Another interesting experiment would be 'unjustly' treating subjects, especially wrt punishment. Any conscious, normal human will be outraged if they are punished for something that another person did, or that no one did.
I think it would good for the scientific community to come up with a set of these immutable ethical absolutes to use as a standard when solving ethical dilemmas. I imagine it would be less than ten simple, universal rules of human behavior.
Such as: -My example, people abhor injustice (with a special, specific definition of injustice wrt the individual) -Your example, something along the lines of the golden rule -etc.
It's too early in the morning for me to come up with more. But I still think it's neat.
I think that they don't feel pain in the same way that a rock or a puddle doesn't feel pain. It doesn't have the capacity to feel anything. No one is going to argue that breaking rocks starts a slippery slope to gov't sponsored euthanasia. I think you are taking that part of the definition out of context.
There is a world of difference between a normal adult who has been anesthetized and a collection of ~3 grams of undesignated cells supported solely by the host body. And it's foolish to argue that the same set of ethics applies to both cases.
That's a good point; however, I would point out that brainless vegetables will remain brainless vegetables and usually die on their own pretty quick, while human embryos will, given the chance, develop into laughing, running juvenile delinquents.
We have been agonizing over the idea of 'personhood' for our entire existence; it seems self-absorbed to expect the answer to come about to conveniently end a very specific ethical debate.
Personally I don't see why unborn clumps of cells get more respect and care than sentient, breathing, suffering people on our own streets. That is what makes me really sick about the whole thing.
>>They are not trained to kill, and certainly not trained to survive
I have to take exception to this. I am a soldier, and I am close friends with 4 people who have graduated cop school, and they are more qualified to kill than I am. They have extensive training on pistol, shotgun, pepper spray, taser, baton, and hand-to-hand combat. Any of them could easily take me down. They are also trained to take out suspects in high-speed chases via techniques like the PIT maneuver. They have advanced training in firearms control, cover, tactical reloading, emergency medicine, etc.
I think it is disingenuous to portray police as this benign caricature of Barney Fife. Police are killers who don't want to. Soldiers are also killers who don't want to. The difference is that they get their order from their police chief, and I get my orders from congress and the president. You need to stop thinking of soldiers as executioners. Or short of that, examine why it is you think of soldiers as executioners. I've never killed anybody, and if I did kill anyone in the course of my duties, it would be for the same reason I'd kill someone in any other circumstances: self-defense.
Go ahead and rationalize it away by saying that I'm not typical, or that if I volunteered for it then I knew what I was doing, or any other reasonable argument. The fact is, humans fight. We will fight until we're not technically humans anymore. History has borne this out, and fiat histories claiming otherwise are just plain wrong.
I'm sorry to ramble. Don't take it personally. I guess I'm just tired and I probably shouldn't even be posting on slashdot in the first place.
I joined up because of a desire to give something back to my country, Starship Troopers-style. I know war sucks. I've deployed to Iraq twice. I think it's the most terrible thing I'll every experience in my life. And I'm signing up to go again.
I did not join to finance my education; scholarships would have covered that.
I am a citizen (politicians are scumbags who would kill me to win an election) AND a solder (I will do everything in my power to get the job done). That is a lot to wrap your mind around if you haven't been in the same situation. And I won't get on some moral high horse about it, because before I joined and before I went off to war, I didn't know what it was like, really. There just isn't a way to prepare for it. It changes you. But on the other hand, I'm going to have to take exception to this:
"Am I not allowed to abhor natural disasters as I have not been in any?"
There is 'abhor' and then there is hiding under your couch on July 4th, keeping your bags packed, staying armed, staying isolated, jumping at every slammed door...
It is one thing to hate something on the principle that it is something that deserves to be hated, and quite another thing to hate something because it has power over you.
So anyways... I see your point- and it is worth reflection- but there is another side to the story. I just thought I'd give you a soldier's perspective.
I just had to throw in my two cents here (SSgt speaking)-
I know you're not lying about the state of the computers you fix. But I would like to say that, given ANY large group of 18-24-year-olds, you will find the same thing. Young men are young men. All I'm saying is that it's good to take a step or two back every now and then to get some perspective.
You know, the interesting thing is that people do drink in Iraq. I can't remember the day, but there is a day each week in Baghdad where beer comes in or something like that. I'm sorry that I don't remember the specifics. Anyways, the point is that you have these soldiers who cannot drink (General Order 1A, no wait, we're up to 1B now), and they're watching over this muslim country where beer is sold out of people's cars. A little bit of irony there- decadent western lifestyle meets austere muslim lifestyle, but all turned around.
