Slashdot Mirror

Thanks for the response!

Except the memo (and most laws) consider sex and gender to be the same thing.

If Trump was putting out a memo recognizing they were different you would have a point. He isn't. He's putting out a memo that considers sex and gender to be the same thing, and only recognizing sex.

I would disagree with you. The government has no bearing on gender. A biological man cannot be arrested for wearing a dress as a result of anything Trump does, regardless if that man is doing it for drag or because they are transitioned. This still seems like the NYT is creating a mountain out of a mole hill to generate clicks.

What, exactly, is making light of it?

The far left kinda treats it as a feeling based thing that would be full of sunshine and rainbows. The far right treats it as a made up thing that is nothing but a mental disorder. The truth is somewhere in between.
It's kinda like the abortion thing. Far right: murder. Far left: let's make a song and dance about getting our abortions!

And their suicide rate goes way down post-transition.....unless you start demanding they be treated as their birth sex.

Do you have a source for this?
Hmm, most of the sources I've looked over doesn't mention the pre/post transition rates, but show that even while transitioned they have higher than usual rates. http://theconversation.com/fac... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

This shows that the rate is NOT significant influenced post-transition (going from 60% to 40% is a factor, but is still too damn high to call it "way down"). http://williamsinstitute.law.u...

Though it shows that people who "pass" as the gender have the lowest rates, but it is still 1/3. Interestingly enough, male-to-female suicide rates are higher, mirroring the higher rate of mens suicide compared to women. Makes sense if the hormonal development (testosterone) is responsible... but then you would think that hormone therapy would be better at preventing suicide attempts than counseling which doesn't seem to be the case.

They may or they may not be. Which is why the normal treatment is to block puberty until they are older and able to figure it out for sure. In the meantime, you gender them as they want to be.

Yeah, I guess I worded that one poorly. At the same time, kids can go through phases and want to please their parents. It is a tricky thing to be sure.

Well, we're not to the neural implant level, but developers can start using this.

Another company is experimenting with pressure, heat, and cold for gloves. That tech is a bit bulky and isn't quite ready.

Several others are trying to use exoskeleton designs to give a sense of resistance.

This tech is rapidly approaching $20,000 per user expense. Prices will drop over time.

Horseshit, they haven't been careful about evaluating change in the Trump era, they plowed ahead with changes at a speed the left could only envy. That's because conservatism is actually about the domination of society by an aristocracy. This can be mistaken for resistance to/caution toward change in a society that was recently or is dominated by an aristocracy if you don't look too closely.

No justification needed these days, they'll just twirl their mustaches and cackle maniacally.

Trump has taken the modern businessman's mask off of conservatism and exposed the face of the ancient evil underneath.

Ah the Cole and Ohanian paper again, but with an extra heaping of customized unhinged exaggeration ("and that's likely an under estimate as it comes from UCLA"). Since the legislation was signed in June 1933, three months after FDR entered office (March 4 in those days), and the Great Depression did in fact end no later than June 1940 when the US per capita GDP had recovered to its pre-depression level (the NBER, who is the semi-official self-designated shot-caller for recessions places it much earlier, but there are good reasons to disregard their definition). I guess since the paper is from UCLA economists he believes FDR actually signed the legislation before he took office perhaps.

As Ohanian himself sighed 12 years after the paper was published:

“People on the right would say, ‘Hey, look — these guys from UCLA — which is not perceived as some traditionally conservative place — said Roosevelt was to blame for the Depression continuing,’” Ohanian said. “Then people on the left would say, ‘Oh, these guys are conservative, paid mouthpieces for the Koch Foundation,’ which, of course, we were not. But neither side really understands what we did. “

Now this complaint by Ohanian admittedly does nothing to clarify the matter of "what he did" and no explanation at all is found in the entire press release I linked to. You might however want to read this discussion of Ohanian and Cole's claims.

That is probably unconstitutional.

Yeah, SCOTUS felt the same way about most everything in the New Deal.

"In the preceding decades, the Court had struck down a laundry list of Progressive legislation – minimum-wage laws, child labor laws, agricultural relief laws, and virtually every element of the New Deal legislation that had come before it."

