Pro Vida de Mexico" brings up a JSTOR abstract: Damage to Immunisation Programmes from Misinformation on Contraceptive Vaccines.

Whoops, wouldn't want think about immunizing against neonatal tetanus in developing countries. Seems like this author wants to assume there's a sinister plot to take over the world population. Where's James Bond when you need him?

IANA Radiation Researcher, but this may be what you were looking for (and did not expect to find).

334 more deaths due to solid cancer than expected for a population that size (table 2)
87 more deaths due to Leukemia than expected (table 5)

Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors. Report 12, Part I. Cancer: 1950-1990
Donald A. Pierce; Yukiko Shimizu; Dale L. Preston; Michael Vaeth; Kiyohiko Mabuchi
Radiation Research, Vol. 146, No. 1. (Jul., 1996), pp. 1-27.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-7587(199607)146%3A1%3C1%3ASOTMOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

The results are sort of summarized at http://www.rerf.or.jp/general/qa_e/qa2.html (although the numbers don't quite match)

It is entirely ludicrous to think that the low level of wage taxation paid by illegal aliens compensates for the pull they create on the social support structure. They are at the bottom of the wage scale which means they will draw from the system if the opportunity is presented.

Darn, I thought I mentioned how immigrants were more likely to start a business that employees others but going over my post you replied to I see I didn't, so I will now. Almost everything I've read about citizens, immigrants and entrepreneurship, including studies have concluded that immigrants are more likely to start a new business employing citizens. Here's an article from "American Sociological Review" on "Immigrant Self-Employment: The Family as Social Capital and the Value of Human Capital". Unfortunately this only offers an abstract, the article itself cost $14.

I agree with the economic argument that removal of the profit would reduce the attractiveness for the producers of drugs. At the same time, a society has a responsibility to protect it's citizens from harm. Where do we draw the line?

You draw the line where the person begins. While government has the responsibility to protect it's citizens from harm, that does not include protecting them from themself. If a person knowingly and willfully decides to use drugs that is their decision and they should be able to make it. Some people, my sister did, will say "but they harm others". So do alcoholics but alcohol is legal. Hold the person under the influence responsible. Just as with drunks, if someone get pulled over when driving under the influence convict them and sentence to gaol, then make it difficult and expensive to get their license back.

Would you propose we let the country turn into a modern-day opium den a la the British drug war against China?

Opium used to be legal in the US yet it didn't lead to everyone being addicted to opium. Legalize and tax it. Then if an addict wants help escaping the addiction let them enter treatment. Some European countries are working on this, so that when an addict walks up to a police officer the officer will help them get therapy. The tax on drugs should be able to pay for the therapy with many people only being recreational users and not addicts. I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of recreational users, yet the first person I met who was addicted was an alcoholic I met in college. I met her when I stated tutoring her, she kept a cooler in her car filled with beer, wine coolers, or some such. After only meeting her a few tymes I had to stop tutoring her, I couldn't stand her being drunk when we met. Though I had tutored a number of people in chemistry and algebra she was the worst student I had to work with. As far as I was concerned her parents were wasting their money paying her college expenses. They could of spent money much wiser by putting her in therapy, demand she enter therapy or they would cut her off. Though I knew people who used acid, cocaine, ecstasy , LSD, marijuana, and opium I had never since anyone as bad as she was, before or after.

Think about what you are proposing. You propose to create addicts and use them as a means of funding the government. What adjectives can adequately describe that proposal?!?!

No I propose ending an insane drug war that's been fought for at least 70 years and has created the world's largest prison population, many of whom committed no violent crimes.

You don't really believe the government shouldn't tell people what to do with their bodies. Your posts contradict themselves.

Where's the contradiction? Can you point out wher I made contradictory statements?

All societies tell people what they can and can't do with their own bodies. All societies legislate morality. The government tells you every day in innumerable ways what you can and cannot do with y

I don't use grievances from multiple generations past in my family as justification for racist hatred and neither should you.

