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For most studies of any kind, the margin for error is around +/-3%. For example, a study covering the United States population using a sample size of 1000 will yield a margin of error of 3.1%.

So a study says that texting while driving increases your risk of a fatal crash by 23 times. That sounds like a lot! But hold the phone...the overall rate of traffic fatalities is about 10 per 100,000 people, or about 0.01%. Multiply that by 23, and you get 0.23%. A big change, right? But that 0.23% is still well within the margin for error of most any study.

I'm not saying that texting while driving isn't dangerous. I'm just saying it's a lot harder to prove a link than it would seem.

Still, people are wowed by big multipliers, and news writers love to tout dramatic statistics, whether the subject of the study is economics, medicine, or traffic safety. But if you understand statistics, you know that most of these studies don't really tell us much. It's no wonder we keep getting contradictory study results!

hmm... that "company called TRW" just happens to be a large defense contractor for the US (I've worked there before).

I think I might just have to dust off that tin foil hat...

And, lest we forget, there are thousands of privately owned companies that have stock holders, boards of trustees, etc. who all face the same issue. There are things you are allowed to disclose, and things you are not allowed to disclose. Stock holders generally don't care about the technical details of every single project that comes along. They are interested in whether it is generating revenue, if it is over budget, etc. These things can be discussed openly without fear of the gestapo coming knocking on the boardroom door.

Here's a short video showing some Laser action (in Quicktime and Windowsmedia).

That would be sooo easy to fake though. :)

A bit of Karma whoring here, wish I'd gotten online sooner so that people would see this much earlier:

TheHigh Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (so-called HELSTF). Let's see if Tom's webserver can survive this...This is the laser test facility for the army and navy at White Sands Missile Range. They've got the world's most powerful laser (MIRACL: Mid Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser) there.

Being developed for them, by Livermore by the same guys that are doing the National Ignition Facility is a solid state laser. It works.

Also at HELSTF, and the first functional laser weapon, is Tactical High Energy Laser (aka THEL, and I hate that URL, btw...)

Search TRW for more stuff on lasers as well as Lockmart and Boeing, of course.

That's the kind of sh*t that pisses me off, I don't pay taxes to have the government simply hand that money to a corp.

Actually, that's exactly what you do. Of course you could delude yourself into thinking that your particular share of the money was going into Condoleezza Rice's pocket, or perhaps Colin Powell's paycheck instead.

Of course, your money is probably going to TRW, Lockheed Martin, or Boeing, or perhaps all 3.

Remember, it might be neat to think about Bill Gate's money, or how much cash Microsoft has, but really. Call me when Microsoft gets awarded a multibillion dollar contract that has the potential to blow up or get shot down.

I've never seen Windows crash quite like that.

lots of good pix here
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/sbl.htm

a paper on SBL for missile defense
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/docs/98-16 5.htm

SBL fact sheet (PDF)
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/pdf/sbl.pdf

Missile Defense Agency homepage
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/bmdolink . tml

other links
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/md/sbl/
http://www.sbl.losangeles.af.mil/Divisions/FrontOf fice/body.htm
http://www.trw.com/presskits/detailinfo/0,1067,2_1 2^2^12^40,FF.html

http://www.smdc.army.mil/FactSheets/THEL.html

http://www.smdc.army.mil/FactSheets/HELSTF.html
TRW's contribution:

http://www.trw.com/thel

-Mark

I found this neat wrap up of American Military Weaponry. They mention several military gagets that I read about on slashdot a while back. Super-cavitating torpedo's, the ABL which is being jointly developed by TRW and Boeing, The Land warrior System which gives our soldiers on the battlefield a counterstrike like HUD with green for friends and red for enemies. It's warm fuzzies knowing that none of this is possible without computer science.

I work at TRW (the company that produced this spacecraft, and some of the other recent NASA successes (e.g. Chandra)) and am privvy to the actual production costs. Obviously, I cannot give out figures, but we got good money's worth on this one.

NASA was particularly smart on this one, in that it is making two. EOS Chemistry is a follow-on, that reuses much of the existing spacecraft design (new payload, though) so we were able to realize a lot of savings by just referencing the original paperwork for many of the components (such as the propulsion system, which I got to work on briefly.)

Terra is in a "Low Earth Orbit" (LEO), and as such, will eventually crash back into Earth. In fact, NASA is requiring LEO satellites be de-orbited at end of life, as a way to keep trash out of orbit. (For several spacecraft I've designed this is an annoyingly design-driving requirement; simple spacecraft are being made complicated by the need for a beefy propulsion system simply to make it crash into Earth before it's dead. But keeping space clean is a noble and correct thing to do.)

So that I can blatantly plug my own company, here's my company's news release, a page describing the spacecraft briefly, a more detailed one and another that describes the follow-on spacecraft we're making. I don't know why TRW doesn't toot its own horn more, it's done some of the coolest physics-breaking things in the last fifty years, of any of the aerospace companies.

Terra is in a "Low Earth Orbit" (LEO), and as such, will eventually crash back into Earth. In fact, NASA is requiring LEO satellites be de-orbited at end of life, as a way to keep trash out of orbit. (For several spacecraft I've designed this is an annoyingly design-driving requirement; simple spacecraft are being made complicated by the need for a beefy propulsion system simply to make it crash into Earth before it's dead. But keeping space clean is a noble and correct thing to do.)

So that I can blatantly plug my own company, here's my company's news release, a page describing the spacecraft briefly, a more detailed one and another that describes the follow-on spacecraft we're making. I don't know why TRW doesn't toot its own horn more, it's done some of the coolest physics-breaking things in the last fifty years, of any of the aerospace companies.

Terra is in a "Low Earth Orbit" (LEO), and as such, will eventually crash back into Earth. In fact, NASA is requiring LEO satellites be de-orbited at end of life, as a way to keep trash out of orbit. (For several spacecraft I've designed this is an annoyingly design-driving requirement; simple spacecraft are being made complicated by the need for a beefy propulsion system simply to make it crash into Earth before it's dead. But keeping space clean is a noble and correct thing to do.)

So that I can blatantly plug my own company, here's my company's news release, a page describing the spacecraft briefly, a more detailed one and another that describes the follow-on spacecraft we're making. I don't know why TRW doesn't toot its own horn more, it's done some of the coolest physics-breaking things in the last fifty years, of any of the aerospace companies.