Slashdot Mirror

I agree with m50d that it is not relevant for the reason he gives above.

The Gödel theorems are interesting for the study of the foundation of mathematics and more specifically for the study of the relation between logic and mathematics. Using it outside that field is at least tricky, and more often than not crackpottery.

Out of a set of axioms (or out of a set of hypothesis) you use deductive logic to prove some theorems which are true if the axioms are true. The axioms together with the theorems form a theory. The question of completeness is: can we construct a proof for every true stament in that theory, or do there exist true statements which cannot be proven. The question of (in)consistentcy is: can we construct a proof for a false statement? All this is about the internal properties of a theory.

Now back to your question: relativity theory and quantum mechanics have different sets of axioms. The axioms of relativity do not lead to theories which are in contradiction with other theorems of the same theory (I am not sure about this for general relativity, there are however several sets of axioms for special relativity which have proofs of consistency*). I guess the same holds for QM**. The problem is: theorems of relativity are in contradiction with theorems QM, so this is a problem between two theories. The problem is that both theories are very solid and well-tested on their own right. A theory which tries to combine relativity and QM on a logical level is Branching Space-Time by Nuel Belnap.

* For axioms of special relativity, check: - Optical geometry of motion, a new view of the theory of relativity by A. A. Robb, 1911
- A theory of time and space by A. A. Robb
- The absolute relations of time and space by A. A. Robb, 1921
- Geometry Of Time And Space by A. A. Robb, 1936
- Orthogonality and Spacetime Geometry by Robert Goldblatt, 1987 (this is a first oder theory, so it is both complete and consistent - however it is not categorical
- Independent axioms for Minkowski space-time by John W. Schutz, 1997. This theory is of second order, so it suffers from the problems caused by the Gödel theorems.

** Check Quantum Logic by J. von Neumann (yes, the guy of the "Von Neumann Concept") and G. Birkhoff.

We'll randomly select a number of universities to read the key points of the law, and submit one question each to the congress

I like your idea, but it only moves the problem elsewhere — I wouldn't necessarily trust the universities over the law-makers. The "correct" answer may depend strongly on the question being asked. For example, preparing the questionnaire for the recent Afghan "surge" legislation, a University could ask something like (see? both .edu-links):

• Do you support killing innocent Afghanis so that Haliburton gets to own a trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline?

Like it or not, legislating is the job of the elected legislators — we just have to pay more attention to their passing laws, we don't approve of...

if you vote for a bad law, you won't be able to say "golly, I didn't know"

Such "not knowing" ought to be a disqualification in itself... If it is not, then the electorate is stupid, not the politician. Relying on some Universities to rephrase the bills into multiple-choice questions is not going to solve the underlying problem... Unfortunately...

... Pittsburgh has a high percentage of it's economy that comes from non-profit entities such as universities ...

Pittsburgh does it to themselves sometimes. Case in point, the Syria Mosque in Oakland wanted to expand their building or parking lot, I can't remember what exactly. They tried to get the appropriate permits from the city, and guess what? They were turned down. So they sold their property to Pitt, taking it off the tax roles as Pitt is a not-for profit, and they moved out of the city to Cheswick. I have the feeling Cheswick appreciates having the Syria Mosque there and all the taxes they pay while the city of Pittsburgh did not.

Evidently you're not cool enough

To quote a certain ex-Vice President, no controlling legal authority has ruled what they did was illegal.

That ex-Vice President is also what I like to call a "jackass," since he and his buddies in Congress specifically forbid courts to hear cases involving these activities. That's what this whole damn article and its discussion is about. To bring that up as if it's anything other than political half-truths is disingenuous at best.

That said, if he doesn't consider a federal judge to be a controlling legal authority, he's playing even more with the words to allow him to say whatever he wants without actually saying anything at all. It's a common trick of politics.

Repealing that immunity then would be criminalizing behavoir that was legal.

Huh? No. The very fact that immunity came into play means the action was not legal, or at least had a significant chance of being ruled illegal when they got themselves sued into the dirt.