I don't use anything as justification for racist hatred, although I admit I am biased I try not to be. I try to judge people by their abilities and motives not by their skin colour. As I've told others my ethnicity is Heinz 57 as in 57 varieties. I have French Canadian blood as well as Welsh and American Indian blood. Multiple generations? As in the past? As late as the 1970s, which is part my personal past, the US government was forcibly sterilizing American Indian Women. This was the policy of the Indian Health Service. And it wasn't just used again the American Indians but also against Latinoes. Today, president Bush wants to open up Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage site. However Yucca was promised by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley to the Western Shoshone Nation, as was most of the Nevada Nuclear test Site. If Bush has his way another treaty the US has signed will be broken along with a string of similarly broken treaties.

Innocent until proven guilty applies only to sentencing in a court of law. It does not mean law enforcement and national security are prohibited from discovery. If a cop pulls your car over and asks for your license, the law requires you to provide legal identification.

Being able to drive is a privilege not a right and for being granted the privilege you're required to show your drivers license when you are driving.

Julius Caesar was no bible thumper, but under him, the Romans practiced a particularly vile form of ethnic cleansing in Gaul.
True, Caesar did kill a lot of people in Gaul. And the Romans also razed Carthage and salted the lands around it. But part of that was also motivated by the fact that a lot of those peoples that they most viciously attacked were peoples that performed ritual human sacrifice of captives as a part of their religion . If you want to stamp out that kind of a religious practice, it's a lot easier if you make a strong impression. And losing citizens regularly to border incursions for human sacrifices is a pretty strong motivator. It tends to get people riled up.

Begins at the bottom of this page, but the stuff about the eyebrows starts on the next page.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00076287/ap020301/02a00030/0

Giorgio Vasari (July 30, 1511 - June 27, 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, known for his famous biographies of Italian artists.

He would have seen the Mona Lisa when it was relatively new.

You can have a model that isn't the game, but is still exhaustive.

You can model tic-tac-toe as a problem of exclusive selecting numbers from 1 to 9 until one has selected 3 numbers that add up to 15, and then remap the solution to that problem back onto a tic-tac-toe board. However, we do not play that game: we play a game of spatial relationships, which we, generally, have also solved, even if we don't have a 3x3 "magic square" in our heads. Tic-Tac-Toe is neither the "material" representation on paper, nor is it simply the branching tree of possible game-states: it is a conceptual game of spatial relationships.

In 1988, Philip Greenspun and I did a study of audiophile cables, as part of a Psychoacoustics laboratory course at MIT. Our paper was published in The Absolute Sound and the MIT Computer Music Journal (first page). The MIT version published several paragraphs and pages out of order, so you have to put the puzzle back together.

At the time, CD players were just out, and many audiophiles derided them, so we used 33RPM LP recordings, purchased new and played on a high-end turntable, and used expensive electrostatic speakers and a typical audiophile listening room, not an anechoic chamber, as audiophiles again had in the past not accepted such tests.

Rather than testing speaker cables, we decided to test the tonearm-to-preamp connection, where the signal as the weakest, reasoning that any effects would show up more profoundly there.

We tested a 1-meter long cable from Straight Wire (provided to us free, but costing about $100) and 24-feet of zip cord from Radio Shack (which we purchased).

To avoid any interference from switches or relays, I went into a closet with the equipment and the door closed, and Philip waited with the test subjects in the listening room. (This formally made our test single-blind, though it answered previous concerns from previous tests about signal depredation from switches. Still, we made sure that there was no way for subjects to find out during the test.)

Each run consisted of either AAAA or ABAB, with A or B being a one-minute passage played with cable A or cable B. AAAA or ABAB was etermined by coin toss. Before each minute passage, I unplugged the cables and plugged the cable back in, so there was no way for the subjects to tell which cable was used. We asked for each 4-minute run if the subjects thought it was A or B, and we asked after each 1-minute, if they preferred it.

We ran several groups of 5 subjects each, and did 6 runs with each. Our tests included audiophiles, musicians, and other random test subjects. We found no statistically significant ability for subjects either in preference or in ability to distinguish 1 meter long audiophile cable from 24 feet of Radio Shack zip cord.

