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The only people I have ever met who have that much stupidity and that much arrogance are the RIAA's lawyers.

I think other such people clearly exist, sadly :-(

There are several (in)famous miscarriages of justice that I can think of that were largely down to the stupidity / arrogance of expert witnesses.

Just to pick one: I believe that Skuse in the Birmingham Six trial used his own "modified" Greiss test and claimed a certainty of explosive residue detection that went well beyond scientific concensus on the standard test. He also then "misspoke" about his private recipe for the reagent when others were trying to test his results. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14719864.300-forensic-chemistry-in-the-dock.html.

For two: ear print identification.

It is (IMO) likely that these folks believed in their tools and results - just as I think it is also likely that the RIAA sincerely believe in theirs.

Sincerely held belief does not valid forensic science make - unfortunately it seems it can prove convincing to a court.

A statue to Galileo 400 years late? WTF?

Those guys have a really big time horizon - things change /very/ slowly as they can't just take up any new 'truth' that comes down the pike unless they're /really/ sure. I've always thought it meaningful that they first publicly admitted their mistake 359 years later - 360 being a significant number for ancient astronomy/astrology/mythology.

Heay, I'm American and there are a great many things I deeply cherish about America....

But at times like these, yeah, we do fully deserve the smackdown he gave us. And more.

As great as America is in so many ways, every time religious fundamentalism and anti-evolutionism comes up it is horrifically embarrassing and I just want to crawl onto a boat headed to Iceland. I hear it's actually rather quite nice there.

-

Wow, I thought this was common knowledge already, at least within traffic engineer circles. In my little world, anyway here's a report from 1994...

If our fundamental laws are a bit off, then this bending/distorting of the light would be explained by that...

That's the thing: no, it wouldn't!

Have you even read the Wikipedia article on MOND? MOND is the only serious proposal to modify our laws of gravity. It proposes a change in F=ma, such that tiny accelerations result in a surprisingly large force. This would not affect the amount of mass, and thus would not cause a change in gravitational lensing. Any observation of gravitational lensing in a place where there's no visible matter is ipso facto evidence in favor of dark matter and evidence in disfavor of MOND.

Beyond MOND, no other modification of gravity has yet been proposed that's consistent with General Relativity. (Even MOND might not be, depending on how well TeVeS works. AFAIK, the math is still under scrutiny.) And without compatibility with General Relativity, gravitational lensing is impossible, so it contradicts reality.

At this point, thanks to the Bullet Cluster and other observations, even MOND supporters acknowledge that dark matter exists at the scale of galactic clusters and up. The only question remaining is, at the scale of a single galaxy, whether the galactic rotation curve is due to MOND or due to a halo of dark matter around the galaxy. And that itself is a point of fresh debate ever since the recent observations of NGC 4736, a galaxy that follows the classic (non-MOND) Newtonian predictions. Dark matter theory can easily account for this by suggesting that this one galaxy was somehow separated from the dark matter halo that once surrounded it; MOND (or any other modification to gravity) must somehow explain why this one galaxy does not conform to the laws of physics.

At this point, the existence of dark matter is as good as proven.

What's up with dark energy, OTOH, is still anyone's guess...

Laboratory experiments mimicking the temperatures and pressures found deep within those planets suggest diamond production is indeed possible, but would be more likely to be an agglomerate mass of diamond microcrystals than the yottacarat diamond solitaire envisioned by Clarke. Uranus and Neptune would probably make for better diamond production than Jupiter and Saturn due to a higher abundance of methane and thus carbon.

That being said, recent research suggests that Uranus and Neptune are not sufficiently carbon-rich to have produced an appreciable amount of diamond after all.

Ramesh Ganju at the Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts, US, and colleagues deposited human lung cancer cells under the skin of a dozen mice and allowed the tumours to grow in the animals for about two weeks. They then began giving half of these mice daily injections of about 250 micrograms of synthetic THC right next to the tumours for three weeks. A cannabis cigarette may contain as much as 150 milligrams of THC.

Tumours in the control mice averaged about 0.6 grams in weight by the end of the five-week trial. By comparison, those in the mice that received THC weighed just 0.25 grams - 60% less

Also from New Scientist:

The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the last minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO officials, the cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of external advisers.

As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had been eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of such comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is understood that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana.

One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the eyes of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for marijuana legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went nuts" when they saw the draft report.

