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How a pulsar gets its spin?

... from the Bush administration ?

I just know some day I will run across an adult saying "pasghetti" in a professional setting.

Arizona functions well without DST because it's pretty far south, and the length of days doesn't change too much.

For those of us further north, DST is helpful, because having the sun rise at 4am and set at 8pm is wasteful, as most people don't start their days until much after 4, and their evenings certainly don't end at 8.

There was an interesting article in Slate a while ago arguing that it's not DST that should go, but time zones altogether.

Citation for point 4:

http://www.slate.com/id/2106714/

All electric, 0-60mph in 4sec, 130mph top speed, 250 mile range on 3.5 hour charge. It's not 180 but even over here in Australia the highways have bends.

My biggest issue with Harry Potter series is that it depicts the protagonist as one who has no genius, is not hard-working by any standards, has bigotry - in short - an absolutely average person.

Germany did have a short lived but violent insurgency (the Werewolves) that was put down.

Try this for a different take on the bible: http://www.slate.com/id/2141050/

1. They are not being paid to have the bias they have

This is nothing against any of the organizations that are mentioned, but just a note about non-profits in general. Having worked at a non-profit I know that the people who work at them are better off (financially and social status-wise) the more people agree with them. Thus, they do have a vested self-interest in promoting their point of view. These days non-profit only really means "without shareholders" - it's naive to assume that non-profit status implies anything beyond that.

See also, Charity is Selfish

Got any cites for that statement?

The literal meaning of literal would be something like "according to the letter," but it's almost never used this way. "He copied the manuscript literally" would be one possible example. So when we use literally to refer to something other than individual letters--to whole words, or to thoughts in general--we are already walking down the figurative path, and if we end up with people eating curry so hot that their mouths are "literally on fire," how surprised can we be?

In this case, he would have been better off just telling people it could be done IMO.

CSO Online told people about it in February 2006. Slate told people about it in February 2005. Senator Schumer told people about it in February 2005. Security expert Bruce Schneier told people about it in August 2003.

We're more than a little beyond "telling people" being productive.

Worse, apparently a proof of concept isn't enough. The TSA is busy trying to presecute the messenger, but they still haven't fixed the core problem. I'd sadly forced to conclude that the TSA will not fix a real threat to airline security until terrorists successfully exploit that threat. While honest people are stuck measuring their shampoo out of fear of a deeply implausible liquid-bomb threat, anyone with access to a printer and a reasonably plausible state ID can get into the "sterile" area of the airport. (I find it darkly humorous that the boarding pass vulnerability makes the cost of getting 30 ounces of liquid explosives onto a plane just 10 fake boarding passes for almost no cost and 10 evil conspirators.)

He crossed the line from researcher to (potentially) criminal when he published a tool on the web that had no other purpose than to make it possible for others to circumvent security.

The purpose was to shame the TAA into fixing a problem which was widely known and publicized: August 2003 by security expert Bruce Schneier, February 2005 in Slate , February 2005 press release by a US Senator, February 2006 article in CSO Online . The TSA has been ignoring the problem for over three years. Bad guys have known about the attack for at least three years, possibly longer. For all we know bad guys are using it right now; we have no way of knowing. Even without Soghoian's program, it was really, really trivial to exploit; all you need is a very basic understanding of HTML, enough to change one name to another, to execute the attack Schneier described in 2003. The media has been letting the TSA continue to ignore this. If Soghoian had simply published a "I can make fake boarding passes and get into the "sterile" area of an airport he would have gotten an article or two and nothing would have changed. By providing a working exploit things just became that much harder for the TSA. News coverage exploded. Finally something will happen.

The TSA has proven itself grossly incompetant. There is little to no oversight and zero public accountability. Drastic measures were necessary, as rational measures have clearly failed. The really sad thing is even in the face of such a drastic failure, they're not fixing the core problem.