Let's be clear. "The behavior" was what the telecommunications companies did; ie, help the government spy on its citizens a couple years ago. Nothing about that behavior has changed. In fact, nothing about that behavior can change unless somebody has invented a time machine I'm unaware of.

Ex post facto prevents Congress from making the behavior illegal now and then charging the telecom companies for having broken a law that didn't exist when the behavior occurred. That's not the case. Their were laws on the books at the time that seem to say it was illegal. Immunity has nothing to do with the legality of the behavior, it has to do with whether or not it can be prosecuted (or, in this case, litigated).

Maybe, if such a case gets to trial, a judge will decide that what the telecommunications companies did was not illegal. Cool for them, but whether or not they were ever granted immunity for it will never enter into the decision.

And TOTALLY irrelevant once immunity was granted.

Why? Because it sounds good in Anonymous Coward land?

Immunity is simply a legal decree stating there won't be a prosecution/litigation. Other than being (in this case) nationwide and binding, it's little different than a prosecutor saying "I've declined to file charges." It does nothing to alter the legality of the behavior at the time it was conducted. Repealing immunity is a kind of shitty thing to do, even if it never should have been granted in the first place, but doing so simply removes that decree; it's as if it never took place. Now the case can be taken up by the legal system to decide what happened and what the appropriate action should be.

Once again, whether or not something is legal or illegal is an entirely different concept from whether or not you will be taken to court for it. What they did was either legal or illegal; that is for a court to decide. Whether or not a court is permitted to decide is immunity; currently not, in the future possibly.

But frankly, all of this is moot. I think "immunity" is a poor term being used here. We're talking about civil action, which means that what Congress did specifically is to remove the jurisdiction of any court from hearing cases in the specific matter. When you think of it that way, it's easy to see why they can simply re-instate such jurisdiction.

Japan just started having a jury system, so I'm wondering if any of you have advice to give people there, like those at Slashdot Japan?

Bell's Theorem has previously been disproven. As with all universal negatives, you only need to find one exception to disprove it. Joy Christian presented a disproof using Clifford algebra.

Citing Bell's Theorem no longer constitutes a rebuttal against local variables.

As for the cellular-automata models, it's really not that outlandish. Consider how molecules are made up of atoms, or any other emergent system. They are all cellular automata to one extent or another.

Still, we'll have to see. Quantum physics has been at a near-standstill for the last twenty-five years. It's good to see some movement, even if it turns out wrong.

Ignored for good reason:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001833/
http://books.google.com/books?id=u357_V0Tu4QC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=maudlin+cramer&source=bl&ots=3q77fGuIZC&sig=9RyZBJTi4ch7WRTpLddE7za0MRE&hl=en&ei=FqKYSvuPCZWz8Qayg4G2BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=maudlin%20cramer&f=false/

For example, one question is "Does the student need a work permit to be hired" and the answer is no. The student cannot get a work permit until they have a written job offer, so any employer waiting for proof of a work permit before giving an interview is asking for the impossible.

I think Cmdrtaco should read TFA.

May be, you should read TFA first. From TFA:

Don't international students need work authorization before I can hire them?

No. International students must have the work authorization before they begin actual employment, but not before they are offered employment. In fact, J-1 students must have a written job offer in order to apply for the work authorization. Many F-1 students will be in the process of obtaining work authorization while they are interviewing for employment. Students can give employers a reasonable estimate of when they expect to receive work authorization.

Your post reminds me of The Emperor's New Clothes

I'm not trying to sound cynical here, but I think it's an interesting point; spending lots of money on something you can't see and that has a lot of dubious but theoretical value.

Take a look at how many people are currently calling for Bush to be tried as a war criminal.

Spain is currently pushing for exactly this.
Take a look at
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/03/spain-judge-says-bush-and-iraq-war.php and
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004640 for example.