If we discarded the first run for each group of subjects as a training run, we found an 80% confidence for ability to distinguish, which was still not significant. However, we did find a 95% confidence on preference, for the Radio Shack 24' zip cord!

Apparently continuing a trend towards presumption of guilt begun in 1994.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-4169(199624)86%3A2%3C559%3ATROSTP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

My first question was does UK have presumption of innocence so when I googled for that it looks like they do.

I still remember my time on a jury here in the US. We had one lady that kept insisting "But they haven't PROVED he is innocent!!!" The rest of the jury was aghast and it really took her a while to vote not-guilty (and I'm not sure if she understood- or if she just caved in).

I was a lit major in school but often found myself led stangely enough to the subject of money, currency in particular, as it's a subject that seems to have had much more relevance in people's everyday life in that past than it does now. I find the Federal Reserve, especially the institution of FDIC after the Great Depression, one of the greatest innovations of the 20th century. As Milton Friedman points out, it effectively ended the terrible plague of bank runs that wracked economies in the past.

To get a sense how invisible money as an instrument is to most people in modern stable economies, you can look at the plays of Shakespeare and all the reference to coinage and especially "debased" currency during the period. One of the most insightful history books I've read is E.C. Challis's The Tudor Coinage. It really gives you a sense of how much we take a stable currency, as the bedrock for a stable economic system, for granted.

Anyway, if you have any curiosity about that subject at all, you can check out this article:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0117(196712)2%3A20%3A3%3C441%3ATDOTC1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

I've been looking for a good stimulating non-fiction read. I think I'll pick up G. Edward Griffin's book. Thanks for the review.

Well, given that I'm not a zoologist, probably "talking out the arse" is a more apt description than "educated guess". So take it with more than a grain of salt.

That said, if the above paragraph didn't drive you off yet, there have been studies exactly on this domain. I didn't keep a list of links, being that I just read a ton of unrelated stuff and just rely on memory from that point, but some quick googling turns up quite a few links on animal vision and camouflage.

E.g., This one seems to discuss just that, and even says that patterns evolve and are optimized by natural selection. It give the zebra's stripes as an example of disruptive camouflage right in the first column. (As opposed to cryptic camouflage, where the animal tries to blend in the background by imitating the background pattern.)

The fact that the mammal eye (including human) is pretty much hard-wired to detect edges, is well known. I'm too lazy to search for a more authoritative source, so Wikipedia. The key paragraph there is "Spatial Encoding". Each photoreceptor is physically wired to inhibit the surrounding ones, so basically large patches of exactly the same colour will produce very little signal, if at all, while the edges will produce the most.

We also know that various animals (A) have a lot less bandwidth for transmitting the result to the brains, so the image will be much more aggressively reduced to edges. (E.g., IIRC a hamster has about 10 times less bandwidth than a human.) And/or (B) have various adaptations to recognize certain patterns, sometimes as early as the eye itself. (E.g., it seems that a frog's eyes and optic nerve actually have separate data channels for "there's probably an edge here" and "there's something moving here" (a.k.a., the "bug detector".) See a summary for example, here. Not a primary source, but it nails it pretty well and gives you some names to search for if you feel so inclined.) And/or (C) actually respond differently to different patterns and shapes. (E.g., the thing I mentioned about birds recognizing foes by eye position was actually an experiment in seeing how they react to various artificial heads.)

The idea that primate evolution was at least partially driven by the need to recognize snakes, is from a recent news piece that appeared all over the net a while ago. Among other places, you can see it on National Geographic.

Well, you get the idea. It's not _my_ guess, I know I've read it and various other bits before in various places, but, well, my memory has been known to fail before. So take it with a grain of salt and do your own search :)

Assuming it's all true, well done sir.

Thanks. The "assuming it's true" is clearly just "rigorous in scientific caution" rather than an active challenge, but I'll be "rigorous" in return backing up my post for you and for anyone who may have been actively skeptical.