Probably this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2124884

I'm not saying that the dog was living a good life, but he flat out stole the dog, and then wrote an article about how the dog was stolen.

http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2113564&GT1=6 082

Scalia and the House Republicans, for effect really, are mixing up the difference between listening to foreign ideas and obeying foreign commands.

As a political candidate, I would advocate some sort of tax rebate to subsidize Internet porn and Kleenex for single men between the ages of 18 and 35. That way all the potential rapists can more easily afford to exhaust themselves at home.

If he is seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney is interested free markets why does Halliburton [halliburtonwatch.org] get no-bid contracts... DOH!

Because perhaps he has given thought to it. Those two are not mutually exclusive. Haliburton recevied no-bid contracts because they were the only ones capable of doing the desired task. Nto all of their contracts were no-bid. If you've got a requirement to put an experiment into orbit that requires human activity on it over the course of 5 days, and you need it done soon, are you going to put out a bid request, or are you going to go to NASA and offer them the contract? Lets say you need to rebuild your render farm. You need (or think you need) a veritable army of Cell based blade servers to create a powerful render farm. Who are going to? Do you set it out for bid, or do you go to IBM. Maybe a few years from now you might put it out to bid, but right now nobody else will have the capability to do it. So you go to IBM. Further, in issues of security, putting something to bid may breach needed security. Maybe you don't want your potential competitors to know what you are building your render farm on until it's too late for them to catch up quickly. So even if there might be another company available, you have to pick one.

It's funny, those who complained about Haliburton "doing" these things were silent when Haliburton was doing the same things (getting no-bid contracts) while a Democrat was in office. Gore singled Halliburton out as a model to be used. yet you dont' see sites such as halliburtonwatch.org talking about that. Why? sadly, it isn't about Halliburton or the process, it is about who is in the Oval Office - and who isn't. In a company the size of Halliburton there are bound to be problems, and said problems need investigating. but tying it to who is in the WH is an injustice and a disgrace.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1tvxm/thepoliticalare na/The%20Truth%20About%20Halliburton.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2090636

(last I knew Slate wasn't exactly a bastion of the Dick Cheney Fan Club, or the Republican party)

Halliburton primary does a lot of what the US Army used to do during peacetime: build and military installations. Not many companies have the reach and scope they do and have been doing for over a decade. That alone gave them better contacts with decisionmakers in the DoD than Cheney ever could have been.

You might want to read this before claiming the infallibility of judges. Did you ever read the Jackson findings? From a technical perspective, his findings are completely misguided. This Slate commentary offers a history of the appellate court thinking, which overruled much of his findings. I was once party to some hearings where a panel of distinguished judges had their ruling overturned by an act of Congress because it was so poorly formed. Believe me, judges can make incredible mistakes. Most of the time they don't, but when you have a political body levying fines against a foreign enterprise, there is a huge conflict of interest. This is a money grab by the EU. No doubt about it, unfortunately.

...but why vote at all? (I don't think i personally agree with this article, but I definitely found it mathematically sound, and a very interesting arguement. Just at least read it before you mod me "-1, unamerican".)

The one and only thing you can possibly deny is that maybe those two points weren't put together to steal the 2004 election -- except that there is that nasty little problem of explaining away the peculiarly large exit-poll discrepancies that correlated with the use of those voting machines.

Except that there is no exit poll discrepancies. The highest discrepancy I've seen for any of the contested states in the 2004 election is a difference of 5% between the exit-poll result and the final result. Well within the margin of error. What's more, the conspiracy nutcases, as always, have chosen to latch on to the exit polls that best match their theory of voter fraud. Selection bias, yada yada. Take Ohio for example; Slate's exit polls actually show a result closer to the end results (2%) than for states with papertrails. (link)

And as for the general accuracy of exit-polls, well, suffice to say it's usually not all that good.. (link)

Peer reviewed by who exactly.

The original study:

Slate's review.
Another useful breakdown of problems with their methods.
Just one more for flavor.