Something else that I found really interesting/weird was that our cooks on base (who are almost all third-country nationals, mostly malaysian and mostly muslim) cooked our pork for us. I mean whole roasted pigs and sausage and bacon and pork chops and anything else you can imagine. Even when I was stationed in a hostile country, I still felt bad that our American dollars meant enough to certain people that they would sacrifice some of their core values in order to support themselves and their families.
And then of course we had the uncannily accurate mortar attack, and subsequent search of third-country national living quarters, and found maps of our housing areas, work/shift schedules, maps, U.S. uniforms, etc. So the whole thing is really thorny, ethically speaking.
If you have 17-20-year-old kids, please try to dissuade them from joining up right now...
I have spent a good deal of time at these markets, and I can testify that I saw no porn. Ever. I never saw porn, alcohol, or drugs at these markets. Maybe these porn DVDs were passed around sub rosa or something.
Here is what you CAN find in the markets (even on base): Fake cigarettes, fake cigars, fake Rolexes, fake Nikes, fake anything. Imitation Apple products- headphones, iPod cases, even fake iPods. No fake zunes, though... In an area about the size of a high school gymnasium, about 80% of the space was filled with bootleg DVDs and software. I don't mean bootleg like the MPAA wants you think bootleg; I mean actual printed DVDs out of japan or taiwan. Some were really crappy theater-cams but many were very good copies of promos and the like. I watch 300, letters from Iwo Jima, Black Snake Moan, and many others before or very shortly after theater release. It was awesome:)
I also got all ten (at the time) seasons of south park on 4 DVDs for $25. Sweet.
So, here we have this article that, while it may be true, seems to completely miss the point. It's like saying that, "Magazines such as hustler are causing massive deforestation and are filling our landfills." It is just trying to sensationalize the situation. Which is weird, since there are so many other, BIGGER things out there to write about. Try this, RIAA: The base media server, loaded with ~180 GB of music, is free to anyone who wants to download from it. You can get 180 GB hdds at the BX. Oh and there is the movie server, loaded with hundreds of titles. All free for the taking. And this author chose to write about porn? Whatever. Iraq is the wild, wild middle east. Everything goes.
>>But then a majority of people would be judged for hate speech.
What part of "democracy" do you not understand?
If they made brushing your teeth 'politically incorrect', would you stop brushing your teeth?
There is a saying- I think it's something like, "Behind every argument is someone's ignorance." Sometimes you need to wonder if it's your ignorance that is causing the disagreement. While many of the author's opinions and predictions are up for debate, he does quote and cite many self-professed muslims. It is not hate speech, IMO, to quote verbatim an Imam saying something like he was proud of muslims for breeding like mosquitoes. The hate speech part could be in the auguring of future doom, but I'd even disagree with that. If his book was hate speech, it would somehow _incorrectly_ (not based on facts) call out for action against a (self-defined) group of people based on their socio-religious beliefs. I personally don't think that a book claiming that 43.5-year-old white far-sighted left-handed dog-owning blood type A+ men are bad drivers would be hate speech IF it was true (repeatable, demonstrable, etc.).
I don't think this article is a troll. I'm not even sure how I feel about what the OP is saying, but I do know that he/she is simply stating their opinions on the discussion at hand.
Can we please focus on modding _up_ instead of down? I don't think I've ever modded anyone down. There is no need for that. I've been seeing a lot of posts labeled Troll of Flamebait that are just personal responses by regular people. The negative mods should be reserved for gratuitous violations of slashdot's discussion policies.
Sorry if I sound angry- I'm not- but I like balanced and fair discussions, at least as much as I can reasonably expect them.
What would happen is that the claim would be heard by a regular court, and of course if would quickly be dismissed. The problem is that this human rights tribunal is free to interpret its cases in any way it sees fit. Your claim of violations of your human rights would qualify for a 'real' court, where more often then not spurious cases are quashed. That pretty much is the problem: In a 'real' court, you need evidence, damages, etc. while in this human rights thingy you do not. And since none of the human rights judges have said anything hateful about you, you have no recourse. I would say that I'm happy I'm not Canadian, but... Even with this, I'd still rather be Canadian:) If only because their dollar is stronger.
You don't happen to be in Hawaii, do you? The reason I ask is that I seem to recall pooka meaning 'hole' in Hawaiian. Maybe completely unrelated, who knows.
Well, I'm an OED man myself, and here is what IT has to say: ---------- Profligate Adj; Recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources:Profligate consumers of energy.; Licentious, dissolute: He succumbed to drink and a profligate lifestyle.
Profligate isn't a verb. What the OP said is equivalent to saying, "The were desperating new cameras all over the place."