The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but rather to minimise the double standards that have operated in appraising the health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of the comparisons it makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal drug comes out better--or at least on a par--with the legal one.

I saw reference to another study that compared nonsmokers, daily pot smokers, daily cigarette smokers, and people who smoked both pot and cigarettes daily since at least 1970, but I can't find the study. Those who smoked only pot had the fewest cancers, those who didn't smoke had the second fewest, followed by those who smoked both pot and cigs, with the butthead-only crowd having the most cancers. The most striking was the difference between those who smoked both, and those who smoked only cigarettes. From that study I'd say if you smoke cigarettes it would behoove you to start smoking pot as well.

One last NS link:

That support is bolstered by research showing that cannabis (and psychoactive extracts such as THC or cannabinoids) can provide relief for sufferers of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. Cannabis can also help to improve appetite and decrease weight loss in AIDS victims and may be able to slow the growth of cancerou

Ramesh Ganju at the Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts, US, and colleagues deposited human lung cancer cells under the skin of a dozen mice and allowed the tumours to grow in the animals for about two weeks. They then began giving half of these mice daily injections of about 250 micrograms of synthetic THC right next to the tumours for three weeks. A cannabis cigarette may contain as much as 150 milligrams of THC.

Tumours in the control mice averaged about 0.6 grams in weight by the end of the five-week trial. By comparison, those in the mice that received THC weighed just 0.25 grams - 60% less

Also from New Scientist:

The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the last minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO officials, the cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of external advisers.

As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had been eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of such comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is understood that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana.

One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the eyes of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for marijuana legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went nuts" when they saw the draft report.

The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but rather to minimise the double standards that have operated in appraising the health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of the comparisons it makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal drug comes out better--or at least on a par--with the legal one.

I saw reference to another study that compared nonsmokers, daily pot smokers, daily cigarette smokers, and people who smoked both pot and cigarettes daily since at least 1970, but I can't find the study. Those who smoked only pot had the fewest cancers, those who didn't smoke had the second fewest, followed by those who smoked both pot and cigs, with the butthead-only crowd having the most cancers. The most striking was the difference between those who smoked both, and those who smoked only cigarettes. From that study I'd say if you smoke cigarettes it would behoove you to start smoking pot as well.

One last NS link:

That support is bolstered by research showing that cannabis (and psychoactive extracts such as THC or cannabinoids) can provide relief for sufferers of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. Cannabis can also help to improve appetite and decrease weight loss in AIDS victims and may be able to slow the growth of cancerou

Ramesh Ganju at the Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts, US, and colleagues deposited human lung cancer cells under the skin of a dozen mice and allowed the tumours to grow in the animals for about two weeks. They then began giving half of these mice daily injections of about 250 micrograms of synthetic THC right next to the tumours for three weeks. A cannabis cigarette may contain as much as 150 milligrams of THC.

Tumours in the control mice averaged about 0.6 grams in weight by the end of the five-week trial. By comparison, those in the mice that received THC weighed just 0.25 grams - 60% less

Also from New Scientist:

The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the last minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO officials, the cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of external advisers.

As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had been eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of such comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is understood that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana.

One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the eyes of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for marijuana legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went nuts" when they saw the draft report.

The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but rather to minimise the double standards that have operated in appraising the health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of the comparisons it makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal drug comes out better--or at least on a par--with the legal one.

I saw reference to another study that compared nonsmokers, daily pot smokers, daily cigarette smokers, and people who smoked both pot and cigarettes daily since at least 1970, but I can't find the study. Those who smoked only pot had the fewest cancers, those who didn't smoke had the second fewest, followed by those who smoked both pot and cigs, with the butthead-only crowd having the most cancers. The most striking was the difference between those who smoked both, and those who smoked only cigarettes. From that study I'd say if you smoke cigarettes it would behoove you to start smoking pot as well.

One last NS link:

That support is bolstered by research showing that cannabis (and psychoactive extracts such as THC or cannabinoids) can provide relief for sufferers of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. Cannabis can also help to improve appetite and decrease weight loss in AIDS victims and may be able to slow the growth of cancerou

See Most scientific papers are probably wrong for details.

You Katrina comment is part of the problem. You are believing these made up relationship and ignoring the scientific data.
Also with gas prices the US is higher then some Europian countries once you eliminate the taxes.

