If they want to turn everything into big capacitors, I hope they work in ways to keep you from accidentally discharging it (years ago I took apart a cheap point-and-shoot camera and I touched the capacitor for the built-in flash and got quite a nice shock).
I always looked at it as a really neat puzzle, but one that is easily solved if you know the "trick". Just like those "IQ Tester" puzzles where you have n holes and (n-1) pegs, and you're supposed to jump the pegs checkers-style until there is only one left. It is fun to pass the time, but once you figure it out you're done. Of course, the trick these days is to see how quickly you can solve it, or doing it blindfold, or under water, or whatever. That's why I wouldn't classify it as the "greatest geek toy".
I didn't see the SA article, but I found what I am sure is the paper that caught SA's attention. A 1982 article in the European Journal of Physics by Marx, Gajzágó, and Gnädig. It is an entertaining article on how a physicist can see the universe in a Rubik's cube. However, since apparently a 3x3x3 cube forms a mathematical group, and if one takes quantum mechanics to be consistent with group theory, their conclusions are not very surprising. I am grateful for the reference and I look forward to reading the full paper.
In support of your argument, from the conclusion of the paper, the authors write:
And let us call the attention of the physics professors to what David Singmaster wrote in his paper to the International Congress on Mathematical Education: ‘The cube is probably the most educational toy ever invented.’
I can't say I think of it as the greatest geek toy. Cool puzzle, but not geek toy. When I think of a great geek toy, I think of something that demonstrates some physical property (like a gyroscope, or one of those glass tubes with a colored liquid that boils when you hold it in your hand), or something like a Mindstorms set where you can explore computing and robotics.
1. Perhaps, but more likely because this is basic research it also can simply have shown to have not panned out.
2. For research at this level, it is never really "finished." There are always avenues to explore and interesting things to look into. The hard part is convincing a funding agency to let you go down those rat holes. The leap between basic research and "weaponizing" is bigger than the leap between basic research and commercializing. In other words, it happens very rarely.
3. I would like to see you provide some examples of this, particularly if you are suggesting this is so common as to happen regularly.
There are many things imposed upon the DoD that they do not want, but Congress inserts them via pork. Stevens was probably the best example of the worst part of the pork barrel process. He probably sent more money to Alaska than Byrd did to West Virginia (remember "the bridge to nowhere"? That was a tiny drop in the Stevens pork money ocean). One example off the top of my head, I recall years ago that he tried to have a NSF polar monitoring station (remember, this is supposed to be in the polar regions) moved to Alaska because it is cold there too. You can easily google major weapons programs the DoD doesn't want, but can't cancel because of pork.
The Air Force isn't going to spend their limited R&D funding on something that was set up with pork money unless it actually turns out to show that it has value (pork doesn't necessarily mean the idea is bad, but more often than not if the idea was good enough to stand up to peer review and other criticism, it would get funding via some legitimate channel).
I don't know why this is intriguing. The way good science is done is you take your criticisms and you refute them when you have an answer. Bad science, such as how cold fusion unfolded, jumps immediately into lawyer mode and other such nonsense. You immediately refute criticisms if you can (i.e., you know the answer off the top of your head), otherwise you go back and look into it (given the size of the BICEP team, I am guessing the PI was not the one who actually crunched the numbers, so he would have to go back to the person/people who did crunch the numbers and check with them). Also, "flat-out deny" is a pretty overblown set of words to use. If they used the wrong background in their subtraction, then they do the reanalysis and give the new results. If they didn't, they show that they didn't.
If you read TFA they eventually go beyond the breathless statements highlighted earlier in the article and repeated in the summary above ("everything we thought was wrong!") and talk about other possibilities. I don't see how this makes one need to reevaluate what we've thought before. A gas cloud is not uniform and has density perturbations in it. It is most likely that newer stars will form in the center where the densities are higher, but it doesn't mean that they can't form on the outside.
I don't know how it is in law school, but professors get a free copy of the textbook(s) ("professor's or teacher's edition"), and perhaps support material. They get unsolicited texts mailed to them in hope that they'll be used in their course. Some don't give it a second thought and go with the path of least resistance. I did have a few who (younger, and closer to remembering their student days) purposely didn't use the latest edition, or didn't use one at all and pulled bits and pieces out of a number of books that were put on reserve in the library.
LOL! As someone who was a kid when the first one came out, your comment made me chuckle. You should have seen all the merchandise crap that came out, even after the first one. And the Ewoks only existed for their marketing potential.