The Digital|Vita system was designed by a team of masters students in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. It allows users to manage biographical information, output this information into several commonly used formats (e.g. NIH biosketches), and assemble research teams through expertise location and a social network. The system is currently in the prototype stage. See video of the prototype (8 min): http://www.dental.pitt.edu/informatics/orc/

On Neural Nets at least.. The only text book that I can think of offhand which is decent is Duda, Hart and Stork

Hawkins, like many others, has ripped off many of his ideas from Steve Grossberg (in this case, the ART model). Although he's not very easy to read, especially if you start much earlier than say, Ellias and Grossberg, 1975. You should also check out the work of people like Jack Cowan, Rajesh Rao, Christof Koch , Tom Poggio, David McLaughlin, Bard Ermentrout, among many, many others. I think the above names are sufficient to start a survey.

The term 'gene' has undergone quite a bit of change in its history, so this isn't really all that surprising in light of this. The term was originally coined (probably by Mendel himself, but I don't remember) to mean roughly "whatever is responsible for the observable results of hybridization experiments" and later, with the advent of molecular biology, came to be shorthand for referring to a molecular structure of a certain kind. It's an interesting question of course, whether those definitions are coextensive (my bet is they aren't) and these latest findings are just evidence of a new conceptual (or at least terminological) shift. See Stotz and Griffiths "Gene" (2005) (to appear in Cambridge companion to philosophy of biology, and also can be viewed online at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002494/ )

Dr. Alan Russell is the Distinguished University Professor of Surgery and the Founding Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published more than 125 articles in refereed journals, one book, and 10 book chapters. Dr. Russell holds 14 patents, with 13 additional pending patents. Dr. Russell has given more than 250 national and international invited lectures, and has received numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to research, teaching and public service. For more information on Dr. Russell and the Russell Lab, please visit his website at http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/russell/.

I had the opportunity to attend a lecture entitled "The Hope and Hype of Regenerative Medicine" last Wednesday evening in Cambridge, MA (10/29/2008) hosted by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. This lecture was profoundly interesting and awe-inspiring. Simply amazing what can be done for people in need of replacement of internal organs: bladders have been successfully grown and implanted in 6 children, both a vagina and uterus have been replaced in in pigs, and the tip of a human finger grew back after being accidentally amputated by the propeller of a small model airplane engine. The photographs and videos were quite graphic but show the power of this new type of medical research, some based on stem cell research. Current research is directed at replacing damaged cardiac tissue and the replenishment of islet cells to the pancreas to treat diabetes.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html#gruff

Really? Then why is it that almost every member of America's military marched off to Bush's illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq without so much as a whimper?

...because almost every member of America's military believes in the cause... The ones that didn't exercised their rights as a "conscientious objector" and didn't go. That's what democracy is all about. You have every right to walk all over it and call every preemptive strike an 'illegal action' if you so choose. Personally, if you make a motion like you're going to hit me, you better believe I'm going to tie your ass in a knot whether or not you connected with your first punch.

I remain completely mystified as to how a war that was approved by the VAST majority of not only the government, but the American people (73%, if I remember correctly) can be considered 'illegal'. If someone wants to investigate whether or not the president knew the intel was inaccurate, please, knock yourself out and get back to us. Don't forget the proof, though.

Why is it that the the defense in the court-martial of Corporal Trent D. Thomas asserted that "Marines in combat don't challenge orders"?

Well, I don't know why the defense made that statement. Whoever it was certainly lied directly to the judge's face. I can state that as an absolute fact, having been personally involved in said disobedience.

Hmm. So you detest those who participated in the criminal invasion of Iraq, then hid in the Green Zone or in FOBs, unwilling to fight the fight with insurgents that they provoked?

Well, no... I more detest those who participated in the criminal slaughter of over 3000 innocent civilians, and all those who supported their efforts, whether openly or covertly, then hid in the mountains of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria, and used innocent civilians as human shields, lopped off the heads of innocent reporters, and placed IEDs in easy reach of children playing in fields. (This particular example I know all too well... I gave blood to a 5 year-old girl who lost a hand while playing with an IED planted by an Iraqi terrorist, whom we later captured and did NOT kill.) - At any rate, the provocation is obvious to all but the most severely disabled of minds.