And Climate Audit is also your friend - very eye-opening, unbiased, scientific and statistical examination of a lot of the global warming debate.

Oh, the IPCC and their assessment reports... I'm sure everyone takes those as the gospel. Those are always popular. Like in 1995 when their analysis estimated that the worth of a human life in developed nations was 15 times greater than human life in the third world. Hey, it only triggered protests and sit ins.... oh, but you'll tell me those were supporters. Part of your imaginary consensus perhaps?

The same IPCC that was served a nice helping of humble pie in front of congress in 1997?

By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

It seems their dire predictions in 1990 didn't materialize so the 1995 report had to be revised a bit. Quite a bit. I doubt they could accurately forecast the weather in LA, much less global climate in 10 years time. So when it came time to make policy decisions that affected the real world and not just global warming fairy land... well, congress went in favor of continued economic progress. I could go on with bad news for the IPCC, but I'll just say they burned all their credibility many years ago. Since then, they only make predictions 100 years out. They must have gotten tired of having egg on their face.

Next time, take a Viagra first.

Well, if we take GP's point (about "life as we know it" not being a necessary condition) one step further... Maybe some life forms could be possible without a solvent? Think gaseous structures or plasma blobs, for example...

I wonder if any such hypothetical gaseous life forms can seriously hold any scientific ground.

I submitted this yesterday, it was probably already in the firehose. I saw it at New Scientist, where I followed some links to Professor Wang's press release.

Yes, that's really his name. Here is his research group's home page.

-mcgrew

OK, these aren't the pictures you are looking for. Move along. Here is the black hole on Mars, here is the vortex on Saturn.

Both are as much "black hole" as the one they "reated in the lab". Meanwhile, the last one I met was named JoAnne.

I'm not sure that you're 100% right in your criticism.

One of the favorite forgottens of the '90s conflict and its aftermath with Iraq:

While on patrol, a group of soldiers literally stumbled over a large circle of pipe out in the desert attached to an innocuous facility. Being a news junkie - and working in a related field at the time - this one hit me like a ton of bricks. It was broadcast late night, but because Joe Reported never really got it, or so I speculate, it was one of those not-often repeated stories (again, anomalous) but its implication did become part of "what everyone knew."

http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/bas-iraq-hide-seek-9-91.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/nuke/program.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117790.400-iraq-clings-to-its-nuclear-secrets-.html

If the question is why were so many willing to believe in WMDs in the first place, this time around, there it is. That we did so is shameful, but it wasn't without cause.

To have been lied to by our leaders is beyond infuriating. But we've also been played by them in another way. What didn't come out in popular media until much later - that I, a news junkie, am aware of - is Saddam stupidly bluffing and intimating that he did or could possess such capability in his responses to the West. He just didn't believe that Dubya would do anything about it.

I guess my point is to emphasize that we weren't just lied to, and we weren't just sheep to believe the lies. We were misled by guys who later decided to take the heat as liars instead of guys who were too stupid to recognize bluff from data. I guess I'd damned well be neither, but if I had to admit to the American public that a) I'm a lying politician or b) I'm a politician dumber than Saddam, - well, let's just say I can maybe see how the choice was made.

So, we weren't just sheep believing lies. We were sheep to believe the under-qualified. I'm guilty of not buying it until Colin Powell supported the position. Prior to that for me, it was easy: claims by idiots in government. So I bleated along complacently because I thought Powell's judgement would be different - trustworthy. I forgot - as did anyone like me - this simple adage: Tell me who your friends are, I'll tell you who you are. I should have known if one would get pulled up or one would get pulled down if you put Cheney and Powell alone in a room together.

As far as your personal paranoid fantasy - take heart. You nailed it in one. For a bunch of fancy words outlining this, see an earlier post of mine in this topic, if you care. Not claiming to have proved anything, but I did use a lot of correctly spelled words - your view is neither uniquely yours nor fantasy - paranoid or any other kind, IMO.

British prisons used to do it. Though the amount of work you can get from humans is so low that they mostly wasted the energy by attaching vanes to the mill that made it harder for the prisoners to work.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg16322007.600-the-last-word.html

It works only if you have a UID less than 100,000 or if you are an Anonymous Coward Emeritus. It is actually pretty awesome.

Oh, stop looking at me like that. Here is your bloody link

I'm not sure if it is the story the submitter was trying to link to, but this article seems to cover the subject.