I think I read most of the stuff about the foraminifera evolutionary record a long time ago in dead-tree format, but I googled a couple of links to back up the general issue. Ok, I probably went overboard on the links... oh well :)

PhD Paul Pearson writes:
In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin lamented that the imperfection of the fossil record detracts from the glory of geology. Fossilization is such a rare and capricious event, our collections are so poor, and sedimentary formations are so full of gaps, that Darwin could not point to a single example where fossils in successive geological strata showed evolution from one species to another.
Unknown to Darwin, uninterrupted sedimentation does occur in the open ocean, especially on aseismic ridges and plateaux. These areas experience a continuous rain of particles to the sea bed, and are among the most geologically quiescent places on Earth. A steady build-up of sediment is the result.
Now, after thirty years of systematic ocean drilling, many of these sites can be studied. Piston coring generally allows hundreds of meters of sediment to be fully recovered, spanning millions of years of deposition. Where gaps occur, they can easily be identified.
[]
The sediments in question are composed mainly of the shells of microscopic plankton such as foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms and coccolithophorids. Large numbers of individuals can easily be extracted. Their evolution can be followed through geological time, simply by comparing one closely spaced sample with the next.

In describing his work in non-linear dynamics in evolution, PhD Timothy Patterson comments:
Due to their exceptional fossil record, planktic foraminifera are ideal for studies of evolutionary processes.

PhD student Nadia Al-Sabouni
Institute of Micropalaeontology
Biodiversity and evolution of planktonic foraminifera
Google cache of missing PDF:
Planktonic foraminifera have the best fossil record of all organisms, spanning the
last 150 million years. Owing to the completeness and continuity of their fossil
record, planktonic foraminifera can be used as model organisms to study patterns
of evolution at time scales that are not replicable under laboratory conditions.

A science paper from 40 years ago:
Rates of Evolution in Some Cenozoic Planktonic Foraminifera
William A. Berggren
Micropaleontology, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 1969), pp. 351-365
doi:10.2307/1484931
Link to first page
I'd copy/paste the Introduction first two paragraphs, but it's a jpeg scan of the text. Click and read.

Testing the Molecular Clock Using the Best Fossil Record: Case Studies from the Planktic Foraminifera
multiple authors
Abstract near bottom of this page
Since many major groups (e.g. birds, mammals, reptiles) have a poor fossil record, it is often difficult to test and refute these limitations. Planktic foraminifera represent an exception to this rule. Deep-sea sediments are super-abundant in foraminifera, and large numbers of specimens and occurrences are easily garnered from Ocean Drilling Programme cores. Planktic foraminifera therefore represent an ideal model group with w

If a sequence was random is there a way to prove it? Apparently not:

Sergio B. Volchan
"What Is a Random Sequence,"
The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 109, 2002, pp. 46-63.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9890(200201)109%3A1%3C46%3AWIARS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

This article won a Lester R. Ford Award in 2003 for "expository excellence".

If you are trying to carry out some sort of electrically large scattering problem through inhomogeneous anisotropic materials - you are in for a tough ride. Unless you can approximate things away furiously you will soon find the problem computationally intractable.

It sounds to me as though you really need to get a feel for the basics before embarking on anything too heavy. Time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted. Once you have an intuitive idea of how things work you will probably better understand the problem - hence be able to pick an appropriate solver.

A good general starting point in my opinion (particularly in the scalar case) is the use of pseudospectral methods. These will allow you to describe the field propagating through materials in a reasonably tractable manner - they are not too much effort to understand, reasonably quick thanks to the magic of FFTW and surprisingly robust.

I suspect your problem breaks down into three distinct domains:

1. Getting the excitation field to the interaction region
2. Modelling the (potentially complicated) interaction of the field with the surface
3. Getting the field back from the interaction region to the detector.

Since the excitation is presumably beam-like, a pseudospectral technique (particularly one with coordinate scaling) will probably help with 1) and 3). With finite difference techniques you must model the field step-by-step through space. With FFT methods you can jump from one plane to the other - this can be orders of magnitude faster than finite difference.

