In a longer manner, creativity is as much about recominbing familiar elements in novel ways as it is about completely new invention. Some people practically have a seizure when the lightbulb flashes upstairs and they find they have "thought of a new thing." With others the lights are on all the time. Whenever they open their mouths their listeners are going, "oh wow!" while they just say "of course, its obvious, isn't it?" And of course, it IS obvious, once they've pointed it out.
The first sort is desperate claim credit, while the latter scarecely notice their own creativity. The first sort exist in a dark landscape lit by rare lightening flashes, while the latter see the same terrain brightly lit. The first sort want copyrights extended perpetually, while latter don't really care much. The first sort tend to make an issue of being artists or scientists. The latter are actually productive and don't live by labels, titles, degrees and such.
Apparently he doesn't need to. At least he thinks so, as long as the consensus is with him.
Since science doesn't operate by consensus, any "consensus" is irrelevant. Brutal facts are simple. There is labortory evidence that the excess CO2 we have been putting into the atmosphere "ought" to affect the climate. The empirical data doesn't support this. The hockey stick curve is an artifact of data analysis and dependent upon data sets that are not correlated with temperature anyway. There is a clear chemical signature but the predicted climatic signal is largely missing. Between 1950 and 2000 the empirical data indicates that the amount of light reaching the ground decreased immensely; more than enough to explain the missing CO2 signal. Now the Danes have shown an alternative source of climatic effects in the incidence of cosmic rays, mediated by solar weather.
The short conclusion is, we have NO CLUE how the climate really works, nor do we know the full list of inputs that drive it nor their relative importance. Nor is there any convincing -i.e. not overly simplified- model of how our own inputs affect climate. It may well be that CO2 warming is all that is keeping us from a particulate driven cooling and ice age.
It is not really clear just what the problem with your image might be from what you write. For example, the higher the ISO value you shoot with, the nosier an image will be. Increased sensivity comes at the price of more cross talk between pixel sites on the CCD resulting in noise in the image. ISO 100 should be quite clean on most modern cameras, but ISO 1600 is likely to be problematic. Another possible problem could be your lens. If the "variance" you mention is distributed around the edges and especially in the corners of the image, then you have vignetting which is due to the lens. If you are shooting jpegs rather than RAW, the compression may produce artifacts that appear as noise as well. Then again, just how much did you magnify the image when you "inspected" it? Also, the sky really isn't uniform in either brightness OR colour. An exposure of a clear northern sky around noon is going to provide the most uniform colour and lighting in natural light.
There are a large number of ways that a photo can be "improved" using just GIMP or Photoshop or any number of other equivalent programs (FOSS or proprietary). But advise will only be as good as the description of the problem you provide.
Patent lawyers nixed because they won't get a cut. The reasoning is beyond specious. If you consider that drug companies insist that patents are necessary to pay back tremendously expensive research, then you hear, "sorry, we can't produce the drug. It'll be too cheap."
The idea that a lack of patent would prvent production is silly. Look at aspirin. It is made competively by any number of drug companies and lack of patents doesn't reduce aspirin's availability.
There is no evidence to support the concept that "intellectual property" patents actually encourage innovation. The candle metaphor used in the article is directed exactly at this concept. Anyone conversant with the history of science beginning with Francis Bacon and onward through the formation and growth of the Royal Societies and the other national and international scientific associations knows this. Knowledge leads to knowledge. The very REASON for peer review is to test one's data, methods, and conclusions against other knowledge. Secrecy around "intellectual property" encourages a "small pond" approach to peer review and limits the actual functionality of the scientific method and effectively intellectually isolates the very researchers attempting to benefit from the "secret." Patents, secrets, and "intellectual" property hobble any science, and will force increases in cost at the expense of money, time and efficenicy. At the other end of the scale, incidents such as the "discovery" and patentiang of Tumeric, a substance widely documented as a folk-remedy, is simple theft, pure and simple. It was cynical and can even be construed as greedy and vicious. Certainly the patent didn't support a costly research effort, nor does protect a "discovery." Ultimately the tumeric patent was struck down. One could argue that rather than the government issue patents, business should be required to rely soley on industrial secrecy to protect their "intellectual" property. This would immediately simplify many things. WIth no more patent system the demand and cost of patent lawyers vanishes over night. If an individual wishes to actually benefit from the knowledge of others through peer review, then they bite the bullet and decide whether the lost of the "exclusivity" of their "secret" is balanced by the gain of the insight of others. Each time they seek the response of the community innovation actually WILL be encouraged.