It seems awfully familiar to me as progressive legislation is often forced to drag our nation (kicking and screaming) into a better future that the easily-fooled insist is wrong and evil.

The new deal impeded the recovery by 7 years and that's likely an under estimate as it comes from UCLA

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/relea...

Without WWII god knows when it would of ended, we might well have become a Venezuella a country ruled by a clique continuously promising freebies to a population while they abused the system for personal profit.

So when you say progressive policies dragged us, you mean like an anchor.

Yep, Trumpism has taken the earnest businessman's mask off of conservatism, and shown us the bare face of the ancient evil underneath:

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/...

While the slashdot summary uses the term "light", the paper states that they used a 0.4 THz source — not the frequency/wavelength most people think of when they hear the word "light".

and the "magazine" article, get the research paper straight from the horse's mouth for free.

http://innovate.ee.ucla.edu/wp...

apparently thirty three language communities decided to bind to Gtk+, sometimes in multiple implementations, but only fourteen language communities decided to bind to Qt5 (of course some bindings are missing from the list, but that happened to both sides) - which is rather telling, isn't it?

It does tell you something: the vast majority of GUI apps are written in OO languages now. But even without a binding you can easily put a QT GUI on a C program if you want to. You compile main() as C++, add your GUI there, then the rest of your C code is compiled and called as standard C. Alternatively, you can make the small changes required to compile your C code as C++. Far easier than gritting your teeth and dealing with endless GTK crappiness, and a slicker end result.

I doubt anybody will lose sleep over not being able to call QT from Tcl or Fortran. If somebody really does want Fortran+QT then they can do it the same way as C.

A hash of the metadata (if by this you mean the output of the voice print, as "Mrs Miggins, The Pie Shop, The High Street, East Cheam, is also metadata) might not allow the matching to work, depending on how it has been implemented.

Ding Ding Ding! Unless someone can replicate a sound exactly, comparing a new hash to a recorded hash will fail.

So I take it the Slashdot community hasn't spent their time studying the theory of fuzzy hashing and secure sketches.
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail...

Might want to look that one up; he's a law professor of some repute.

Here's some more information of interest:

https://www.cato.org/survey-re...

https://today.yougov.com/news/...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I believe, if you scroll up, that the original post was:

Dissenting opinions can be punished by the state, or the herd, but either way, the outcome is the same.

I'm failing to see the empathy and the willingness to compromise here.

All of those things are about 'otherizing.' Rural, low social status people don't have as much experience with strangers because travel is expensive and rural life is insular. Poor whites living in areas that have had an influx of new racial groups and international business were less likely to vote for the president eject.

If that's a reaction, it sounds like a rather drastic one for a company that wanted people to be able to take a leak in comfort.

It prioritized the 0.3 percent's comfort (actual number,citation below) at the expense of the remaining 99.7%. That trade off is bad math. Moreover they doubled down when called on it and thus became a symbol of political correctness. They chose their customer base and I'm not part of it.

Citation:

http://williamsinstitute.law.u...

But has a Santa Ana ever occurred this late in the year? Generally they strike in October.

See this.

"Santa Ana conditions can exist at any time in which the Great Basin tends to be cooler than Southern California -- typically the September to May period. However, the winds garner the most attention around October because of unique aspects of Southern California climate which enhances fire danger in the autumn season."

With respect to duration: "Santa Ana conditions can exist at any time in which the Great Basin tends to be cooler than Southern California -- typically the September to May period. However, the winds garner the most attention around October because of unique aspects of Southern California climate which enhances fire danger in the autumn season."

You're just looking at one tip of the iceberg. You might want to give this long essay a read:

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/...

Conservatism in general is not just a misguided, arguably somewhat reasonable pro-business ideology. It's an ancient evil, dressed in a human skinsuit, dressed in a suit and tie, and even many conservatives are not aware of this. Our foe has thousands of years of experience vs. our <300.

I have never once seen someone reference "energy return on energy invested of about 50:1" factor for any kind into the viability of a city. Is there any literature that uses that metric seriously?