Their latest study:

The Wall Street Journal's take. This covers the main problem with both studies, ridiculous clustering methodology. It also points out another important aspect as to how poorly the respondents were documented.

Iraq Body Count's review.

A little on the political bias of the 'impartial' researchers:

The Political Pitbull.
Lancet editor at an anti-war protest. Notice his circular reasoning that since his new report using the same flawed methodology confirms his original report that he is completely vindicated.

And that was just from the first page of my Google search.

http://www.slate.com/id/2152794/fr/rss/

His conclusion. Can't wait for a Wii.

"The problems are just too numerous: lowering of research and writing standards, dealing with too much or just plain unbalanced information, corporate red-herrings, conflicts of interest, fanboyism, private agendas"

Yes, the news corporations have managed all of this with their wonderful writers, editors, and other staff. It will be a difficult job for the bloggers to stoop down to these standards, but I'm sure they'll strive for it. So one day blogging might become so bad that it can count as (old style) news.

The Word We Love To Hate: http://www.slate.com/id/2129105/

I don't follow your math - I see federal debt at ~$6T at the start of Bush's term, projected to wind up at ~$10T. That's a 66% increase, hardly "identical" to Clinton's increase. Not chicken feed, indeed. Grossly irresponsible, one could argue.

And you seem determined to pooh-pooh Clinton's elimination of the Reagan/Bush deficit while making (at least partial) excuses for Bush. The fact is that Clinton controlled federal discretionary spending AND didn't start any unnecessary wars of aggression. Bush, OTOH, presided over the largest growth in domestic discretionary spending in the last 40 years AND drove massive tax cuts for the rich AND started an unnecessary war that has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Domestic spending growth (warning, PDF): http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0510-26.pdf
More on Bush the Big Spender: http://www.slate.com/id/2095237/

Honestly, your assessment is so slanted it's laughable. 'Clinton was just lucky, but it mostly wasn't Bush's fault!' It just kills you conservatives that the only fiscal responsibility of the last 25 years has been that hippie Democrat Clinton.

In related news, Slate ran an interesting story about "What's Really Behind the Plunge in Teen Pregnancy?".

The fact that he is going through this for pointing out a flaw is pretty horrifying. That said, hopefully the justice system will 'do justice' to keep this guy out of prison. Even still at best he's going to be pretty shaken up by this for a while to come, and probably be out a fairly sizable chunk of money in legal defense; at worst, he's gonna have a pretty horrible time (can't check punishments as all but final 2 of the USC links The Fine Summary are 404s). All for pointing out what should be a fairly apparent flaw in a 'security' system. I guess the guys at the FBI just like arresting folk for things like that. Hell, why didn't they arrest Andy Bowers of Slate for his research / article too?

Also, can some pro-2nd amendment folk go and give him some "legal defence"? You know, protect people from the government and all that... ;-)

As a purely constructive Wikipedia contributor, I have a feeling (from my gut, of course, not my head) that there will never in the future be a moment, even a millisecond, when there is absolutely no vandalism present on WP. However, Wikipedia is far more comprehensive, I believe, than any other encyclopedia operating by academic submissions will ever be.

There is far more specific knowledge. Just see this page. Awesome stuff; I would never expect to see anything like that in a regular general encyclopedia. I believe that, given that everything else in the world has an (at most) linear rate of change (in terms of fossil fuels, engineering, knowledge, celebrity divorces), Wikipedia will continue to exist well. Of course, someone could take over Wikipedia and use it for unscrupulous objectives, just like RSA encryption has allowed criminals to flourish. We'll never know, of course, since Douglas Adams died before he wrote that 6th book.

But don't panic. Yet.

Weird Al: the Troubadork

Slate's Weird Al essay by Sam Anderson is infinitely more insightful and thoughtful than the Globe's coverage: "He's not like them, he's like us. To the millions of us flitting around the edges of hipness, he is our Geek Bard, our Troubadork. Unlike his prey--the rappers and the rockers, the folk-pop shamans and the techno wizards--Weird Al is, in the only meaningful sense of the phrase, keeping it real."