Why do you think Iran and Russia have such a beef with us, rather than with, say, Switzerland?

...because we are more powerful than them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. These are evil men with evil motives, whose people live in poverty MUCH greater than America's, and their power-hungry governments are entirely to blame. I'm not saying we're not headed down the same path, but life is full of choices between the lesser of two evils. At least America has a few checks and balances in place... At the moment, America is absolutely the best place on Earth to be, but this can always change tomorrow. (It may change as soon as November 4th if we end up choosing to switch over to socialism.)

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when all you have is a military-industrial complex, everything looks like a reason to bomb or invade someone.

...and when all you have is the perceptions of a reporter from half a world away, everything looks like a human rights violation. When it's right there in your face every single day for nearly 2 years of your life, you begin to think much more clearly about the whole thing.

Thank God for this, in America's military our moral judgment is not only encouraged, it is celebrated.

Really? Then why is it that almost every member of America's military marched off to Bush's illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq without so much as a whimper? Why is it that the the defense in the court-martial of Corporal Trent D. Thomas asserted that "Marines in combat don't challenge orders"?

I do detest those who pick a fight, then hide in the bushes and buildings, unwilling to fight the fight they brought upon themselves like men.

Hmm. So you detest those who participated in the criminal invasion of Iraq, then hid in the Green Zone or in FOBs, unwilling to fight the fight with insurgents that they provoked? Wow. Most anti-war protesters don't go that far; we realize that those soldiers were duped victims too, guilty perhaps of poor judgment, but certainly not to be detested. We hope they get to stay safe in the bushes and buildings, rather than being shot at by Iraqis defending their homeland against invaders.

The bottom line is, if there were no organized military in America, you'd be climbing a tree or hiding in a bush every few months trying to defend the country you love when Iran or Russia decides to take a swim over here to rape our wives. That's a fact.

Why do you think Iran and Russia have such a beef with us, rather than with, say, Switzerland?

Number of times Russian or Iranian troops have invaded the U.S. or toppled its government: 0.

Number of times U.S. troops have invaded Russia: once: 13,000 American troops during the Russian Civil War.

Number of times U.S. covert operatives backed an anti-democratic military coup in Iran: once, in 1953.

These are the sorts of actions carried out by those who march in joyful, singing ranks, following unquestioningly the orders of their "superiors".

I am all for the right to self-defense, individual and collective. And certainly some sort of organization is needed for that. But when that takes the form of a large standing army, instead of a "well-regulated militia", it's a constant temptation to use it for aggressive means.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when all you have is a military-industrial complex, everything looks like a reason to bomb or invade someone.

My experience is much the same as yours in JROTC; that is, we are being taught as future officers to question those orders which seem unreasonable or dangerous.

So why, then, did the defense in the court-martail of Corporal Trent D. Thomas assert "Marines in combat don't challenge orders"? Do only officers get to question orders?

Why, indeed, did almost every member of the military march off to Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq with nary a whimper? Only a handful stood up and refused.

I'm involved in what I am to protect the public's right to protest what I'm involved in, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Protect it from whom? The Canadians? The Mexicans? Al Qaeda, while a bunch of criminals who are in dire need of being stopped, is no more a threat to my freedom of speech than is the Mafia or the Crips. (If they managed to pull a 9/11 every year, more Americans would still die by drowning than would be killed by terrorist attacks.)

The U.S. faces no significant threat of invasion; no foreign power is going to take us over and take away our freedoms. They don't have to; we're going a bang-up job of taking them away from ourselves.

The only guys I see who pose a threat to my freedom of speech are the ones you work for: the federal government.

There are a number of efforts around the county to do similar things. These include things like RODS Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance http://rods.health.pitt.edu/, and the Environmental Public Health Tracking Program http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking/.