"The population of the New York region still grew 2.7 percent from 2010 to 2016, thanks to foreign arrivals and births, records show."

While it is an interesting anecdote that there is meaningful amount of migration out of NYC specifically, those individuals even according to your own source are moving to other slightly less large mega-cities. Even with that, the area is still growing. Your conclusion that somehow NYC is decaying seems erroneous in light of its net growth.

The US is still undergoing urbanization http://www.econ.ucla.edu/lbous...

How the actual fuck did you manage to blame 30 years of trickle-down economics damaging the working class on the left? By *blaming the foreigners* they let in, perhaps? No, that was your man Reagan throwing open the floodgates of inequality, with Bush Sr. finishing the job. Own that shit. OWN IT.

You also play on the "liberal elite" fallacy, that there are no working class leftists and as such, anyone on the left struggles to understand working class problems. And then in the next breath the right will push to make voting more difficult for working-class people. So we know that you know that it's horseshit.

It's the right that should be in for a heel realization. Especially if they ever dig right down and find that the core of their ideology is an ancient evil in a human skinsuit. It's entertaining to think about which right-wingers know this and play dumb, and which actually don't know. I think most actually don't know.

Talk about invoking the trivial objections fallacy. You're just splitting hairs over the dates rather than offering any actual evidence that the information is obsolete. And as if that isn't enough, you're trying to argue against most of these sources just because there isn't a link. There's a good reason for this: Most of them aren't publicly accessible, which is pretty common. And then you try to refute arguments based on vague terms like "known dubious quality" (known by whom?) "not relevant to transexuals" (Uhh...the title pretty clearly says transexuals...)

Just to drive the point further home:

https://williamsinstitute.law....

The prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality, is 41 percent

In fact, it even breaks it down by demographic:

Suicide attempts among trans men (46%) and trans women (42%) were slightly higher than the full sample (41%). Cross-dressers assigned male at birth have the lowest reported prevalence of suicide attempts among gender identity groups (21%).

Also, in that PDF you may want to compare the difference in the suicide attempt numbers of those who want genital surgery and those who have had it. Or more precisely, the lack thereof.

and if we have a draft will this last?

According to this study about 0.6% of the adult population identifies as transgender. If the US is hurting for manpower that much I hope they go after the 1%ers kids before trying to draw from the transgender community. Maybe then they will think twice about supporting chicken hawks who are too eager to go to war but not willing to fight it.

Trans suicide rates are between 40-50% https://williamsinstitute.law.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Trans people, regardless of having actually had the surgery, or the supportive nature of their environment, have a incredible high rate of attempted suicide.

Actually, there is good analyses showing that Government intervention significantly lengthened the Great Depression. And given that our unemployment rate - if calculated as it was pre-2008 - is still around 9%, and inflation - if calculated as it was pre-1990 - is still around 8%, we are still in the recession (lowering the inflation rate artificially results in an artificially increased GDP growth rate).

Yes, the stock market is way up, but when you pump several trillion dollars straight into investment banks, it's no surprise that the value of the investments increases on paper. But hey, we're still adding around $1.4 trillion a year to the debt so we do have another year or two of ever-increasing stock market values.

They didn't say much before then, because there were no cases that hinged on the interpretation of the Second where it mattered.

One case that I can think of that was related was US v. Miller (1939). In that case, SCOTUS ruled that a sawed-off shotgun was not legal, because it was not a standard military weapon, and thus was not "particularly suitable for use by militia". Because the weapon itself was found to be out of the scope of the amendment, they didn't have to decide whether the right was collective or individual.

Another was Printz v. United States (1997), which ruled parts of the Brady law unconstitutional. But that actually had very little to do with guns, and mostly about whether the federal government could enact a law that forced state and local LEO agencies to enforce some federal provisions (SCOTUS ruled that it couldn't).