You learn that databases tend to do one of two things without constant vigilance on the part of the maintainer. One route is users who don't want to learn to do things properly and "migrate" their "personal data" to flat files and then want help extracting what they have actually destroyed - "but it was there!" - or can't figure out why the "inefficient" two fields (a character and a numeric) they merged into a single field will no longer sort properly. Two, cowboys move in and small data tables proliferate to the point that structure has turned into a morass where queries simply can't be trusted. Migrating SHOULD be designed for but...
She has effectively paved the way for a serious countersuit if there is even a remote indication that her MS became more severe DUE to the stress through which the RIAA's suit put her. Even if she never thought of such a thing, her lawyer should have - and probably has. Believe it, relevancy was never the point - at this time.
IRONY- Since the industry really has to expend its own funds for much of the investigation and retain lawyers simply to deal with pirates, the actual loss to the industry needs to factor into the assessment of damages just how much the lawyers cost. Obviously many trivial economic crimes are really far more costly to the victims than more clear cut crimes such as murder. - END IRONY
Intellectual property would assume its real value if piracy was valued based upon the actual economic harm it caused, which is generally trivial or non-existent. Lawyers would fin themselves working pro bono or even looking for second jobs to may their mortgages and car payments.
When you consider it, publically available "private intellectual property" is an oxymoronic concept. No sooner does one utter an idea publically (regardless of the nature of the idea) than it becomes publically held. -Think about it first- We try continuously to make workable, but the clear motivation of the "owners" of such property is to pick your pocket. The process only works as long as the "owner" values their "property" reasonably in the public's mind.
And as a side note, it is puzzling to me that that people see the discrepancy between the exit polls and the actual numbers and seem to question the actual election results because of the exit poll results. The actual data incorporates the entire population in its data, and was collected transparently, with a great deal of oversight to assure that it was collected properly.
This perhaps basic problem. With a system without a paper trail, there is NO assurance that the actual results reflect anything, except perhaps the programmer's intent. If that intent is honest, that it is the purpose is to achieve what you describe, then well and good. But, when exit polls from a precinct are in serious conflict with the certified vote of that precinct, and no paper trail is available, AND the owner of the company that makes the voting machine asserted his intent to deliver election results that mirror the certified results prior to the election . . . There is no logical reason to actually trust the election results. Also when considering Ohio, you want to remember that the only results in conflict are those of the "certified election." Both pre-election polls and exit polls were in agreement about the forecast results. Methodological assumptions aside, if you regard all these different attempts to gain an idea of Ohioan opinions and voting intent, the actual election _looks_ stolen, whether it really was or not. Diebold cannot offer any palliative for this. Even if the polls actually were subject to a colective Type I sampling error (unlikely unless the "sample" tended to systematically lie to the pollsters), Diebold's paperless machine leaves them and any election they serve open to question whenever something like this happens.
That's happening anyway. As far as a spec goes, EXIF data fields include GPS fields. Most citizens wouldn't have much use for it, many field scientists, military, etc. Could use such info readily. I participated in a failed effort to document views from Native American sacred sites that could have been extremely interesting, but the photographer got lost in his art and provided us with 100s of images - some very nice - and minimal viewshed information scribbled in pencil on note paper. He was completely baffled when we withheld part of the fee because he had not properly filled his contract. We had to explain in tiny words, many times that his pictures were nice, but his data stank, and he had completely forgotten to monument his stands so they could be GPSd.
The parent WAS wrong about the non-existence of "anti-semitism," however, simply turning the argument around just continues the confusion. The situation was never so simple as either post suggests. But, the Muslims of Spain largely tolerated the Jewish population that lived among the other occupants of the Iberian penninsula. There were sporadic riots by the muslim "umma," but by and large the Sephardim of Spain were comparatively safe and secure, allowed to build their synagogues and to worship in their own way. There were few if any forced conversions or killings.
The treatment of Jews under Christian reigns at the time were also varying. Several monarchs protected their Jewish subjects. However, as with the Muslim-ruled regions, the clergy and the mobs they incited actively sought brutality and bloodshed. Christian monarchs were also by and large poorly educated and superstitious so the worst of them were as bad as the clergy and their subjects. Jewish populations were generally far less secure, enough so that some sided with Muslim rulers in battle against Crusaders. The ultimate end of this was the acts by Ferdinand and Isabella that forced the Sephardim to leave Spain, convert or die. Many emigrated to the eastern Mediterranean where the Ottomans among others welcomed them as skilled craftsmen and traders who could aid against the Crusaders. The Jewish people have experienced many ups and downs and you can't blame just Muslims or just Christians.