I recall that they have been planning this for a while. Check out http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6547-scientists-seek-to-create-threeparent-babies.html. Funny enough, this was banned in the US, though this is a great way to treat mitochondrial disorders while still keeping the kid from being "the milk-mans" baby....err "milk-womans"?

I hope that ESCR can be made to produce ESC with out killing embryos. ESC are much more flexible than adult stem cells. Try healing a problem in an organ that repairs very slowly, thus does not produce very active adult stem cells.... like the kidney.

For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been obtained without having to destroy the embryos they came from.

The Daily Mail is considered a tabloid rag by many of us who have lived in the UK because they cater to people with a palate for sensationalist headlines and content. The referenced New Scientist article talking about Karim Nayernia's research was published in April of 2007 but The Daily Mail chose to report it many months later. Regardless, since last year there have been few tangible gains in this field. The problem rests in the fact that converted stem cells can achieve the first 2 of 3 stages towards mature sperm development. Even once this is done there is no guarantee the sperm can actually be used in IVF to create a viable/implantable fertilized egg.

The implications of this research are great but rags like The Daily Mail focus on the most provocative uses such as gay/lesbian couples conceiving and auto-reproduction. Before we can approve this research for use in the public we must ascertain whether the manipulations necessary to force conversion of bone marrow stem cells into spermatogonium or the products of these cells potentially introduce undetectable abnormalities within the genetic code. Next, during the process of spermatogenesis chromosomal crossover introduces genetic variability. Without more details in the original article I wonder if one of the failing stages of development involves this important process. Lastly, auto-reproduction is nearly impossible. Every person carries a set of lethal recessive alleles which manifest themselves in incestuous reproductive pairings--hence why most societies have shunned this sort of relationship. This would almost certainly guarantee the fetus would spontaneously abort.

The real application of this research is injecting spermatogonium eggs in women or men who are infertile. This would revolutionize reproductive medicine because it would allow couples to conceive naturally. However, being in the medical field, there are very valid natural reasons why couples may not be able to reproduce (i.e. certain genetic abnormalities) or why fetuses spontaneously abort that we need to decide as a society whether its prudent to interfere. I don't claim to have the answers but I would welcome discussion in this direction so we can make informed choices in the medical breakthroughs we're bound to see in the next few decades.

Incidentally, the New Scientist published a new article today on the matter discussing the implications of this research. Without having a subscription I can't read more but I certainly wouldn't count out fathers just yet. Having a child is only the first part of the equation. Raising an emotionally and psychologically well-adjusted child still necessitates their role--although many single-parents or LGBT couples may argue this point. Anyway, as a community I hope we're a bit more careful of citing sensationalist publications.

The Daily Mail is considered a tabloid rag by many of us who have lived in the UK because they cater to people with a palate for sensationalist headlines and content. The referenced New Scientist article talking about Karim Nayernia's research was published in April of 2007 but The Daily Mail chose to report it many months later. Regardless, since last year there have been few tangible gains in this field. The problem rests in the fact that converted stem cells can achieve the first 2 of 3 stages towards mature sperm development. Even once this is done there is no guarantee the sperm can actually be used in IVF to create a viable/implantable fertilized egg.

The implications of this research are great but rags like The Daily Mail focus on the most provocative uses such as gay/lesbian couples conceiving and auto-reproduction. Before we can approve this research for use in the public we must ascertain whether the manipulations necessary to force conversion of bone marrow stem cells into spermatogonium or the products of these cells potentially introduce undetectable abnormalities within the genetic code. Next, during the process of spermatogenesis chromosomal crossover introduces genetic variability. Without more details in the original article I wonder if one of the failing stages of development involves this important process. Lastly, auto-reproduction is nearly impossible. Every person carries a set of lethal recessive alleles which manifest themselves in incestuous reproductive pairings--hence why most societies have shunned this sort of relationship. This would almost certainly guarantee the fetus would spontaneously abort.

The real application of this research is injecting spermatogonium eggs in women or men who are infertile. This would revolutionize reproductive medicine because it would allow couples to conceive naturally. However, being in the medical field, there are very valid natural reasons why couples may not be able to reproduce (i.e. certain genetic abnormalities) or why fetuses spontaneously abort that we need to decide as a society whether its prudent to interfere. I don't claim to have the answers but I would welcome discussion in this direction so we can make informed choices in the medical breakthroughs we're bound to see in the next few decades.