As far as divining the precise meaning of the Amendment itself, and the intent of those who authored it, it's instructive to take a look at state constitutions. Many of them include RKBA provisions, and those that were enacted later than the original Bill of Rights are clearly influenced by it, but often use more explicit language to clearly define the right as individual. Some examples:

"That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." (Kentucky, 1792)

"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" (Indiana, 1816)

"That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Alabama, 1819)

"Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for the common defence; and this right shall never be questioned." (Maine, 1819)

"Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Connecticut, 1818)

"Every citizen shall have the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the republic" (Texas, 1836)

"The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons." (Colorado, 1876)

"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired" (Washington, 1889)

I think that given all these, there's a clear trend here towards interpreting RKBA as an individual right with self-defense as explicitly valid application. It would be rather surprising if the federal constitution would diverge radically on that.

Cement isn't identical with Portland Cement, although there are proposals to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from making that, too.

Another way to go is a magnesium silicate based cement.

There's a lot that needs to be done to get us close to carbon neutral, but it's doable and we need to get started.

hits minorities much harder

Including Asian minorities?

Try here. For the supplementary material go here.

Can't get the excerpt page but the main part is there, including their methodology. Which is flawed.
It's based on this study.
Which uses the number of unique /24 subnets and geolocation as a measurement of internet penetration in a country.
No problem in that. Referenced study shows that there are pretty high correlations on both national and subnational level.

The problem with the original study (one this slashdot story is about) is where it claims to "show that politically excluded groups suffer from significantly lower Internet penetration rates compared with those in power, an effect that cannot be explained by economic or geographic factors.
Except their study uses ONLY geographic factors (i.e. geolocation) to determine the "internet penetration" within the "excluded groups".

I.e. They are counting subnets in geographically remote places (away from the countries' main networks which tend to be in urban areas) and simply calling such groups of subnets "excluded".
Implying "ethnic favoritism" and political motivation for "exclusion" but never presenting any.
They never demonstrate the connection from subnets to actual people - "excluded" or not.
They never demonstrate "ethnic favoritism" or "political exclusion".
They never even demonstrate "exclusion".
For this study it is a presupposed "fact" that people (i.e. subnets) are somehow "excluded" by the mere fact that there are few of them in one place and a lot of them elsewhere.
It is borderline conspiracy theory nuttery, where being rural automagically means that "the man" is keeping you offline.

When they DO try to present SOME kind of evidence for "exclusion", they do so in the supplementary material (page 21), based on the Ethnic Power Relations Dataset.
Where "exclusion effect" is presented across the entire country.
And where USA is situated between Zimbabwe and Nigeria, right next to UK and Canada which are standing shoulder to shoulder between Gabon and India.
While their error bars are universally so wide that South Africa (one of the countries in their study) has an "exclusion effect" just over zero and error bars ranging from -2.5 to 2.5.
The entire graph shows values from -5 to 5.
While Saudi Arabia, Butan, Congo and Egypt are near the bottom of the "exclusion" scale - the lands of internet freedom and political inclusion.

Only thing they actually DO determine is that, when controlled for local GDP indicators, "excluded" groups DO have negative regression coefficient (-0.481, standard error of 0.094) - which are about twice lower than "distance to capital" (-0.942, s.e. 0.133).
I.e. Negative influence of being geographically distant from nation's capital is TWICE that from being "excluded".
Even when controlled for the influence of having no electricity (nighttime lights per capita) instead of for GDP, being away from the capital is still a greater negative factor (-0.703, s.e. 0.130) than "being excluded" (-0.539, s.e. 0.090).

Meanwhile, higher GDP per capita (0.749, s.e. 0.155), road density (4.068, s.e. 0.833) and urbanization (2.782, s.e. 0.748) all show positive regression coefficients for "internet penetration".
I.e. Closer you are to roads, cities and more money - the greater the number of subnets.
Whodathunkit!

In other words, their "conclusion" is not only cherry picking - it is pure confirmation bias in the face of their own results showing the exact opposite of their claims.

The government-granted monopoly (especially on drugs) stems from two things:

1) Patents. A twenty year monopoly in exchange for publication of the invention. Frequently used to secure a monopoly on new drugs.
One can argue that they don't really serve their purpose (Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine have written a book about it, http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm).
If one agrees with Boldrin and Levine, the solution is abolishing patents. Otherwise, they are a fair deal between society and the inventor, and the public should just live with the twenty year monopoly.