Even abridged dictionaries are full of words that are virtually unused in our society... and from TFA, it appears their intention was to ensure whatever word they used didn't already have significant meaning in popular culture.
Now that's just brilliant, concerned about using words that might confuse members of popular culture. When are they going to change "star" to something less confusing? "Pluton" is WIDELY used in GEOLOGY because that's the ONLY TERM for the object, since it isn't a sill, a dike, or a batholith. Since "popular culture" is increasingly inarticulate anyway, perhaps Astronomy might want to consider not creating confusion where it might actually count!
Occam's Razor argues that the "best" explanation is the least complex, and by "best" is meant the simplest to validate, not the correct one, even so, consider. Two heads of state are in real political trouble and want their people looking elsewhere. Twenty-odd chemically naieve "terrorists" want to use a method seen only in movies to blow up aircraft bathrooms using "household" chemicals - which BTB is a crock. Hydrogen peroxide in the concentration available publicly can be used to put fires out, even though it is classed as an oxidizer. Given that which is simpler? Which of those is most likely to be valid, even using Occam's Razor?
The difference between a "pebble" and a "boulder" isn't tangible.
"Pebble" has a formal scientific definition of small alluvial material from 4 to 64 mm diameter. "Boulders" are more than 256 mm diameter. Assuming the piece is a standard stony material such granite, drop a pebble of granite on your left toe and a boulder of granite on your right. I believe you will quite clearly note tangible, tactile differences. You might also try carrying a boulder in your back pocket and a pebble in a front pocket in your pants, or the other way around, if your are insecure with your girlfriend. Whenever you try sitting I again suspect you will note "tangible" differences.
Not only the accusation but the continued ban can be due to reasons ranging from Reeves being guilty but the authorities lacking evidence to professional jealousy that succeeded moving an "interloper" out of the way. It could be as simple as a rival hearing about the discovery of voids revealed by Reeves's radar data and taking a cynical step to remove Reeves from the field. In the Valley of the Kings, "voids" evoke the possibility of tombs.
Reeve's discovery of intact stratigraphy outside of the tombs (it's visible in TFA) is really more important than any tomb. The "voids" imply that another whole generation of Carnarvons could possibly get lucky. However, the stratigraphy points to the potential for some real archaeology of the seriously dusty, unglamorous sort that tells about the people who did the real work in the VOK: quarriers, architects, cooks, and masons and all the others who WEREN'T interred in the tombs. The call he makes for thinking first would get up the nose of any would-be Carnarvon out for a name, fame, and gold.
The point is that the ME-163 gained its lift aerodynamically. It had _wings_. An "airplane" can be powered by props, jets, or rockets, but it doesn't stay aloft on its thrust. Its wings do that work while the thrusters simply provide sufficient forward speed to generate the lift necessary to get it into and keep it in the air. Bezos' craft won't have wings, thus no aerodynamic lift, and thus won't "fly" in the sense that a plane does. It is not an airplane in any sense of the term. Calling the Bezos rocket an "airplane" is like calling a helicopter an "airplane," and actually, a helicopter is closer to being one if you think of the prop as a big rotary wing.
The primary article points to a report concluding that LiON batteries destroyed a UPS plane. Any battery that fails catastrophically on board an airliner could be a very serious problem. And camera batteries are only one source. Lap top batteries are a lot bigger. And what kind of batteries do iPods use? Depending on the chemistry, some of these batteries discharge Hydrofluoric acid when they fail. That is seriously nasty stuff. I would really hate to be in a plane cabin at 30K feet or so and have any kind of lithium battery fail. So the answer to your question is "YES." The really important footnote though is that they don't HAVE to be modified, just abused. It won't require anything but a maroon who has abused his laptop battery to cause real problems for a whole planeload. Statistically, you hazard is from the roadwarrior with a laptop, teen with an iPod, or every day tourist, or even the air marshall with a radio. Terrorists are a trivial risk factor in comparison.
And yeah, the TSA continues to worry about pocket knives, cabin crew wince at nail files and clippers, while they let road warriors light up their laptops.
Heh, you obviously did not have an English grandmother. I was perpetually arguing with teachers about why it was alright to spell colour and several other words with the "u," and trying to remember that "Americans spell grey 'g-r-a-y'." I always liked Jefferson's remark, "I have nothing but contempt for a man who can spell a word in but one way." Twain expressed a similar sentiment and in fact I think he was barely paraphrasing Jefferson.