When a journalist is covering a conflict, they have an obligation to cover both sides of the story. You cited a few anecdotal examples of obvious journalistic screw-ups in this regard, but I think you'll find that if *you* do your homework (and don't just restrict it to a right-wing media criticism site or right-leaning Israeli news site), people with opposing political views to yours have just as many examples. Witness Judith Miller's ridiculously biased reporting of an Israeli interrogation or CNN's failure to balance dubious assertions that the Qana photos were staged and uncritical airing of Israeli intelligence contradicting our own.

The same journalists who embedded with Hezbollah, of course, regularly embed with American, Iraqi, and Israeli forces (most also make the controlled nature of their experience part of the story). In most cases, there's little to suggest that these incidents stem from an explicit bias rather than just poor journalism or Reuter's stupid practice of hiring stringers virtually sight unseen.

Watch and learn :)

http://www.slate.com/id/2107388/

http://www.eci.gov.in/faq/evm.asp

No vindaloo or call center jokes please!

A month or so ago there was a similar article, making a qualitative comparison between a bigger screen versus a faster processor. This reinforces the idea that, really, processors and memory and other nuts-and-bolts features of computers have pretty much been "good enough" for a while, and high-value improvements will come from elsewhere.

Link.

And in England you don't need to prove malice, hence that cryptic comment by Tom Cruise in that South Park episode about Scientology, "I'll sue you! I'll sue you in ENGLAND!"

I originally typed "buy it" in the subject line, but remembering back to slate's article http://www.slate.com/id/2149694/ on this very same topic, decided it wasn't necessary. One of the examples given there was Kuma\War, which is a free to download FPS based on current events in the Middle East. I haven't played it, so can't vouch for it, but it seems to be doing pretty well, and although I admit that the screenshots are pretty lame compared to the average FPS, I've read that in March the company signed a deal to work on Valve's source engine http://www.kumawar.com/PressReleases/03-22-2006.ph p for upcoming titles using the same episodic ideas. But all other politics and nonsense aside...

A.) It's free,
B.) It releases new "episodes" typically coming out about every three weeks, and they are also free.

Actually, most of the 'founding fathers' who formed our original government and signed the Constitution were Deists. Even the ones who were Protestant would have vilified the current group that calls themselves conservatives. You can point your outrage at much more recent revisionism.

Don't worry; you'll matter when you become a billionaire.

. .... because it is well known that billionaire councils appoint the president?

It is a good thing that all of the billionaires were for Bush.... or were they?

It would seem that seem that RFK Jr and many in the public have a rather myopic memory when it comes to allegations of vote fraud. One would expect that Mr Kennedy would certainly be aware of the controversy surrounding the outcome of the 1960 Presdential election especially since his uncle John F. Kennedy was elected.

Or was he? Rather than Ohio and Florida, that election came down to narrow wins in Illinois and Texas. Both states were Democrat-controlled and rife with allegations of fraud. Did Mayor Daley of Chicago arrange for the dead to vote? Did Johnson's own political machine throw Texas? Like 2004, the answers depend on who you ask.

I did RTFA and didn't think it was anti-science so much as anti-groupthink. I don't think this article's author is this Jim Holt, who is clearly pro-ID. I can't find much about the New Yorker's Jim Holt, but at least this attribution makes it clear it's not the same one.

They were killers.

Harris and Klebold weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia", nor were they singled out for harrasment by schoolmates.

Klebold, however was a depressive. And Harris was a bona fide psychopath with a superiority complex, as well as a desire to cause as much suffering as he possibly could.

Read THIS for more details.

Columnbine had nothing to do with revenge, and even if it did, no amount of wedgies or ridicule or stolen lunch money or even after-school beatdowns should garner any sympathy for someone who decides they're going to indiscriminatly kill as many people as possible in retribution.