2) Testing requirements. Even when a patent has run out, a new company that wants to produce the drug still needs to show the safety of its products. I have some experience in a related field (medical equipment) and the approval process costs time and money. That is one reason why there is not always a competitor that undercuts an overpriced manufacturer. This could be changed by abolishing the FDA, but at the expense of (literally) bringing back the snake oil peddlers.

In short, it is not only crony capitalism. There were some good intentions involved.
Personally I see crony capitalism in ever longer copyright terms, especially the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
That one is far more difficult to justify than 20 year patent terms and drug testing requirements

This is what I've never quite understood: why does it seem that zoning laws are allowed to ignore constitutional freedoms? Banning research and development, "including software coding" would seem to ignore the right to free speech, free assembly and the right to privacy

Sometimes speech is also conduct, and conduct can be regulated. For instance, if I call you up and say "give me a million BTC or else I'm going to kill your family", surely that's speech but it's also criminal conduct (e.g. 18 USC 875 for Americans, YMMV elsewhere). Similarly, if two coffeehouse owners in a small town meet over lattes and one says "Let's raise prices a quarter" and the other says "Sure, we'll change ours next week", surely that's speech, they are just talking, but it's also criminal conduct (15 USC 1). Or urging a specific person to commit suicide. The fact that all of these crimes are accomplished by talking doesn't magically throw First Amendment protection over conspiracy to fix consumer prices.

The same is true in civil, as opposed to criminal, law. Libel, defamation, and slander are tortious, even though they are obviously speech. So are tax fraud, misleading investors and filing false business reports, even if you use a printed medium to convey them. Publishing your company's trade secrets as a book (or a newspaper) won't get you off the hook, neither will failing to pay generally-owed taxes or follow generally-applicable laws (like zoning) for your magazine. I mean, no one (I think?) believes that the NYT or /. can just ignore the zoning laws and set up whatever, wherever any more than they can violate labor law or building codes or tax law (right?).

Eugene Volokh did a fairly thorough review of the boundary between speech and conduct.

But Asians are counted as white, only sometimes as asian, depending on the point you are trying to make.

Asians are now counted as white.

Luckily I live in a country where that is explicitly forbidden and all code automatically belongs to the creator (unless in a work contract).

I don't think the situation is different here than in your country. You can read the UCLA copyright policy...

According to UCLA policy, the copyright on Student work is owned by the Author if it was produced by a registered student without the use of University funds (other than Student Financial Aid), that is produced outside any University employment. Includes all coursework, term papers, theses and other work, as long as the student is not employed as a participant in a sponsored project where research results may be obligated to a third party.

Given that Professor Klug's research areas was Computational Biomechanics at UCLA, I would speculate that nobody forced him to sign rights to the professor, the lab nor the university. However, if there was sponsored research that was related to his thesis (apparently he was working on his thesis for 10 years someone was probably paying him something), perhaps there might have been some copyright ambiguity is some of his research was paid for by other companies (which is akin to a work contract). if this was the case, perhaps other researchers on the same research contract could presumably get access to the software that he wrote because it might have been allowed by the sponsor (even if the student didn't *like* it).

In addition, in California, an employer cannot simply force an employee to assign copyrights to software that they develop on their own time independent of employment. The employment law as it is written is here... If there was such an agreement, it would be void as it is unenforceable under California law.

If the universe ran on a grid or other regular structure there would be some slight anisotropic effects.

You mean like what we see in the CMB?

The vast majority of road pollution today comes from semi trucks.

A surprising amount of congestion and pollution also comes from cars circling the block looking for parking. One hope is that autonomous cars could self-park somewhere else, reducing congestion around popular destinations. Any system which avoided you needing to park near your destination (mass transit, Uber, taxis, robocars) has the same effect.

Back to TFA, the world is complicated. It's hard to say whether robocars will increase, decrease, or leave unchanged emissions. I expect they'll change too much other stuff for anyone to accurately predict the new equilibrium.