Years ago my employer at the time decided that in addition to the perfectly good archaeological consulting business he was running, we would branch out into the ISP arena. As a result of some horrible karma from a past life, I was detailed to answer "help desk" calls in addition to all the normal things an archaeologist does. This was a temporary expedient until an actual staff for the ISP business was hired. I took two calls that still stand out. One was from a man who had signed up and waited eagerly the internet to do its thing. When he was flooded with amazing things he called to ask how come he had npt so far recieved any "mail from the E." I often still refer to email by that term and now so does my family.
The other call I have seen labeled as an Urban Myth. Since I took it, I know it isn't, and it wasn't a joke either. I answered a call and found I was talking with a middle aged woman. She had signed up for internet service three days earlier and had just received her computer. She had successfully set it up - mostly. She was eager to get on line and wanted one of us "help desk" people to talk her through the process. I talked her through booting the system and then asked her to open the floppy disk that contained the basic driver (Trumpet Winsock) she needed to install. There was a pause and she then said "nothing" was happening. I was asking what she meant when she said, "oh dear! It just broke!" After a little furthe discussion, I discovered she had carefully placed her mouse on the floor and tried to work it like a sewing machine foot pedal. Naturally, it failed as she put more weight on it. About two years later I was surprised to see a similar story listed as a modern urban myth.
Well, first, as regards spelling, I respond with the words of Thomas Jefferson, who remarked, "I have nothing but contempt for a man who can spell a word in but one way." So, there.
As regards your comments, I think your points are well taken, but . . .
Evolution is a troublesome issue not so much because of whether it works or not, but because of how we choose to understand it. Darwin and Wallace originally took a "thing-like" approach and considered species as being XOR phenomena. That was pretty normal for the time. However, as I remarked, every hybrid gives the lie to such as simplistic view. Even your garden variety bible-hammering fundamentalist "believes" in evolution; they just don't know it, which is sad when you consider it.
Your suggestion that cumulative changes sooner or later elminate any particular and unique genepool as we see it at some specific point in time is a good one, but . . . The offspring are still the offspring. There is continuity imbedded in the change. And, when you get right down to it, you, me, the dog, and Toxicodendron diversaloba are all descendants of chemical reactions that were bounded by a puddle way back in the Archaean (or maybe Hadean) before life even had gotten around to inventing cell walls. That puddle is in some ways the only living thing on the planet. Each species is nothing but a subset of the potential of that puddle and a means of reaching into the future. Makes a good image anyway.
... it is statistically relevant that with all the species in the entirety of history, only one has developed these traits.
In fact, we don't know that. Elements of most "special" traits we think humans have are present in other species. Many use ad hoc tools (chimps strip twigs as termite extractors and dolphins have been known to use sea urchins as prods while teasing fish) and there was a furor awhile back about a crow filmed making a hook out of a piece of wire in order to extract food out of a narrow mouthed bottle. At best we seem to be the only species that has settled on "intelligence" in the inventive sense and "extrasomatic" means to adapt. We have off-loaded much of our evolutionary load onto more fluid means and methods that require less organismal redesign, but we are still observably part of a coninuum of such adaptation.
Also, evolution is at the base merely a means for a common (breeding) genepool to maintain itself through time. There are a number of different tactics that are used to achieve this, including "stupid but very fertile" (yeasts, bacteria, mice, rats, etc.) and "intelligent and careful" (elephants, humans, cetaceans). That really oversimplifies, but I am attempting to emphasize extremes. Many would consider me unfair to bacteria and truly over the top with rating humans as intelligent and careful.
By and large though, each lineage tracks its own tactical path into the future. Among humans, we are clustered into social groups that are also, roughly speaking, smaller inbreeding genepools. Each of these has the potential to "speciate," splitting off from the broader stock and going its own way. For over a century it has been a misconceived but popular truism that speciation must be an "all or nothing" event. The existence of mules and hybrids has always contractdicted this idea and has almost always been ignored popularly.
Part of this ignorance is due to a popular confusion between species and "kinds" in the biblical, or binary logical senses. That is, we are encouraged to think of species as XOR facts: e.g. the animal can be either dog or a wolf, chicken or a pigeon, not both. But species occasionally may simply be populations that have become behaviourally separated (Mulims and Christians, Amish and Atheists) - not that these latter examples are actually different species, but geneflow is reduced across social boundaries and where the rules are strict enough, the flow can be very restricted. Bacteria actually have several means of recombining DNA that are so permeable and strange that it raises questions about the actual idea of species. They can acquire new DNA through viral transmission (there's an image: bacterium with a cold), "sexual" exchange, and by scavenging free floating fragments (debris from dead bacteria) out of their environment. That happens to be what makes them so much of a problem in hospitals. They evolve quickly and effectively when challenged because they are pretty indiscriminant about their DNA sources.