I'm currently working in the computational biology department at the school across the street from CMU,... A lot of people don't think of "programming" and "biology" in the same sentence, and most biology programs are the last science programs that would even think of requiring programming as a prerequisite for graduation. However, once you get into the more specific structural and molecular biology fields, you almost can't escape programming. Almost on a daily basis, I use perl. Most of our software is probably coded in C or C++, and some of the older software is coded in Fortran, though that's not as common anymore. Some people in our department have been doing some stuff with Python, too, though I personally haven't. There's also quite a few genomic and database applications where SQL will come in handy for the database work, and an increasing amount of computational biology projects are coming online with web interfaces, so PHP could be useful.

6) The fact that Donald Rumsfeld even created his own intelligence unit because the CIA was still unable to uncover anything supporting, what the administration was believing to be true.

Just another Team B, complete with agenda intact and the same rhetoric. Are we having fun yet? And of course, Team B is famous for gerabbing the credit for any percieved 'victories'. Nothing to see here, move along, and leave your tax money in the plate...

Take good notes, keep a good, organized laboratory notebook. Become very familiar with the instruments and/or software that you will be using. If you know how to use this well, and you become well known as an expert at a particular experiment/procedure, professors will love you for it, and you'll be a valuable resource to them later on (they may even ask you to come back a year or two later, if you're available, and pay you to do a particular experiment or train someone how to do what you've done).

Don't expect to work in one lab too long. You'll probably end up working in 1-3 different laboratories as an undergraduate, move on to a different one (or different school) for graduate school, maybe another lab for a PhD, and another one for a post-doc. That's the typical route -- expect it. There's not too much advancement in laboratory work without some type of graduate school, unless you want to end up maintaining equipment or working in IT or something. But if you start undergraduate research as a freshman in college, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a PhD in 7-8 years, easily.

A lot of your coworkers will not be American. A good number will be from India, and more from China. Don't let this be a reason you avoid them. The US has some of the top research universities in the world, and we usually get the cream of the crop in terms of foreign students and researchers (even some of the smaller, less well known American schools can be well known and well respected overseas). Their English may not be all that good, but most of them do know their shit, and can be quite helpful. And most of them do want to learn more English and become better at it, so talking with them will help them out as well as you.

Anyway, good luck to you. I'm not sure where you're going to be, but if you're going to be here, I might run into you,... Cheers!

Like it or not, the USA will always have firearms. We are like no other country in the world in that respect, right or wrong. We were founded on individualism and being tough SOBs (like it or not).

I say this with as much objectivity as I can, being a US citizen. We are prone to consumerism, decadence and overall "whinyness" because of our success as a nation. BUT, I think most of us take a (perhaps twisted) sense of pride that we will NEVER be conquered and occupied for any length of time. You could put every soldier in the world on US soil and we'd still win (eventually). This was a major concern of the Soviets during the cold war.

Twisted and paranoid? Yep, but that goes to our very roots, because of the way we were born as a nation. Australia, India, Canada... all were born from relative peace. Not us, we were born in fire and remain a violent society in no small part, because of that fact.

Less guns work in the UK and Australia because you are both island nations. It works in the UK and Australia because you are less aggressive (arguably more mature) societies. It will NOT work in the USA.

Also, it should be noted that an extremely important decision will be made by the supreme court directly pertaining to the interpretation of the 2nd amendment for the first time (assuming they don't dodge it, like they did in '39) this session. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/04/middle-ground-supreme-courts.php

I agree with hherb on this issue. We are way to harsh on sex offenders. It seems that we can keep on passing new laws that find new ways to punish sex offenders. Are the current laws not strict enough? Other than murder, sexual assault convictions carried the longest median prison sentence in New Jersey. I think if someone suggested we add an extra 2 years onto minimum sentences for all sex offenders it would pass in any state. We have since 1980 consistently upped the penalties for sex crimes since the 1980s. There is no evidence that it has helped. Now states are considering the death penalty for worst case sex crimes. There is a guy in Louisiana who is on death row for a sex crime without murdering anyone.