Nope.

People make that statistical error all the time. The question is whether to use one-tailed or two-tailed statistical tests. You are proposing using a one-tailed statistical test, but two-tailed is correct here.

The thing that seems anomalous is getting the same result six ties in a row. Whether that's six heads in a row, or six tails in a row, is irrelevant. What you should be testing for is the probability of getting the same result n times in a row, whether that is heads or tails.

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/m... tells more.

But, wait: what if you are about to say "Well, if it had been Bernie that won six times in a row, I'd accept it as chance, but since it's Hillary, I am suspicious"? Wouldn't that be a reason to use one-tailed probabilities?

No. What you just did there was to insert your own bias. The whole point of statistics is to avoid bias.
A good rule is, if you can't decide if you should use two-tailed probability or one-tailed, always use two-tailed.

--in any case, though, if the Washington Post is accurate, there were over a dozen coin flips, and Sanders also won some of the tosses.

Socialist economies don't exist in the western world. There is no such thing as a socialist economy in the western world. Look at the companies in the so called socialist countries and tell me if they have owners, investors, stocks, bonds, dividends... etc.... See?

To say something doesn't exist, you have to define it. Neither of you have defined what you mean by "socialist economy" so it is possible you are both talking past each other.

The economies you think you can point to as successes are just capitalist systems that you're parasiting off of... nothing more.

A socialist economy would be one where the socialism were producing the wealth of that society.

Ok, now we have a definition from you. That's an unusual definition, I'm not sure it is shared by others.

Of course, you have to define socialism now.

No such society exists in the West. Outside of the west... you could point to North Korea if you wanted to claim them... I suspect you don't want to do that though.

North Korea is actually an example of a military aristocracy, I can't imagine anybody honestly fitting socialist as wanting to point to it for anything but what happens when a small group has power over others.

As to banking crisis... In every case I can point to government mismanagement so you'd have a very hard time citing the collapses as being an argument for more government control.

Sometimes a lack of control causes mismanagement. So your citations can work backwards against you.

In 2008 for example it was the Freddie Mac/Fanny Mae situation.

For example, Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae failed to control their business with private investors who they were supposed to serve and make sure they knew they'd be accountable.

In the EU, the EU drove the Greek collapse with cheap debt.

The EU could have told their banks not to go into that, but oh wait, what happened?

They didn't.

The examples are long.

Actually the great depression did not happen before FDR. The CRASH happened before FDR. The great depression was mostly during his presidency.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/relea...

*yawn*

Too easy.

Oh my, two economists say something! Oh wait, no, you're just giving us a press release about it.

At least link to the actual study.

Which has already been argued over, and rehashed ad nauseum, with the only result being more economists get to justify their salaries.

But no, the Great Depression began in 1929, and continued through the 1930s, so you're going to have to either face the fact that your description does not fit with the terms everybody else is using, or give us a good reason to not consider the economic collapse before FDR took office as part of the Great Depression.

Socialist economies don't exist in the western world. There is no such thing as a socialist economy in the western world. Look at the companies in the so called socialist countries and tell me if they have owners, investors, stocks, bonds, dividends... etc.... See? The economies you think you can point to as successes are just capitalist systems that you're parasiting off of... nothing more.

A socialist economy would be one where the socialism were producing the wealth of that society. No such society exists in the West. Outside of the west... you could point to North Korea if you wanted to claim them... I suspect you don't want to do that though.

The economy of every western country is CAPITALISTIC.

Having welfare does not mean your economy is socialist unless the country in question doesn't operate under capitalistic principles as regards its production.

There is no western country that operates other than capitalist as regards its ECONOMY.

As to banking crisis... In every case I can point to government mismanagement so you'd have a very hard time citing the collapses as being an argument for more government control.

In 2008 for example it was the Freddie Mac/Fanny Mae situation. In the EU, the EU drove the Greek collapse with cheap debt. The examples are long.

Actually the great depression did not happen before FDR. The CRASH happened before FDR. The great depression was mostly during his presidency.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/relea...