Profligate belongs to a family of adjectives that end in -ate and sound like verbs, but aren't: Insensate, desperate, profligate, sedate, etc.
So the sentence doesn't mean anything, yes, but in an unintentionally insightful way, what with the misuse of a word that means extravagant or wasteful. But then maybe I have a weird sense of humor.
Ok I'm about to go to bed, but here. Take your equation to the limit where the angle is very small- let's say 3 or 4 degrees. The area described by this cone would fit inside the area of the aircraft. You would be saying that there was a shockwave inside the aircraft. That doesn't make sense. The shockwave must follow a line from origination to a point outside of the aircraft. As I mentioned before, operational restrictions are in place to keep the shockwave from hitting the wings. Physics keeps the shockwave from existing solely inside the airplane (not that the airplane would exist long enough for that to happen).
Your equations assume a _point_ traveling at speed and causing a shockwave. Aircraft are not points, and this needs to be taken into account in your equations. Two points, traveling at identical speeds in the same direction would cause the results you are finding. Two points traveling in water in the same direction would create congruent wakes if their respective wakes did not interfere with each other. This is obviously not the case in practice. Hopefully someone who is more awake than me can weigh in here and make sense of all this to us both.
Why does it matter if the person who robbed you is black or white or homeless? Board up your windows and toss out your reliance on the one saving grace of The State: law enforcement. If you don't like keeping your property secure, then don't be a property owner!
Having an officer arrest people for breaking into homes or mugging people is yet more proof that society has failed.
Also, stray dogs are much less statistically likely to crap on your sidewalk. Sidewalks are where people go, not dogs. A dog crapping on a sidewalk is a sure sign of a nearby owner. I don't see how this is even up for debate, unless you are about to go in front of parliament and make your case to recover you lost right to allow your dog to crap anywhere it wants and then not clean it up. Which, by the way, I'd love to watch.
>>I don't think these cameras who were installed for a loftier purpose should be used to catch them.
That's like saying, "The 20 new police officers who were hired to help reduce drunk driving should not be used to catch burglars even if they happen to be the closest officer at the time."
If your job was traffic law enforcer, and you saw a murder, would you just ignore it? What are you trying to say, that you believe that millions of taxpayer euros should be thrown away to prove some kind of point purely out of spite?
Why do you think that a crime isn't a crime anymore if it is discovered using unorthodox methods?
-b
(oh and for good measure, "Why do you hate Jesus?")
Hey there. I can understand your bitterness. I work for the gov't, too, and I am very bitter and disillusioned. However, this article was about the UK, which has NOTHING to do with Bush et al.
Sorry to get all "-1 offtopic" on you, but I'm tired of EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE that has ANYTHING to do with big brother being populated primarily by +5 Insightful comments about Bush, even if the article is about another country that isn't even on our CONTINENT.
Sorry... Beer got the better of me. But still. It bugs me.
>>When I could sit in front of my computer and feel smug when this happened in other countries.
Err.... This IS happening in other countries. The title of TFS is "UK Uses CCTC, Terrorism Laws, Against Pooping Dogs."
You can continue feeling smug now. How about getting outraged by something that DOES affect you as an American, like the democratic party not nominating their candidate based on popular vote? Or the republicans getting the support of religious leaders who felt that we deserved 9/11 without any negative coverage? Or Bridges To Nowhere? Or no-bid government contracts? Or Cheney deciding which documents are secret and which are "to be treated as secret"? Or how about the candidates pandering to consumers by promising a gas tax holiday even though they know that it would make matters worse (Price goes up along with demand, unlike taxes)....
How did you get +4 insightful? Do people think that the UK is a US state now? Does Lacrosse, Wisconsin have CCTV cameras on every street corner?
I think it does. Your assumption that the first and second cones share an identical angle is incorrect. The waves take the form of an N (in 2 dimensional depiction). In order for the leading edge V part of the N to not be a negative angle, the trailing I part of the N must compensate. This is easier to visualize in terms of boat wakes. Anyone who has ridden in a boat going at a moderate to high speed can tell you that the bow shockwave and the stern shockwave do not share the same angle of incidence.
You can see (barely, sorry) that the bow and stern wakes are not congruent. Also of interest is the constructive/destructive interference.
Another way to think about it is this: The shockwave at the bow of a craft can sharpen only slightly with increased speed, while the shockwave at the rear is not constrained by the body of the aircraft itself (avoiding negative angles again). In theory, both shockwaves could approach zero degrees, but in practice the bow shockwave cannot touch aft structures such as leading edges of wings without causing damage. This necessitates the swept wing configuration common to all superconic aircraft (the markedness of the sweep depends on the operational speeds of the aircraft). I guess what I'm saying is that much like a boat's bow wake, a supersonic (bow) pressure wave cannot form an angle that is smaller than the space that the craft itself occupies. Sorry, but I've been tearing down plaster and lathe all day and I'm tired and inarticulate.