But no matter how harsh the punishment, we can always make it a little worse. We could insist that sex criminals serve a minimum of 25 years. Then we could restrict their privileges in prison even if they were well behaved. We could ban them from having a television. We could ban them from lifting weights. We could stop them from wearing civilian clothes. We could lock them up for 23 hours a day like those on death row. But no matter how much we punish them the public desire for revenge is never satiated. We always want more. When do we finally say that some punishment is enough?

About 400 municipalities in New Jersey have enacted local zoning ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live within their boundaries. This vengeful justice is getting so out of hand that an ex sex offender cannot function in society. They can't get a job because firstly they have a criminal record and secondly they are a sex offender and have to register as such. They can't live in many places. We are forcing them into a life of crime to survive. Many towns like to ban sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any place where there might be children. This list gets very long. It starts with schools and parks. Then it moves on into movie theaters and churches. Now the vogue is to also ban them from 2500 feet of libraries and bus stops as well. There are increasingly states and counties where there is no place a sex offender can live legally.

As to the specifics of the internet ban for sex offenders. Firstly if they have already served their sentence haven't they already paid back their 'debt to society'. Or is this to keep society safe and not as a punishment. Well what if their original crime had nothing to do with the internet. What if they raped an adult and have no desire to do anything to kids? Is there any evidence that this would make kids safer? There is no evidence that residency restriction laws do in fact diminish crimes against children. And remember banning people from a using the internet is removing a distant threat from a kid. They can't physically do anything. And all this assumes that they will choose to use the internet to contact kids to begin with. What if they do not? What about other categories? If someone had underage sex, the law is the problem there as opposed to the law breaker.

So what type of person is this law about? Is it about a sex crazed pedophile who cannot help stop themselves. Well in my mind they don't have what we would call free will. the urge is so great. States are starting to use civil commitment with such offenders so they never get out. So what sort of sex offenders are we talking about?

I think banning people from using the internet is also itself ludicrous. In the 1990s the net was nice to have but

There's a critical difference with your capital punishment comparison.

China has executed some people fairly high up the food chain, like their FDA chief, or a bank official. These are not your regular, fairly anonymous people like those executed in US states, but are among the small, wealthy minority of people who wielded significant influence and power.

Slashdotters are always complaining about how laws never get passed that touch the wealthy in western countries, or they skip out of the country and retire in the Carribean, or how they always get cushy sentences. While there's still a lot wrong with the Chinese government, backing up your anti-corruption campaign by executing high-profile officials says to everyone that money and power are not enough to shield you from your crimes, and goes a long way to curbing such behaviour.

Oops, darn, my geography is almost as bad as your spelling. I'm confusing Guantanamo with Abu Ghraib, where we have piles of evidence that the inmates were tortured in this way, and others besides. Now, I'm sure that you'll counter with the lame argument that this behavior was perpetrated by a few "rogue soldiers." Hmm. The last time I looked, the military was a hierarchically structured organization with a well-defined chain of command, run by a bunch of grown ups, who, being adults, are directly responsible for their inferiors' behavior. So even if these were "isolated incidents," the blame lies squarely on the heads of perpetrators' officers. Further, as we both know, a private soldier can't have a wank without his officer's permission, much less his awareness, particularly in a war zone. Let's not forget, either, that this administration has not only repeatedly refused to rule out the use of torture in these camps, but has actively promoted its use as an expedient, arguing that the captives are not protected by the Geneva Convention. On top of all that, Dick Cheney himself has confirmed our government's use of waterboarding on these inmates. A technique which, even its US government practitioners claim is most definitely torture.

So there's plenty of evidence out there that we're treating these people like animals, regardless of how you and other children like you close your eyes, plug your ears, and shout "lalalalalalalalala," in a disingenuous effort to claim ignorance. If you want facts, just open your eyes.

I do agree with you about the press, though. Once it was alleged in the press that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it certainly did become "fact" to all the booboisie out there. The administration and its shills were not complaining about the press then, were they?

There's a lot on this and nuclear risks in general in Bernard Cohen's book "The Nuclear Energy Option" which is available online at: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html If you only read one chapter, make it Chapter 11 "Hazards of High Level Radioactive Waste - The Great Myth". You should at least find it interesting!