I'm not interested enough to click through and read the article, but instead of net worth, maybe they think their annual salary will be a million dollars.
While true one can google for almost anything, that doesn't excuse poorly written summaries. Far too often the article summary doesn't simply add a sentence or two to put the topic in context, especially when it comes to a particular software package or specialized hardware. In my opinion, a decent article summary shouldn't put the burden on the potential reader to click through link after link, or bring up a separate web search simply to determine whether the article is worth their time reading.
Apparently you need to go through one of the participating companies, but the filing is free if you meet that company's criteria. I suppose it is seen as a win-win: for the Government, free filing for low income people, and for the companies, a sales pitch complete with (I'm sure) plenty of opportunities for the person to be upsold on the "premium" versions.
I remember this very well. They pushed that same argument that industry loves to throw around in cases like this: the Federal Government will not start or carry on any commercial activity to provide a service or product for its own use if such product or service can be procured from private enterprise through ordinary business channels. Basically, the IRS should not set up a system where people can file directly with them because that would hurt the private companies who file taxes. It is a completely asinine system because the IRS already has a great system of easily providing PDFs for all their forms and instructions, it would be the next logical step to allow one to fill the forms out and send them in directly. I haven't followed it closely lately, but clearly the law was changed to allow direct filing for 1040EZ forms. I hope they'll open it up beyond that soon.
I don't know. I actually "science" and after all these years I still think these events are pretty cool. I will make a point of getting up in the middle of the night to see it.
Sorry all, I copy/pasted this in haste. I should have blockquoted it and I should have mentioned that this was the reply posted on the Duke U. blog (just so it is obvious these aren't my comments and where it came from).
Kevin, I’m posting this as a comment here to provide clarity for all, given the interest this has generated. I’ve also written to you to suggest a conversation. I am sorry that we didn’t talk with you before we started requesting waivers from authors at Duke University, that would have been better all round.
You raise two concerns: about our requesting that authors provide formal waivers of Duke University open access policy; and the ‘moral rights’ statement in our license to publish. I’ll start with the second.
We take seriously our responsibility for the integrity of the scientific record. The “moral rights” language included in the license to publish is there to ensure that the journal and its publisher are free to publish formal corrections or retractions of articles where the integrity of the scientific record may be compromised by the disagreement of authors. This is not our preferred approach to dealing with corrections and retractions, and we work with authors and institutions to seek consensus first.
We always attribute articles to authors, we have clear contribution policies. See: http://www.nature.com/nature/j... and http://www.nature.com/authors/...
We believe researchers should be credited for their work, and as a founding member of ORCID, we have implemented ORCID integration on nature.com to foster disambiguated accreditation.
We are requesting waivers from Duke University authors, because of the wide grant of rights as per your open access policy. If we do not request a waiver, Duke University has the rights not only to archive in Dukespace, but to publish and distribute the final version of a subscription article freely to the world at large, in any medium, immediately on publication. We started requesting waivers recently, following an enquiry from a Duke University author.
NPG is supportive of open access. We have no problem with you archiving accepted manuscripts in DukeSpace, for public access six months after publication. We encourage self-archiving, and have done so since we implemented our policy in 2005: http://www.nature.com/authors/...
This is in addition to open access publication options available on many journals we publish.
We are happy to try to answer further questions, and would welcome a discussion with you. We have worked constructively with PubMed Central and institutional repositories for many years, and do not want our intentions and commitment to academic integrity and open access to be misunderstood.
Grace Baynes
Head of Communications, Nature Publishing Group
Space 1999(I kid you not in how I described the plot. A lot of it is summarized in the title sequence). I watched all the episodes when they aired. It was very cheesy, but entertaining for me as a pre-teen, and remarkably good special effects for TV at the time. I also used to watch Mission Impossible reruns in the early 70's, and I knew Martin Landau from that. Later, when Landau won an oscar and he was receiving all the accolades for his career, I couldn't help but remember him from that cheesy show. To be fair, Space 1999 was pretty much where his career really bottomed out.
Just like Jon Stewart said about entitlements (in context of the Megyn Kelly maternity leave comments):
Here's the thing about entitlements. They're really only entitlements when they're something other people want. When it's something you want, they're a hallmark of a civilized society, the foundation of a great people. I just had a baby and found out maternity leave strengthens society. But since I still have a job, unemployment benefits are clearly socialism.
Slashdot Mirror
If they want to turn everything into big capacitors, I hope they work in ways to keep you from accidentally discharging it (years ago I took apart a cheap point-and-shoot camera and I touched the capacitor for the built-in flash and got quite a nice shock).