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In a longer manner, creativity is as much about recominbing familiar elements in novel ways as it is about completely new invention. Some people practically have a seizure when the lightbulb flashes upstairs and they find they have "thought of a new thing." With others the lights are on all the time. Whenever they open their mouths their listeners are going, "oh wow!" while they just say "of course, its obvious, isn't it?" And of course, it IS obvious, once they've pointed it out.
The first sort is desperate claim credit, while the latter scarecely notice their own creativity. The first sort exist in a dark landscape lit by rare lightening flashes, while the latter see the same terrain brightly lit. The first sort want copyrights extended perpetually, while latter don't really care much. The first sort tend to make an issue of being artists or scientists. The latter are actually productive and don't live by labels, titles, degrees and such.
Apparently he doesn't need to. At least he thinks so, as long as the consensus is with him.
Since science doesn't operate by consensus, any "consensus" is irrelevant. Brutal facts are simple. There is labortory evidence that the excess CO2 we have been putting into the atmosphere "ought" to affect the climate. The empirical data doesn't support this. The hockey stick curve is an artifact of data analysis and dependent upon data sets that are not correlated with temperature anyway. There is a clear chemical signature but the predicted climatic signal is largely missing. Between 1950 and 2000 the empirical data indicates that the amount of light reaching the ground decreased immensely; more than enough to explain the missing CO2 signal. Now the Danes have shown an alternative source of climatic effects in the incidence of cosmic rays, mediated by solar weather.
The short conclusion is, we have NO CLUE how the climate really works, nor do we know the full list of inputs that drive it nor their relative importance. Nor is there any convincing -i.e. not overly simplified- model of how our own inputs affect climate. It may well be that CO2 warming is all that is keeping us from a particulate driven cooling and ice age.
It is not really clear just what the problem with your image might be from what you write. For example, the higher the ISO value you shoot with, the nosier an image will be. Increased sensivity comes at the price of more cross talk between pixel sites on the CCD resulting in noise in the image. ISO 100 should be quite clean on most modern cameras, but ISO 1600 is likely to be problematic. Another possible problem could be your lens. If the "variance" you mention is distributed around the edges and especially in the corners of the image, then you have vignetting which is due to the lens. If you are shooting jpegs rather than RAW, the compression may produce artifacts that appear as noise as well. Then again, just how much did you magnify the image when you "inspected" it? Also, the sky really isn't uniform in either brightness OR colour. An exposure of a clear northern sky around noon is going to provide the most uniform colour and lighting in natural light.
There are a large number of ways that a photo can be "improved" using just GIMP or Photoshop or any number of other equivalent programs (FOSS or proprietary). But advise will only be as good as the description of the problem you provide.
Patent lawyers nixed because they won't get a cut. The reasoning is beyond specious. If you consider that drug companies insist that patents are necessary to pay back tremendously expensive research, then you hear, "sorry, we can't produce the drug. It'll be too cheap."
The idea that a lack of patent would prvent production is silly. Look at aspirin. It is made competively by any number of drug companies and lack of patents doesn't reduce aspirin's availability.
Simply put, without big countries there would be no wars.
Simply put, that is pure, unadulterated poppycock.
Try a little educational reading such as War Before Civilization by Lawrence Keely.
There is no evidence to support the concept that "intellectual property" patents actually encourage innovation. The candle metaphor used in the article is directed exactly at this concept. Anyone conversant with the history of science beginning with Francis Bacon and onward through the formation and growth of the Royal Societies and the other national and international scientific associations knows this. Knowledge leads to knowledge. The very REASON for peer review is to test one's data, methods, and conclusions against other knowledge. Secrecy around "intellectual property" encourages a "small pond" approach to peer review and limits the actual functionality of the scientific method and effectively intellectually isolates the very researchers attempting to benefit from the "secret." Patents, secrets, and "intellectual" property hobble any science, and will force increases in cost at the expense of money, time and efficenicy. At the other end of the scale, incidents such as the "discovery" and patentiang of Tumeric, a substance widely documented as a folk-remedy, is simple theft, pure and simple. It was cynical and can even be construed as greedy and vicious. Certainly the patent didn't support a costly research effort, nor does protect a "discovery." Ultimately the tumeric patent was struck down. One could argue that rather than the government issue patents, business should be required to rely soley on industrial secrecy to protect their "intellectual" property. This would immediately simplify many things. WIth no more patent system the demand and cost of patent lawyers vanishes over night. If an individual wishes to actually benefit from the knowledge of others through peer review, then they bite the bullet and decide whether the lost of the "exclusivity" of their "secret" is balanced by the gain of the insight of others. Each time they seek the response of the community innovation actually WILL be encouraged.