There's a depository of online digitized 19th century textbooks here. I glanced through a few but I wasn't able to tell what books were for what ages, you'd just get a lot of "First Reader", "Fifth Reader", etc., with no clue if they corresponded to different grades. Also I think we all have to realize the written word has evolved a lot in the past 100 years. I'll occasionally have to cite legal opinions from the 19th century, and they are written in an incredibly dense, tortured way, but I'm sure a lawyer at the time would have little trouble quickly going through them. I think a lot of it is what you're accustomed to rather than differences in erudition.

That they ignored the request of the Congress (the will of the people) and instead chose to hide behind the president and so called state secrets.

There's a succinct article on this from the UPitt Jurist , with links to copies of primary documents. The key is that this was only a request. As far as I can see, there was no subpoena, which would make it a demand. While I agree with your general sentiments, the rant really ought to wait until the Telcos turn down a Congressional subpoena. As is, I(AmNotALawyer) currently think the Telcos were correct to defer to the Executive branch assertion of the States Secrets Privilege as much as I loathe that "privilege" one — in the absence of a Congressional subpoena.

My question for you is why does this committee feel the need to hold a public investigation?

Oh, I'll conceed, it's just political circus, and that discussing it publicly would be bad for our international interests. That's not relevant to my point; that's merely a question of whether or not it's Stupid, not whether or not it's Legal.

You haven't answer my question: on what legal grounds can "State Secrets Privilege" be claimed in the (evidently hypothetical) case of a Subpoena by another branch of the state itself? In order to keep from having to talk to Congress about it, the DOJ would have to be claiming Executive Privilege, which is a much narrower needle's eye to shove the camel through.

They're the good guys!

AI looked so close in the 1960s, once it was realized that you could get a computer to do mathematical logic. All that was necessary was to express the real world in predicate calculus and prove theorems. After all, that's how logicians and philosophers all the way back to Aristotle said thinking worked. Well, no. We understand now that setting up the problem in a formal way is the hard part. That's the part that takes intelligence. Crunching out a solution by theorem proving is easily mechanized, but not too helpful. That formalism is too brittle, because it deals in absolutes.

Here is the linky. Messed up indeed.

That's the problem with patenting plants. Intention is a difficult thing to prove absolutely when you're talking about pollination. As we all learned from Jurrasic Park, DNA is a hard thing to control.

"The new authority will only be used to go after terrorists..."

• Emergency Law in Egypt
  
• 30,000 political detainees
  
• BBC
  
• Washington Post
  
• Egyptian law
  

President Clinton pardoned a number of convicted drug dealers http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons6.htm. I don't have a problem with this, it is a power given.

The President's pardon power is established under the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2:
The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Uh, Presidents use this pardon all the time for good, bad, and no reason. This power is in the constitution. Ford, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Bush, Clinton, Bush_I have all used it. Almost every other President has used it too.

President Clinton pardoned a number of convicted drug dealers http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons6.htm. I don't have a problem with this, it is a power given.

I do have a problem when someone else selectively complains because they don't like how something that has always been used, is used, just by the "other team."
Pardons since 1945: http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/actions_administration .htm

Looks like conventional plagiarism rules don't always apply at Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business, where the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby is paid to 'draft appropriate letters of support' for H-1B seeking MBA grads as part of the Pitt-funded Katzport Program. The school boasts that the program - which can cost Pitt upwards of $4,000 per student - 'levels the playing field' to 'facilitate the employment of international MBA graduates.'

Looks like conventional plagiarism rules don't always apply at Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business, where the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby is paid to 'draft appropriate letters of support' for H-1B seeking MBA grads as part of the Pitt-funded Katzport Program. The school boasts that the program - which can cost Pitt upwards of $4,000 per student - 'levels the playing field' to 'facilitate the employment of international MBA graduates.'