I always looked at it as a really neat puzzle, but one that is easily solved if you know the "trick". Just like those "IQ Tester" puzzles where you have n holes and (n-1) pegs, and you're supposed to jump the pegs checkers-style until there is only one left. It is fun to pass the time, but once you figure it out you're done. Of course, the trick these days is to see how quickly you can solve it, or doing it blindfold, or under water, or whatever. That's why I wouldn't classify it as the "greatest geek toy".
I didn't see the SA article, but I found what I am sure is the paper that caught SA's attention. A 1982 article in the European Journal of Physics by Marx, Gajzágó, and Gnädig. It is an entertaining article on how a physicist can see the universe in a Rubik's cube. However, since apparently a 3x3x3 cube forms a mathematical group, and if one takes quantum mechanics to be consistent with group theory, their conclusions are not very surprising. I am grateful for the reference and I look forward to reading the full paper.
In support of your argument, from the conclusion of the paper, the authors write:
And let us call the attention of the physics professors to what David Singmaster wrote in his paper to the International Congress on Mathematical Education: ‘The cube is probably the most educational toy ever invented.’
I can't say I think of it as the greatest geek toy. Cool puzzle, but not geek toy. When I think of a great geek toy, I think of something that demonstrates some physical property (like a gyroscope, or one of those glass tubes with a colored liquid that boils when you hold it in your hand), or something like a Mindstorms set where you can explore computing and robotics.
I disagree with your overly-pessimistic comments.
1. Perhaps, but more likely because this is basic research it also can simply have shown to have not panned out.
2. For research at this level, it is never really "finished." There are always avenues to explore and interesting things to look into. The hard part is convincing a funding agency to let you go down those rat holes. The leap between basic research and "weaponizing" is bigger than the leap between basic research and commercializing. In other words, it happens very rarely.
3. I would like to see you provide some examples of this, particularly if you are suggesting this is so common as to happen regularly.
There are many things imposed upon the DoD that they do not want, but Congress inserts them via pork. Stevens was probably the best example of the worst part of the pork barrel process. He probably sent more money to Alaska than Byrd did to West Virginia (remember "the bridge to nowhere"? That was a tiny drop in the Stevens pork money ocean). One example off the top of my head, I recall years ago that he tried to have a NSF polar monitoring station (remember, this is supposed to be in the polar regions) moved to Alaska because it is cold there too. You can easily google major weapons programs the DoD doesn't want, but can't cancel because of pork.
The Air Force isn't going to spend their limited R&D funding on something that was set up with pork money unless it actually turns out to show that it has value (pork doesn't necessarily mean the idea is bad, but more often than not if the idea was good enough to stand up to peer review and other criticism, it would get funding via some legitimate channel).
I don't know why this is intriguing. The way good science is done is you take your criticisms and you refute them when you have an answer. Bad science, such as how cold fusion unfolded, jumps immediately into lawyer mode and other such nonsense. You immediately refute criticisms if you can (i.e., you know the answer off the top of your head), otherwise you go back and look into it (given the size of the BICEP team, I am guessing the PI was not the one who actually crunched the numbers, so he would have to go back to the person/people who did crunch the numbers and check with them). Also, "flat-out deny" is a pretty overblown set of words to use. If they used the wrong background in their subtraction, then they do the reanalysis and give the new results. If they didn't, they show that they didn't.
Don't forget Magic Jack. I hear that is untraceable.
I thought they recalled all you defective Barbies in the 90's.
If you read TFA they eventually go beyond the breathless statements highlighted earlier in the article and repeated in the summary above ("everything we thought was wrong!") and talk about other possibilities. I don't see how this makes one need to reevaluate what we've thought before. A gas cloud is not uniform and has density perturbations in it. It is most likely that newer stars will form in the center where the densities are higher, but it doesn't mean that they can't form on the outside.
That's because he's Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire.
I don't know how it is in law school, but professors get a free copy of the textbook(s) ("professor's or teacher's edition"), and perhaps support material. They get unsolicited texts mailed to them in hope that they'll be used in their course. Some don't give it a second thought and go with the path of least resistance. I did have a few who (younger, and closer to remembering their student days) purposely didn't use the latest edition, or didn't use one at all and pulled bits and pieces out of a number of books that were put on reserve in the library.
Kenneth Washington is still alive too!
LOL! As someone who was a kid when the first one came out, your comment made me chuckle. You should have seen all the merchandise crap that came out, even after the first one. And the Ewoks only existed for their marketing potential.