How you manage 2 is the tricky part! The detail of this will depend strongly on what the material interaction is (e.g. will a scalar approximation suffice). I highly recommend you read Weng Cho Chew, Waves and Fields in Inhomogeneous Media for some pointers. Other things to look into:

1. Green's function techniques (see, e.g. Martin et. al. for an accessible start point).
2. Transfer matrix methods (see, e.g. Barns and Pendry)
3. Discrete dipole scattering (see, e.g. Bruce Draine's DDSCAT)
4. Multiple multipole methods (see, e.g. C. Hafner
5. Finite Difference Time Domain (e.g. see the excellent MEEP from MIT) (see my warning below)
6. Basis expansions and stratified media (similar to transfer matrix) see. Chew for details)

A

Here's a few. There are lots of studies on this, it's very well established science.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1047-7039(199308) 4%3A3%3C478%3ALDASAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r3n42410657816 43/
http://www.thomsoncustom.com/cj/cases/MOD018.pdf
http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327825 mcs0701_7?cookieSet=1&journalCode=mcs

Nice way to not address the poster's points, and instead resort to rhetoric.

The Soviet Union collapsed because of a coup, a radically reformist government, and breakaway republics. The Soviet Union's economic might declined radically from the sixties to the eighties. The Soviets themselves recognized this and wrote about this. It's one of the main issues that brought Gorbachev to power. There was already wide discontent because their industrial production couldn't provide their people the sort of standard of life that the west's did, because of widespread corruption, repression, and so forth. Soviet military spending during Reagan didn't even match their inflation rate. After the 1982 Afghanistan disaster, Andropov made it an economic strategy to disengage from foreign conflict. The big military expenditure boosts in the late Soviet Union's history were the waste that was Afghanistan and their two-way Cold War with China as well as America (largely because the two couldn't agree on what was the "right" form of Communism).

Here's an article from 1991, published in International Affairs, analyzing the (already circulating) claim that the US military spending increase caused an increase in Soviet military spending, bringing about the country's downfall. The full article isn't online but you can read the abstract.

It's preposterous to think that email is equivalent to a postcard, simply because it can be snatched seemingly from thin air by an enterprising computer user. Similarly, early cellphones and especially wireless phones were vulnerable to cheap receivers, but that didn't allow law enforcement the ability to sit on every other block with scanners in the 900 band. Simply because the information is transmitted publicly does not mean the information is public. Furthermore, phone calls could be intercepted in a variety of ways, encrypted or not, because they travel through systems owned by more than one company or individual.

Finally, to the "it's a telegraph and those aren't protected!!!" poster, do a little research and save us the trouble:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-2234(193706) 35%3A8%3C1383%3ACLUSAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7

It's not the information is easily intercepted, it's whether or not the communication itself carries a reasonable expectation of privacy. Get into JSTOR, read the article, and you'll see the court reversed it's decision.

This is one of those wierd "economics papers" from a far right "faith tank", where the solution to everything is an unregulated market. Notice that the paper is mostly vaguely relevant analogies. This is punditry, not research. It's from the Ludwig von Mises people, who are usually busy attacking the GPL as being "anti property rights".

For only $24, you can read the cited paper, "Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion", which might actually contain some useful info on the subject.

Not this again. Let me give you the rebuttal in short:

There are good reasons to think that Deci & Ryan have an axe to grind and that the research that they use is somewhat flawed. Gary Latham (now President-Elect of SIOP, and HIGHLY respected psyhochologist) writes about it in his 2007 book "Work Motivation". Essentially (and I am heavily condensing here), there are good reasons to believe that rewarding people does not undermine motivation the way Deci argues. One of the reasons is that this conclusion is based on the idea that removing a reward results in a reduction of the desired behavior, but the removal of the reward is not a neutral event, which undermines Deci's Self-Determination Theory. In short (and I know the area reasonably well), this is hardly an area that is settled. Deci makes some bold claims, Cameron & Pierce disagree, as do lots of other well-respected psychologists.

Tell me the difference between 'positive feedback' and 'rewards', and we can discuss this more.