*yawn*

Too easy.

18+ year old theory: http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/p... I though I was losing my mind. The article, OK the summary, seems to imply no one ever thought of this.

Haven't found any scientific article yet but here is the news page from UCLA:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/relea...

In short, they found graphite in a crystal and the graphite has a carbon 12 to carbon 13 ratio which indicates biological origin.

So, the current status is "plausible" but if someone comes up with another explanation it is "busted".

link to article

I believe that is why there's a big difference between average age at death and life expectancy. Reference here.

Glad this got mod points, because most of these programs function mainly as an excuse for the sorry state of public education in the US. Did you know? Private and parochial schools saw huge gains in white enrollment right after desegregation, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy and Jim Crow south. And guess what? "School choice" programs favoring charter schools has had the same effect.

Structural racism is insidious and pernicious, and requires a lot of effort to eradicate. Here's something to consider for all the other people in this thread defending neo-segregation: There are two explanations for the unequal racial representation in our society (say, in the prison population, or corporate CEOs, or application of the death penalty, or encounters with police, or income distribution, etc etc): either we live in a society that distributes its awards and punishments unequally according to the racial background of the recipient, or you believe that there is something intrinsic to different racial backgrounds that account for it. Either we live in a racist society which it is our duty as decent human beings to combat, or you are a racist yourself.

So which is it?

The claim that building this car generates 1/3 the emissions of a comparable battery electric vehicle is believable. The lie is that the majority of lifetime emissions are generated during vehicle manufacture. In the real world, BEVs look much better.

UCLA was a reputable school last time I checked.

A reputable school which you clearly did not earn a BS in CSci from. How can I be sure? Their undergraduate CSci major requires

Mathematics 170A, or Statistics 100A

Looking a little further we see that Math 170A is Probability Theory. If you had completed even one semester of statistics or probability you would not have committed that epic statistical failure that you so proudly displayed a few comments ago.

Care to try selling us on a different lie instead?

UCLA was a reputable school last time I checked.

A reputable school which you clearly did not earn a BS in CSci from. How can I be sure? Their undergraduate CSci major requires

Mathematics 170A, or Statistics 100A

Looking a little further we see that Math 170A is Probability Theory. If you had completed even one semester of statistics or probability you would not have committed that epic statistical failure that you so proudly displayed a few comments ago.

Care to try selling us on a different lie instead?

If you want a longer response, then I suggest you read a few books on geology and seismology. Earthquakes are far too poorly understood to be predictable and all the interesting events are happening tens or hundreds of kilometres underground with no feasible way to observe or measure them.

If you want a scientific paper, read this.

I was simply trying to save everybody time.

The are lots of ways to measure the distance to stars. But you are correct that certain methods are better for certain distance ranges
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wri...

The solar wind never gets anywhere near Jupiter's atmosphere. Jupiter has an absurdly strong magnetic field. The magnetopause is between 50 about 100 Jupiter radii from the planet, and the solar wind is deflected around it (Khurana et al., 2004). The jovian aurorae are powered by currents entirely within the magnetosphere (Jupiter's rotation and Io's plasma).

To learn about copyright ethics -- that is, how unethical the very concept is -- be sure to read Boldrin & Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly and Lessig's Free Culture.

The nature of the way patents are written is that they *are* hidden from public view -- while in plain sight.

And are they necessary? Economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine make a *very* compelling case that they are not. The purpose of patents and copyright is to provide incentive to cause creators to create ("Promote progress" in the words of the Constitution), but the evidence that they show makes a really strong case that intellectual property actually retards progress.

And Gates made that point himself in an internal Microsoft memo many years ago. "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

Example of impenetrable and obfuscatory text: "said combinatory alternatives, under permutation, need not necessarily be neither non-exclusive nor non-inclusive". And you have to defend against this sort of stuff in court, where the presumption is that "a granted patent is valid" holds unless the jury can see through it... A patent holder's lawyer can play his fish forever with this sort of thing, and only reel it in when it's essentially dead. 'Nuff said.