Incidentally, the New Scientist published a new article today on the matter discussing the implications of this research. Without having a subscription I can't read more but I certainly wouldn't count out fathers just yet. Having a child is only the first part of the equation. Raising an emotionally and psychologically well-adjusted child still necessitates their role--although many single-parents or LGBT couples may argue this point. Anyway, as a community I hope we're a bit more careful of citing sensationalist publications.

Try http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13269-nasa-to-announce-new-commercial-space-partner.html

You're right, it's really not that new, or rather it's old enough that there was a play with this topic as a highlight that came out about a year ago.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/05/landscape-with-weapon.html

An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system.

John Keogh was issued the innovation patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" under a patent system introduced in May 2001.

(read the rest...)

:-)

- Jesper

Found some Google cache pages regarding this research:

3-D Depth Reconstruction from a Single Still Image
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:I34JFMW8eMQJ:ai.stanford.edu/~ang/papers/ijcv07-monocular3dreconstruction.pdf+site:stanford.edu+asaxena+reconstruction&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Learning Depth from Single Still Images: Approximate Inference
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:guijayWxDyUJ:ai.stanford.edu/~asaxena/papers/MS_E212_Ashu.pdf+site:stanford.edu+asaxena+reconstruction&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

And an intro (full requires logging in): http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825305.600

Just a shame they test it in Scotland then - with lots of lovely depleted uranium. Aye, it's braw stuff. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3148853.stm

Let us rewind:

• 1990 - Facility at Dundrennan Range, Kirkcudbright announced http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12517010.300-scotland-to-host-rail-gun-testbed-.html
• 1995 - Velocities by 5MJ's performed http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/3330/9963/00472945.pdf
• 2003 - First sea trials at 1/8 scale http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2003/05/mil-030512-navsea04.htm
• 2005 - Commenced construction of the new test launcher facility at Dahlgren, VA, using old Army refurbished SDI launcher http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/emrg.htm
• 2007 - Delivery to Dahlgren by BAE of new system - 40 ton, "laboratory" version with removable rails - aiming for 32MJ (scaling to 64) http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/01/aprailgun070117/

And may, I draw you attention to this http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2004armaments/DayII/SessionI/01_Cilli_EM_Gun.pdf. Slides 12/13 are particularly interesting... ("use their test facility at no cost to US")

I remember reading about this in regards to CRT. Here's a good article. Regarding the reading of CAT5 from a distance, I call BS. There isn't enough leakage due to the positive/negative pairs. In any case, IPSec in transport mode should be used for secure transmission on any media. No standalone device required. Even fiber can have a splitter installed for eavesdropping if the traffic isn't encrypted.

This kind of thing is already happening with existing anti-terrorist radiation detectors, e.g.:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/nuclear_terrori.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20041221/ai_n14588366

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn3150

No need to take it back. Medical radiation sources can be quite mobile and far from hospitals. http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn3150 Get used to black cars trailing you if you happen to have a thyroid problem....

Nereid, rather than speculating about something that supposedly happened 13 or 14 billion years ago, why don't you guys focus on explaining why comets and asteroids are surprisingly similar in composition? Once again, we see additional support for electric cometary theory ...

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13224-comet-samples-are-surprisingly-asteroidlike.html

What's completely amazing about your arguments that there is no real debate here is that you are actually *losing* the debate with each week that goes by!

While current observations do not yet provide a direct model-independent measurement of the speed of gravity, a test within the framework of general relativity can be made by observing the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16. The orbit of this binary system is gradually decaying, and this behavior is attributed to the loss of energy due to escaping gravitational radiation. But in any field theory, radiation is intimately related to the finite velocity of field propagation, and the orbital changes due to gravitational radiation can equivalently be viewed as damping caused by the finite propagation speed. (In the discussion above, this damping represents a failure of the "retardation" and "noncentral, velocity-dependent" effects to completely cancel.)

The rate of this damping can be computed, and one finds that it depends sensitively on the speed of gravity. The fact that gravitational damping is measured at all is a strong indication that the propagation speed of gravity is not infinite. If the calculational framework of general relativity is accepted, the damping can be used to calculate the speed, and the actual measurement confirms that the speed of gravity is equal to the speed of light to within 1%. (Measurements of at least one other binary pulsar system, PSR B1534+12, confirm this result, although so far with less precision.)