I agree. And all that nonsense about breaking up "company stores" that kept workers in virtual slavery back in the 1800's was nonsense. I think it is wonderful to have a captive audience of customers who you can sign contracts with and then execute them in a way so they can never get free of the contracts.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/bigsugar/sugar.htm l
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-4175(198610) 28%3A4%3C729%3A%22MFOST%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

If it is legal, then screw'em I always say. I think abolishing debtor's prison was a terrible idea in fact and it was great that we recently reduced people's ability to declare bankruptcy when they develop catastrophic illnesses. Honest businesses were just losing too much money on destitute people who still had a small amount of money they could fork over. The way we charge people without insurance five to ten times as much for the same procedure as we charge the insurance ($75 vs $1500 in some cases) company so we can have a "retail" rate is completely legal. Vicious and evil-- but completely legal.

All these things and eternal copyrights for mickey mouse are what makes America great.

Good point. Looks like the initial costs for LEP were under a billion 1981 swiss francs.

I cannot find a good web link, but I clearly recall reading about experiments conducted over 25 years ago (I think I read about it in Science magazine as a teen) where scientists severed the optic nerves of rats, near the location where the two nerve bundles cross just before entering the opposite sides of the brain. They then reconnected the nerves to the wrong eyes. After initially healing from the surgery, the rats were confused for a while, then fairly quickly adapted and within a short period of time (days to weeks) were acting as if nothing were wrong. A similar experiment was conducted on cats by actually inverting one of their eyeballs:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w4t82x8u734014 26/

A scientist named George Stratton, as the parent post (and I now see another post below) mentioned, conducted similar experiments on humans with inverting prism glasses, and had similar results. Here is another link to a description:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w9n3wk699uu5vc c6/
And an experiment with lateral offsets to vision, in children (probably related to how eyeglasses affect our brains and our hand-eye coordination):
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-3920(193303) 4%3A1%3C6%3AMLOCIH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

The brain is remarkable.

Your scenario doesn't show, never mind prove, that copyright is a public good. Picture the mega-publisher skimming Rowling away from the mini-publisher for the second book, just like any other star content producer. Maybe you've seen what happens to truly great software builders? The Dead did just fine giving away their concert music, because they were in the business of _producing_ music, not _protecting_ it.

Copyright was originally created to protect content from those who would change it and resell it as the original content, so when you bought a book allegedly by Rowling, it actually had Rowling's words in it and not someone else's edited version.

If there's a serious economic analysis of the public costs and benefits of copyright with such a clear result, I'm not aware of it. I've only heard bald claims and anecdotal handwaving. http://www.law.stanford.edu/publications/stanford_ lawyer/issues/73/Property.html is an interesting article, tho. Another is http://www.jstor.org/view/00472530/sp030004/03x003 8l/0?frame=noframe&userID=81531f02@mitre.org/01cc9 9331f00501bacefb&dpi=3&config=jstor
but again, no strong result.

Late for class, two quick snarky rebuttals:

- If you want to live surrounded by serious pollution, free(ish) market countries have nothing on the former Soviet republics. (And the affected people couldn't just sue, either.) The (now) Czech Republic has some especially egregious examples. And, those countries certainly had more soylent-greenism in the large sense (grinding people up, figuratively, officially). At the risk of relying on a tautology, free-market societies don't lead to a lot of soylent green, except from volunteer soylents. That sort of thing usually happens under color of official right.

- Monopolies of the type usually used to justify government interventionism (that is, ones which corner a market, then raise prices) have real trouble staying in business. The government's got a few of its own type of monopoly going though, demonstrating that with enough government attention and special-favoritism, monopolies really can be maintained, for a while.

(Good article tangentially related to this topic: http://www.jstor.org/view/00221821/di974456/97p020 3a/0)

timothy

The call to arms from the privileged elite.

Yeah. Just like the old days. Kinda makes me nostalgic.

IANAL first off, but I have had disputes in the past with employers that made me sign bogus agreements - stuff like signing away accrued vacation days in order to continue employment. I took those up with a lawyer who laughed off the agreement and told me to go ahead and sign it because it's unenforceable anyway and you can sue their asses off plus interest and court costs.

(1) Yes, EULAs are generally enforceable.
It's still not tested yet here in Canada where I'm at. From what I've understood, Canada and the UK share similar common law, and a contract only exists where the money has changed hands. Under contract law the Ginger Beer case would have failed because there was no contractual relationship between the manufacturer and the purchaser of the soda. EULA != Contract as far as English Common law is concerned.