No, I cannot relate to this. At all.

note that SUV sales and gas sales have not been negatively impacted by the gasoline increases recently.

So no, raising the price of gasoline is an utterly inefficient way of doing anything other than causing inflation.

Like most market based solutions, they just don't work.

Actually, the price of gas is elastic... kinda... there are two conditions:

1) the price has to get well above $3 per gallon as an average over the entire US (so it should be $4/g in places with traditionally high prices like california).

2) the price has to stay up that way for a long time (not $3 this month and $2 next). By 'long' I mean 5+ years. Long enough to give consumers the ability to change cars and homes. (running out to purchase a new hybrid does not make short or even medium term financial sense when compared to a 15mpg land yacht that is already paid for. the car loan makes the cost of gas cheap)

In the short term, most folks can take the financial hit up to a point, and at that time they start to drive smarter. But there is a limit to how much you will save by 'driving smarter'.

In the long term, folks will buy new cars that get better mileage, purchase a house that is closer to work, get a job that is closer to their house, etc. But the prices have to stay high. Today, folks are looking at the mpg ratings. If the price goes down tomorrow, they will start to look at things like legroom and horse power ratings (bigger is better if gas is $1.50 a gallon)

Thus, in the long term, higher gas prices will result in lower consumption. http://www.slate.com/id/2126981/ has a nice summary of why it is inelastic in the short term and elastic in the long term, and why we still like our 10 mpg cars. And you know that the folks providing the gas to us know that it is not in their best interest to keep the prices high for long.

Here, Mr. Troll, chew on this. I'll have to concede though... this doesn't prove Bush is an idiot. It is *possible* that he's actually smarter than Hawking, but for some reason he wants us to think he's an idiot.

I bought a faster computer for Office A so I could juggle multiple windows and apps more quickly. On Office B's 1600 x 1200 pixel screen, I don't need to juggle at all. I've even got extra turf to keep background tasks onscreen. If I get an instant message while on deadline, I can scan it in my peripheral vision without moving my hands on the keyboard. If I need to reply, I don't have to shove my work aside. I can keep an eye on inbound e-mail while writing and click to zap an annoying song from iTunes without fumbling for the application. I've even squeezed an analog clock and a weather widget into a spare corner so I needn't remember to check them.

Could you please provide for me a link showing when the Iraqi army surrendered to US forces?

Yeah, that's what I thought. They didn't. So claiming the war was over when Bush unfurled his Mission Accomplished banner upon the aircraft carrier is kind of dishonest? I mean it doesn't look like whoever is fighting us in Iraq has surrendered.

Hey, why don't you go look up "Werewolf" and tell us just how successful those Nazis were. Heck, go look up on how the Hitler Youth took to arms and fought back American soldiers. Oh yeah, that's right. There was hardly any opposition in Germany.

Just curious, but do you have any other Republican talking points you want to spout?

Maybe you'd like to declare that Detroit murder rate is worse than Baghdad?

Maybe you'd like to take some pictures of Instanbul and claim it's Baghdad?

You guys are pathetic. You're not just incompetent, your dishonest too. It's no wonder nobody can trust today's Republicans with national security.

The Slate article in question is here.

I so hope you are making this up.

It's a real quote.

"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." -- Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

I think Slate got it right when it comes to these ads. They're kinda funny, but really mean-spirited. They're "Haha...you suck!!"-ads that don't appeal to me. That, and the fact that they kinda make me happy that I'm running windows (not right now, right now it's Fedora all the way, I double-boot) instead of apple. It makes the PC look productive and serious, instead of the slacker Mac OS X.

They also contain alot of stuff that's plain wrong. For instance, Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it. Set the date and time, account password and keyboard configuration, and bobs your uncle! Same thing with my digital camera, that works fine with windows, contrary to what one of the ads say.

Don't get me wrong, I think Mac OS X is a stellar OS, far superior to windows, I just don't like these ads.