Religion reveals the truth of divine revelation. Which means that it is true by axiom, not proof. If the "revealed truth" isn't actually true, then it isn't of divine origin. Which does much to explain why religious institutions are very conservative when it comes to accepting new ideas.

You cannot be talking about organized religion then. The only religious people then would be ones that have had divine revelations and the only religion would be based on those personal revelations. I haven't seen any burning bushes lately, have you? If you go off of divine revelations made to other people, then you have to look at their accounts, which means the bible for the most part, or people saying that God talks to them (i.e. David Koresh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell and Oral Robers, who had a "divine revelation" that God wanted people to send him $8 million or God would smite him).

When religion doesn't get it right, people abandon it completely.

When Martin Luther thought that the Catholic church had it wrong, he changed Christianity completely. He believed that the only true word was the bible, which is ironic because it was the Catholic church that chose the four stories to make up the new testament out of the sixteen or so there were. When attitudes changed, even the Lutheran church denounced his hateful writings about Jews. If you look at the old testament then the Jews are the chosen people of God, how could you even denigrate them without raising God's ire? At least he broke away from the polytheism of the Catholic church with it's three main "gods" (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) and the fourteen holy helpers. If you're Catholic and wish a safe trip, you pray to the God of Travelling, "Saint" Christopher. There's also their goddess Mary, who Pope John Paul II credited with guiding the bullet that hit him so that it would not kill him (I wonder why she wouldn't make it miss altogether?)

When religion doesn't get it right, people abandon it completely. When science doesn't get it right, they say, "well, that's just part of the process..."

The difference is that science gives you a way to tell if something is true. Religious has someone telling you something or reading a 2,000 year old book written by people that are long dead and that contradicts itself in many places and says to assume that it is all true and go from there. If you go by that, then the Earth is 6,000 years old. We can count tree rings back to 13,000 years (rings from generations can be aligned by changes in size and gaps for instance). We know that light has a speed limit and that the theories of General and Special relativity fit all observable data (GPS wouldn't work if it didn't account for differing gravity at 22,000 miles up and the gravity of the Sun has been shown to warp the path of light from distant stars). You can prove the speed of light yourself by observing IO and Jupiter or by shining a laser on a mirror astronauts placed on the moon and seeing that it takes 2.5 seconds to get back. We also can calculate that the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away. That means that the light we're seeing now left the galaxy 2.5 million years ago. Ergo the universe must be older than 6,000 years and anyone that truly believes that is simply incapable of understanding basic scientific concepts. Religion has therefore changed instead of being abandoned, as recent popes' concessions that evolution is not incompatible with religion and Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 saying that the earth was created in 5199 BCE. So religion must change in light of newly discovered facts to avoid having its followers choose between leaving or looking like an idiot.

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13208-origami-spaceplane-aims-for-space-station-descent.html?feedId=tech_rss20

Origami spaceplane aims for space station descent

Look, do we imagine that everybody is capable of being a first class brilliant scientist or engineer? Clearly not.

Too lazy to log in.

Quantum entanglement is a problem, but working with a bose-einstein condensate might get around the problem.

Check it here. Some Australian scientists are playing around with it.

No. The solution is to keep the liquid between the inner walls of a helical structure. Picture from the article.

We were, the word just didn't get out. I just managed to track down the article I alluded to in an earlier comment.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17623746.200-under-pressure.html

If we run short of migrant workers as a side effect of immigration reform, imagine flocks / herds of robotic weeders / pickers roaming the fields. Heck, you could even have pest eating robots.

This is basically what you said, but a more general point is that any explanation involving a non-naturalistic cause isn't a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, even if intelligent design was supported by heaps of excellent evidence, it still wouldn't be science. Creationists see this as a problem with science, but in fact, it is a feature. Without it, almost anything would qualify as science.

The US, the UK, China and Russia are "endemic surveillance societies", according to a recent study examining privacy protection around the world that gave the four nations the lowest possible rating.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

"Microsoft is already working on a game for the next-next-gen console to bear the Xbox name."

Sounds neat. The real question is, will they be controlling it with one of these?

In related news: Amazing device turns grass into meat

First off, what makes you think that dogs don't do math? Just think about their brains controlling their muscles. Somehow they have to be calculating how much neuronal stimulation to apply to a muscle to get the desired amount of force. Isn't that math?

I don't know about dogs, but I do know about leeches:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/brain/mg15821395.100

'Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.'

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.