(2) To what statute are you referring? To my knowledge, there's no general reason you can't sign away privacy rights.

See my point below about statutes trumping contract. Again, I'm not certain about privacy rights in the US, but in Canada there's Privacy legislation that prevents that.


(3) Statute does not always trump contract. People often waive statutory rights in a contract.


This article from Yale would suggest otherwise:

This article from Yale Law seems to refute your assertion

In Reference Re Section 94(2) of the Motor Vehicle Act, the Supreme Court struck down a provincial statute that made the prohibited driving of a motor vehicle an offence of absolute liability punishable by both fine and imprisonment.

I won't deny that there were British and other European influences. One of the Japanese sources I just dug up actually gives primary credit to the French and Germans, though I thought the German influence was rather concentrated in the medical education area. However, I feel that the American influence was predominant according to most of the books I've read on that period. Unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall the name of the very prominent American educator who spent several years in Japan at that time. Not William James... I think it may have been John Dewey. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9118(196511) 25%3A1%3C150%3AJDIJET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 is apparently one source supporting that view, but I don't have access now...

Those are fairly well-known stats, check google scholar for "CEO tenure" or papers like: The Impact of Regulation on CEO Labor Markets, The Rand Journal of Economics, Darius Palia Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261(200021) 31%3A1%3C165%3ATIOROC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

lol...

Actually, I'm putting off writing a Corporate Goverance paper for a boring third-year law school class, and thought I'd try and inject some fact into slashdot. Maybe a futile endeavour...

Those are fairly well-known stats, check google scholar for "CEO tenure" or papers like:
The Impact of Regulation on CEO Labor Markets, The Rand Journal of Economics, Darius Palia
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261(200021) 31%3A1%3C165%3ATIOROC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

Just one of many...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I dont like to study History. In fact, in primary, secondary and high school I was *really* bad at History (I can not just learn things by the book, I need to find some kind of reasoning).

Having said that, I am completely aware of the value of history, which , if known by the current people(for example) would prevent lots of deaths and war.

Now, what does your dead grandpa has to do with history?, well, history is not only what history books tell you. The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.

As a simple example, take the Mexican revolution (I am aware, as I am Mexican). Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. And that, is one of the reasons why Mexicans are always in the middle of nothing, where nothing happens. It is a bit more complex than that but if you like, you could read this book review to know more about that.

Uhm...weight supported by skeleton is worse than weight supported by muscle, in fact that is one of the major causes of joint problems is people don't have a strong enough muscular structure to support their weight and instead are using the fallback of bone structure to support it. When your weight is supported by bone structure your joints tend to grind together and wear down much faster, when its supported by muscle your bones 'float' and cause considerably less strain on your joints.

But it is more energy efficient to support weight with bone. If you stand upright, you are supporting a substantial portion of your weight with your skeleton. Consider that an active human hunter would have had a strong musculature to complement skeletal support, and that they weren't necessarily designed to be able to run for forty or sixty years.

I was going to question your assertion about running down prey because we really aren't all that efficient at running, however, I did some digging and found that while we really aren't well designed for running in the grand scheme of things, we are well designed for a running biped, and are more efficient than our prey which is really what matters when it comes down to it. So I am only challenging your assertion that we are better than most animals, because I find that highly suspect since as far as predators go we really aren't all that efficient.

I would be interested in where you found the comparison. As I mentioned in another post, this is from an offline journal I read several years ago, so I may be mistaking "efficient runners" for simply "good endurance runners" by assuming they are the same thing. The only predator I was aware of really approaching us in this regard is the wolf, who has a jogging gait that allows for long distance travel. But it seems my information is incomplete.

That having been said, the running things down applies more to the not so large animals, however we most certainly are designed to take down the big animals from the tool using and communal aspect of human behavior. It is far more efficient for a small group of tool using hunters to kill a large animal and feed an even larger number of tribe members.

Someone else linked this abstract which refers to Bushmen chasing down zebras, definitely not a small animal (especially compared to bushmen :P) It also says we aren't particularly efficient, but are good distance runners, so there you go.