You learn that databases tend to do one of two things without constant vigilance on the part of the maintainer. One route is users who don't want to learn to do things properly and "migrate" their "personal data" to flat files and then want help extracting what they have actually destroyed - "but it was there!" - or can't figure out why the "inefficient" two fields (a character and a numeric) they merged into a single field will no longer sort properly. Two, cowboys move in and small data tables proliferate to the point that structure has turned into a morass where queries simply can't be trusted. Migrating SHOULD be designed for but ...
She has effectively paved the way for a serious countersuit if there is even a remote indication that her MS became more severe DUE to the stress through which the RIAA's suit put her. Even if she never thought of such a thing, her lawyer should have - and probably has. Believe it, relevancy was never the point - at this time.
Really, what were you thinking - or smoking - when you wrote that?
IRONY- Since the industry really has to expend its own funds for much of the investigation and retain lawyers simply to deal with pirates, the actual loss to the industry needs to factor into the assessment of damages just how much the lawyers cost. Obviously many trivial economic crimes are really far more costly to the victims than more clear cut crimes such as murder. - END IRONY Intellectual property would assume its real value if piracy was valued based upon the actual economic harm it caused, which is generally trivial or non-existent. Lawyers would fin themselves working pro bono or even looking for second jobs to may their mortgages and car payments. When you consider it, publically available "private intellectual property" is an oxymoronic concept. No sooner does one utter an idea publically (regardless of the nature of the idea) than it becomes publically held. -Think about it first- We try continuously to make workable, but the clear motivation of the "owners" of such property is to pick your pocket. The process only works as long as the "owner" values their "property" reasonably in the public's mind.
And as a side note, it is puzzling to me that that people see the discrepancy between the exit polls and the actual numbers and seem to question the actual election results because of the exit poll results. The actual data incorporates the entire population in its data, and was collected transparently, with a great deal of oversight to assure that it was collected properly.
This perhaps basic problem. With a system without a paper trail, there is NO assurance that the actual results reflect anything, except perhaps the programmer's intent. If that intent is honest, that it is the purpose is to achieve what you describe, then well and good. But, when exit polls from a precinct are in serious conflict with the certified vote of that precinct, and no paper trail is available, AND the owner of the company that makes the voting machine asserted his intent to deliver election results that mirror the certified results prior to the election . . . There is no logical reason to actually trust the election results. Also when considering Ohio, you want to remember that the only results in conflict are those of the "certified election." Both pre-election polls and exit polls were in agreement about the forecast results. Methodological assumptions aside, if you regard all these different attempts to gain an idea of Ohioan opinions and voting intent, the actual election _looks_ stolen, whether it really was or not. Diebold cannot offer any palliative for this. Even if the polls actually were subject to a colective Type I sampling error (unlikely unless the "sample" tended to systematically lie to the pollsters), Diebold's paperless machine leaves them and any election they serve open to question whenever something like this happens.
...millions of boring, uninsightful images....
That's happening anyway. As far as a spec goes, EXIF data fields include GPS fields. Most citizens wouldn't have much use for it, many field scientists, military, etc. Could use such info readily. I participated in a failed effort to document views from Native American sacred sites that could have been extremely interesting, but the photographer got lost in his art and provided us with 100s of images - some very nice - and minimal viewshed information scribbled in pencil on note paper. He was completely baffled when we withheld part of the fee because he had not properly filled his contract. We had to explain in tiny words, many times that his pictures were nice, but his data stank, and he had completely forgotten to monument his stands so they could be GPSd.
The treatment of Jews under Christian reigns at the time were also varying. Several monarchs protected their Jewish subjects. However, as with the Muslim-ruled regions, the clergy and the mobs they incited actively sought brutality and bloodshed. Christian monarchs were also by and large poorly educated and superstitious so the worst of them were as bad as the clergy and their subjects. Jewish populations were generally far less secure, enough so that some sided with Muslim rulers in battle against Crusaders. The ultimate end of this was the acts by Ferdinand and Isabella that forced the Sephardim to leave Spain, convert or die. Many emigrated to the eastern Mediterranean where the Ottomans among others welcomed them as skilled craftsmen and traders who could aid against the Crusaders. The Jewish people have experienced many ups and downs and you can't blame just Muslims or just Christians.
Even abridged dictionaries are full of words that are virtually unused in our society... and from TFA, it appears their intention was to ensure whatever word they used didn't already have significant meaning in popular culture.