I'm not interested enough to click through and read the article, but instead of net worth, maybe they think their annual salary will be a million dollars.
While true one can google for almost anything, that doesn't excuse poorly written summaries. Far too often the article summary doesn't simply add a sentence or two to put the topic in context, especially when it comes to a particular software package or specialized hardware. In my opinion, a decent article summary shouldn't put the burden on the potential reader to click through link after link, or bring up a separate web search simply to determine whether the article is worth their time reading.
You don't think it is a coincidence that Tax day is about as far from Election day as possible?
Apparently you need to go through one of the participating companies, but the filing is free if you meet that company's criteria. I suppose it is seen as a win-win: for the Government, free filing for low income people, and for the companies, a sales pitch complete with (I'm sure) plenty of opportunities for the person to be upsold on the "premium" versions.
What, you don't want to subscribe to his newsletter?? :)
I remember this very well. They pushed that same argument that industry loves to throw around in cases like this: the Federal Government will not start or carry on any commercial activity to provide a service or product for its own use if such product or service can be procured from private enterprise through ordinary business channels. Basically, the IRS should not set up a system where people can file directly with them because that would hurt the private companies who file taxes. It is a completely asinine system because the IRS already has a great system of easily providing PDFs for all their forms and instructions, it would be the next logical step to allow one to fill the forms out and send them in directly. I haven't followed it closely lately, but clearly the law was changed to allow direct filing for 1040EZ forms. I hope they'll open it up beyond that soon.
I don't know. I actually "science" and after all these years I still think these events are pretty cool. I will make a point of getting up in the middle of the night to see it.
Sorry all, I copy/pasted this in haste. I should have blockquoted it and I should have mentioned that this was the reply posted on the Duke U. blog (just so it is obvious these aren't my comments and where it came from).
Kevin, I’m posting this as a comment here to provide clarity for all, given the interest this has generated. I’ve also written to you to suggest a conversation. I am sorry that we didn’t talk with you before we started requesting waivers from authors at Duke University, that would have been better all round. You raise two concerns: about our requesting that authors provide formal waivers of Duke University open access policy; and the ‘moral rights’ statement in our license to publish. I’ll start with the second. We take seriously our responsibility for the integrity of the scientific record. The “moral rights” language included in the license to publish is there to ensure that the journal and its publisher are free to publish formal corrections or retractions of articles where the integrity of the scientific record may be compromised by the disagreement of authors. This is not our preferred approach to dealing with corrections and retractions, and we work with authors and institutions to seek consensus first. We always attribute articles to authors, we have clear contribution policies. See: http://www.nature.com/nature/j... and http://www.nature.com/authors/... We believe researchers should be credited for their work, and as a founding member of ORCID, we have implemented ORCID integration on nature.com to foster disambiguated accreditation. We are requesting waivers from Duke University authors, because of the wide grant of rights as per your open access policy. If we do not request a waiver, Duke University has the rights not only to archive in Dukespace, but to publish and distribute the final version of a subscription article freely to the world at large, in any medium, immediately on publication. We started requesting waivers recently, following an enquiry from a Duke University author. NPG is supportive of open access. We have no problem with you archiving accepted manuscripts in DukeSpace, for public access six months after publication. We encourage self-archiving, and have done so since we implemented our policy in 2005: http://www.nature.com/authors/... This is in addition to open access publication options available on many journals we publish. We are happy to try to answer further questions, and would welcome a discussion with you. We have worked constructively with PubMed Central and institutional repositories for many years, and do not want our intentions and commitment to academic integrity and open access to be misunderstood. Grace Baynes Head of Communications, Nature Publishing Group
Space 1999 (I kid you not in how I described the plot. A lot of it is summarized in the title sequence). I watched all the episodes when they aired. It was very cheesy, but entertaining for me as a pre-teen, and remarkably good special effects for TV at the time. I also used to watch Mission Impossible reruns in the early 70's, and I knew Martin Landau from that. Later, when Landau won an oscar and he was receiving all the accolades for his career, I couldn't help but remember him from that cheesy show. To be fair, Space 1999 was pretty much where his career really bottomed out.
Here's the thing about entitlements. They're really only entitlements when they're something other people want. When it's something you want, they're a hallmark of a civilized society, the foundation of a great people. I just had a baby and found out maternity leave strengthens society. But since I still have a job, unemployment benefits are clearly socialism.
Since you are spinning up a high-speed gyroscope, if you are braking through a turn I wonder if it effects handling in any significant way.
That definition would be consistent with The Little Prince