But your point is well taken. Certainly even without weapons humans acting in concert would be able to take down prey that a single human would not. I think of tactics like the Buffalo Jump -- which, granted, was used by native americans who had long ago developed tools and weapons.

In fact, hunting is FAR more efficient than going to the store in terms of energy expenditure and return.

Yeah, but it's more efficient for me. :)

Check out "Current Anthropology" from 1984 for some examples. From the abstract: "The energetic cost of running is relatively high in man. In spite of this, humans are adept endurance runners, capable of running down, for example, zebra and kangaroo." Other examples in the first page of the article include deer and wildebeest.

The key thing to remember is that, while most animals can outrun us pretty easily over short distances, humans can outrun many of them over long distances.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0962-8436(1997082 9)352%3A1358%3C1129%3ARGK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 (at least originally by Mr. Anderson).

Sure. If time is as simple as, say, a Moebius loop, then there you are ! :)
    As for the chemistry...
          a
          b
          c
          d

    Flat Earth, Flat Time, Flatheads. Yawn !

    1D. 2D. 3D. nD. nnD. n'D. n'nD... iR-D. Oh, and why not ? Dee-Dee ! (DxD).
    Or, Georg Cantor.

    Go figure.

I don't have time to research this fully, but I think the use of military applications isn't a good measure of literacy rates, which your source is using. It's not a good cross section. There are also researchers who would disagree.

The authors review literacy and reading achievement trends over the past century and place current debates in a historical perspective. Although then-and-now studies are methodologically weak, they suggest that students' reading performance at a given age remained stable until the 1970s. The test score decline that then occurred was not as great as many educators think, and much of it can be explained by the changing demographics of test-takers. The decline pales when compared to the tremendous increase in the population's educational attainment over the past 40 years.

The interview would have been more interesting if the reporter had thought to ask if Bricklin had been inspired by tabular analysis programs such as Omnitab dating back to the 1960s. An article from 1967 (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0373-1138(1967)3 5%3A2%3C203%3AOACPFS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0) reviewing Omnitab mentions an even older program from 1957.

Read this academic paper titled: Voter Participation and Strategic Uncertainty. In short, the answer it's sometimes better not to vote (or to throw a die in order to decide whether or not to vote).

but you are still just a common thief.

Dear Ignorant honest person,

Please stop attributing a crime that does not relate in any way to the actual crime being discussed.

"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it".

Understand that, even though there is the belief that the act of getting a copy of certain information (being it, a book, a movie, music etc) is illegal in the same basis as theft, it is really the act of distributing what is illegal.

When someone commits the copyright infringement is when she/he makes a reproduction of the information without consent of the copyright holder (which may or may not be the author).

There, please reffer to A review of the criminal law, section 16 of the theft act and Copyright Law of the United States to understand the differences.

• 6 GtC/year emitted per year
• 100 kilos per 10" balsam fir (50 years old; that's a bit slow
  of a turn-around for the market, but older trees absorb more carbon).
• 800 trees per acre

Hmm, I thought they were best known for this

Here you go:

http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/13498408
http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/15696265

http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://links. jstor.org/sici%3Fsici%3D0066-4162(1986)17%253C111% 253ATSOPG%253E2.0.CO%253B2-K
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114 6/annurev.es.05.110174.001545?cookieSet=1&journalC ode=ecolsys
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0066-4162(1986)17 %3C111%3ATSOPG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(197912) 2%3A81%3A4%3C818%3ATEOABA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

Seriously, anyone who has done even a minimum of reading in primate social behavior will very quickly line up behind my comment.

Here you go:

http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/13498408
http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/15696265

http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://links. jstor.org/sici%3Fsici%3D0066-4162(1986)17%253C111% 253ATSOPG%253E2.0.CO%253B2-K
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114 6/annurev.es.05.110174.001545?cookieSet=1&journalC ode=ecolsys
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0066-4162(1986)17 %3C111%3ATSOPG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(197912) 2%3A81%3A4%3C818%3ATEOABA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

Seriously, anyone who has done even a minimum of reading in primate social behavior will very quickly line up behind my comment.