I have been on the board of the OSI for more than 5 years, and until last year it was fairly easy for us to police the term open source: once every 2-3 months we'd receive notice that some company or another was advertising that their software was "open source" when the license was not approved by the OSI board and, upon inspection, was clearly not open source. [...] Most of the time they would say "Oops! Thanks for letting us know--we'll promote our software in some other way." And they did, until last year.

But what about Scilab, which on its home page prominently claims to be The open source platform for numerical computation (and has been doing so for years)? Scilab clearly does not qualify for the (widely agreed-upon) OSI definition of "open source", because the license prohibits commercial redistribution of modified versions. And yet I've never heard of an OSI campaign to pressure Scilab to either change its license or stop calling itself "open source". As a result, there are many examples of people who have confused Scilab's license with the usual definition of "open source".

You make a fair point about the conspiracy stories. Too much sensationalism also puts people off.
There was some real stuff buried in there, for example #5 and #13 were interesting to me.
I thought niobium was a new better alternative to tantalum http://powerelectronics.com/mag/power_solidelectro lyte_niobium_capacitors/ as its supply was more secure, but it seems it is mined in the same region.

I also thought Roundup was really safe, I didn't know it was toxic in a marine environment, especially to ampibians. http://www.pitt.edu/~relyea/Roundup.html

Yes we can

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley signed off on legislation [SB 634 materials] Tuesday that will award Maryland's ten votes in the US Electoral College [NARA materials] to the national popular vote winner in presidential elections, instead of the recipient of the most votes in Maryland. The legislation will only take effect, however, if a majority of the states representing the total 538 electoral votes adopt similar laws. The bill's sponsor, state Senator Jamie Raskin, told AP that the move to a popular vote system "will reawaken politics in every part of the country," even Maryland, a state presidential candidates usually sidestep because of the belief that it will always vote for the Democratic candidate.http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/20 07/04/maryland-governor-signs-law-changing.php

Enter the sheeple...

Guantanamo Bay does not have a prison, it is a detention facility for enemy combatants.

If you're locked up in a cage and can't leave, the semantics are irrelevant from your point of view.

Guantanamo Bay had released more than half of those who have come through its doors and is one of the most transparently operated detention facilities in the world.

What you just wrote should have scared you after you proof read your post. Some of these innocent "detainees" or "guests of the US government" have been imprisoned for years before release. Some were as young as 12. Is that the behavior of a just and open society?

The people in Guantanamo weren't just picked up off of the streets as suspects in criminal investigations...

Wrong, some were "Jerry Springers" as the troops call them. The US was paying bounties for terrorism suspects and some people just turning in guys they had grudges against.

Maybe you need to stop consulting the military on the rationale for their own wrong-doing. Guantanamo will go down in history as a blight on our record for protecting freedoms just like Japanese detentions. I just hope the Japanese weren't being tortured.

Dungeon Master ROCKED. It really had replayability, and the constant resource constraints made you always feel under pressure. Poison and starvation were real threats. If you have a hankering for it, it's been ported to Java:

http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~alandale/dmjava/

It isn't the same dungeon, but the spells and game play seem very, very similar.

As far as I can see both the Canadian softwood lumber issue and the Antigua gambling issue have been repeatedly decided against the USA - do you know of some more recent WTO or NAFTA decisions supporting the USA's position? I am also unaware of any action on the part of the USA to bring them in compliance with the decision.

I am also unaware of any WTO decisions against Canada or Antigua which have not resulted in changes in their behavior to bring them in line with the WTO decisions.

The most recent I could find re: softwood lumber issue: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/04/wto- rules-for-us-in-canada-softwood.php

Re Antigua gambling -- you're correct, and I was unfamiliar with that instance. As of April 2 or so, WTO did rule that US was not in compliance with 2005 ruling, and now requires US to allow Antigua remote gambling sites the same rights as any other remote gambling site. It is a bit early to say whether US is complying with that order; though it should be clear within a couple of months.

I think it was this series of disputes (linked from your law.pitt.edu reference), most of which have been decided in favour of Canada, many of which have been ignored or misapplied by the US. Yes, some of the decisions have gone against Canada, but most of them seem to have gone against the US.