Now that's just brilliant, concerned about using words that might confuse members of popular culture. When are they going to change "star" to something less confusing? "Pluton" is WIDELY used in GEOLOGY because that's the ONLY TERM for the object, since it isn't a sill, a dike, or a batholith. Since "popular culture" is increasingly inarticulate anyway, perhaps Astronomy might want to consider not creating confusion where it might actually count!
Occam's Razor argues that the "best" explanation is the least complex, and by "best" is meant the simplest to validate, not the correct one, even so, consider. Two heads of state are in real political trouble and want their people looking elsewhere. Twenty-odd chemically naieve "terrorists" want to use a method seen only in movies to blow up aircraft bathrooms using "household" chemicals - which BTB is a crock. Hydrogen peroxide in the concentration available publicly can be used to put fires out, even though it is classed as an oxidizer. Given that which is simpler? Which of those is most likely to be valid, even using Occam's Razor?
The difference between a "pebble" and a "boulder" isn't tangible.
"Pebble" has a formal scientific definition of small alluvial material from 4 to 64 mm diameter. "Boulders" are more than 256 mm diameter. Assuming the piece is a standard stony material such granite, drop a pebble of granite on your left toe and a boulder of granite on your right. I believe you will quite clearly note tangible, tactile differences. You might also try carrying a boulder in your back pocket and a pebble in a front pocket in your pants, or the other way around, if your are insecure with your girlfriend. Whenever you try sitting I again suspect you will note "tangible" differences.
not a midget.
Not only the accusation but the continued ban can be due to reasons ranging from Reeves being guilty but the authorities lacking evidence to professional jealousy that succeeded moving an "interloper" out of the way. It could be as simple as a rival hearing about the discovery of voids revealed by Reeves's radar data and taking a cynical step to remove Reeves from the field. In the Valley of the Kings, "voids" evoke the possibility of tombs.
Reeve's discovery of intact stratigraphy outside of the tombs (it's visible in TFA) is really more important than any tomb. The "voids" imply that another whole generation of Carnarvons could possibly get lucky. However, the stratigraphy points to the potential for some real archaeology of the seriously dusty, unglamorous sort that tells about the people who did the real work in the VOK: quarriers, architects, cooks, and masons and all the others who WEREN'T interred in the tombs. The call he makes for thinking first would get up the nose of any would-be Carnarvon out for a name, fame, and gold.
The point is that the ME-163 gained its lift aerodynamically. It had _wings_. An "airplane" can be powered by props, jets, or rockets, but it doesn't stay aloft on its thrust. Its wings do that work while the thrusters simply provide sufficient forward speed to generate the lift necessary to get it into and keep it in the air. Bezos' craft won't have wings, thus no aerodynamic lift, and thus won't "fly" in the sense that a plane does. It is not an airplane in any sense of the term. Calling the Bezos rocket an "airplane" is like calling a helicopter an "airplane," and actually, a helicopter is closer to being one if you think of the prop as a big rotary wing.
The term "Hari Kari" means "eat spinach."
The primary article points to a report concluding that LiON batteries destroyed a UPS plane. Any battery that fails catastrophically on board an airliner could be a very serious problem. And camera batteries are only one source. Lap top batteries are a lot bigger. And what kind of batteries do iPods use? Depending on the chemistry, some of these batteries discharge Hydrofluoric acid when they fail. That is seriously nasty stuff. I would really hate to be in a plane cabin at 30K feet or so and have any kind of lithium battery fail. So the answer to your question is "YES." The really important footnote though is that they don't HAVE to be modified, just abused. It won't require anything but a maroon who has abused his laptop battery to cause real problems for a whole planeload. Statistically, you hazard is from the roadwarrior with a laptop, teen with an iPod, or every day tourist, or even the air marshall with a radio. Terrorists are a trivial risk factor in comparison.
And yeah, the TSA continues to worry about pocket knives, cabin crew wince at nail files and clippers, while they let road warriors light up their laptops.
Heh, you obviously did not have an English grandmother. I was perpetually arguing with teachers about why it was alright to spell colour and several other words with the "u," and trying to remember that "Americans spell grey 'g-r-a-y'." I always liked Jefferson's remark, "I have nothing but contempt for a man who can spell a word in but one way." Twain expressed a similar sentiment and in fact I think he was barely paraphrasing Jefferson.
JWD
Years ago my employer at the time decided that in addition to the perfectly good archaeological consulting business he was running, we would branch out into the ISP arena. As a result of some horrible karma from a past life, I was detailed to answer "help desk" calls in addition to all the normal things an archaeologist does. This was a temporary expedient until an actual staff for the ISP business was hired. I took two calls that still stand out. One was from a man who had signed up and waited eagerly the internet to do its thing. When he was flooded with amazing things he called to ask how come he had npt so far recieved any "mail from the E." I often still refer to email by that term and now so does my family.
The other call I have seen labeled as an Urban Myth. Since I took it, I know it isn't, and it wasn't a joke either. I answered a call and found I was talking with a middle aged woman. She had signed up for internet service three days earlier and had just received her computer. She had successfully set it up - mostly. She was eager to get on line and wanted one of us "help desk" people to talk her through the process. I talked her through booting the system and then asked her to open the floppy disk that contained the basic driver (Trumpet Winsock) she needed to install. There was a pause and she then said "nothing" was happening. I was asking what she meant when she said, "oh dear! It just broke!" After a little furthe discussion, I discovered she had carefully placed her mouse on the floor and tried to work it like a sewing machine foot pedal. Naturally, it failed as she put more weight on it. About two years later I was surprised to see a similar story listed as a modern urban myth.
JD
Well, first, as regards spelling, I respond with the words of Thomas Jefferson, who remarked, "I have nothing but contempt for a man who can spell a word in but one way." So, there.
As regards your comments, I think your points are well taken, but . . .
Evolution is a troublesome issue not so much because of whether it works or not, but because of how we choose to understand it. Darwin and Wallace originally took a "thing-like" approach and considered species as being XOR phenomena. That was pretty normal for the time. However, as I remarked, every hybrid gives the lie to such as simplistic view. Even your garden variety bible-hammering fundamentalist "believes" in evolution; they just don't know it, which is sad when you consider it.
Your suggestion that cumulative changes sooner or later elminate any particular and unique genepool as we see it at some specific point in time is a good one, but . . . The offspring are still the offspring. There is continuity imbedded in the change. And, when you get right down to it, you, me, the dog, and Toxicodendron diversaloba are all descendants of chemical reactions that were bounded by a puddle way back in the Archaean (or maybe Hadean) before life even had gotten around to inventing cell walls. That puddle is in some ways the only living thing on the planet. Each species is nothing but a subset of the potential of that puddle and a means of reaching into the future. Makes a good image anyway.
In fact, we don't know that. Elements of most "special" traits we think humans have are present in other species. Many use ad hoc tools (chimps strip twigs as termite extractors and dolphins have been known to use sea urchins as prods while teasing fish) and there was a furor awhile back about a crow filmed making a hook out of a piece of wire in order to extract food out of a narrow mouthed bottle. At best we seem to be the only species that has settled on "intelligence" in the inventive sense and "extrasomatic" means to adapt. We have off-loaded much of our evolutionary load onto more fluid means and methods that require less organismal redesign, but we are still observably part of a coninuum of such adaptation.
Also, evolution is at the base merely a means for a common (breeding) genepool to maintain itself through time. There are a number of different tactics that are used to achieve this, including "stupid but very fertile" (yeasts, bacteria, mice, rats, etc.) and "intelligent and careful" (elephants, humans, cetaceans). That really oversimplifies, but I am attempting to emphasize extremes. Many would consider me unfair to bacteria and truly over the top with rating humans as intelligent and careful.
By and large though, each lineage tracks its own tactical path into the future. Among humans, we are clustered into social groups that are also, roughly speaking, smaller inbreeding genepools. Each of these has the potential to "speciate," splitting off from the broader stock and going its own way. For over a century it has been a misconceived but popular truism that speciation must be an "all or nothing" event. The existence of mules and hybrids has always contractdicted this idea and has almost always been ignored popularly.
Part of this ignorance is due to a popular confusion between species and "kinds" in the biblical, or binary logical senses. That is, we are encouraged to think of species as XOR facts: e.g. the animal can be either dog or a wolf, chicken or a pigeon, not both. But species occasionally may simply be populations that have become behaviourally separated (Mulims and Christians, Amish and Atheists) - not that these latter examples are actually different species, but geneflow is reduced across social boundaries and where the rules are strict enough, the flow can be very restricted. Bacteria actually have several means of recombining DNA that are so permeable and strange that it raises questions about the actual idea of species. They can acquire new DNA through viral transmission (there's an image: bacterium with a cold), "sexual" exchange, and by scavenging free floating fragments (debris from dead bacteria) out of their environment. That happens to be what makes them so much of a problem in hospitals. They evolve quickly and effectively when challenged because they are pretty indiscriminant about their DNA sources.