I don't see how changing air to plasma would help- surely the phase change would require tremendous energy, and it would not get rid of the compression wave at the nose and stabilizers of the aircraft. In fact, I'm almost certain that it would make it worse. Right now, you have only the speed of the aircraft compressing the air and causing the boom; with a plasma layer, you'd have the additional speed of the air expanding to form a plasma. At least in my mind, this is almost what happens with lightning. I realize that the boom is caused by the movement of heated air, but the air is heated and moved by the plasma, right?
One thing that never occurred to me is that at high enough speed/altitude, the shock wave won't intersect with earth's surface: Voila, no sonic boom (on the ground, anyways).
Maybe that is where NASA is headed with this research.
>>I don't know about you, but I don't like to drink coffee that can give me 3rd degree burns.
Well then I suppose you also don't own any knives or hammers or maybe an oven or a fragile piece of glass?
And I KNOW that I would NEVER use electricity in my home that could KILL me! Lord no, I only use 9 volt batteries. Better safe than sorry. Except for when they leak acid.
Oh and McDonalds had better start serving everything as a puree, because we all know that you wouldn't want to eat food that could cause choking!
The McDonalds case, while unfortunate, really wasn't as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be. What if the case had been, "The woman choked on a stale french fry after the driver of the car hit a speed bump. The surviving family sued McD's for knowingly selling stale fries"? I don't think that the woman's injuries should affect McD's culpability. As much as I dislike them as a company, I just don't think it's their fault that the woman put the cup of hot coffee in her lap while driving. 170 degree coffee probably would have done the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Another interesting experiment would be 'unjustly' treating subjects, especially wrt punishment. Any conscious, normal human will be outraged if they are punished for something that another person did, or that no one did.
I think it would good for the scientific community to come up with a set of these immutable ethical absolutes to use as a standard when solving ethical dilemmas. I imagine it would be less than ten simple, universal rules of human behavior.
Such as:
-My example, people abhor injustice (with a special, specific definition of injustice wrt the individual)
-Your example, something along the lines of the golden rule
-etc.
It's too early in the morning for me to come up with more. But I still think it's neat.
-b
I think that they don't feel pain in the same way that a rock or a puddle doesn't feel pain. It doesn't have the capacity to feel anything. No one is going to argue that breaking rocks starts a slippery slope to gov't sponsored euthanasia. I think you are taking that part of the definition out of context.
There is a world of difference between a normal adult who has been anesthetized and a collection of ~3 grams of undesignated cells supported solely by the host body. And it's foolish to argue that the same set of ethics applies to both cases.
-b
That's a good point; however, I would point out that brainless vegetables will remain brainless vegetables and usually die on their own pretty quick, while human embryos will, given the chance, develop into laughing, running juvenile delinquents.
We have been agonizing over the idea of 'personhood' for our entire existence; it seems self-absorbed to expect the answer to come about to conveniently end a very specific ethical debate.
Personally I don't see why unborn clumps of cells get more respect and care than sentient, breathing, suffering people on our own streets. That is what makes me really sick about the whole thing.
-b
>>They are not trained to kill, and certainly not trained to survive
I have to take exception to this. I am a soldier, and I am close friends with 4 people who have graduated cop school, and they are more qualified to kill than I am. They have extensive training on pistol, shotgun, pepper spray, taser, baton, and hand-to-hand combat. Any of them could easily take me down. They are also trained to take out suspects in high-speed chases via techniques like the PIT maneuver. They have advanced training in firearms control, cover, tactical reloading, emergency medicine, etc.
I think it is disingenuous to portray police as this benign caricature of Barney Fife. Police are killers who don't want to. Soldiers are also killers who don't want to. The difference is that they get their order from their police chief, and I get my orders from congress and the president. You need to stop thinking of soldiers as executioners. Or short of that, examine why it is you think of soldiers as executioners. I've never killed anybody, and if I did kill anyone in the course of my duties, it would be for the same reason I'd kill someone in any other circumstances: self-defense.
Go ahead and rationalize it away by saying that I'm not typical, or that if I volunteered for it then I knew what I was doing, or any other reasonable argument. The fact is, humans fight. We will fight until we're not technically humans anymore. History has borne this out, and fiat histories claiming otherwise are just plain wrong.
I'm sorry to ramble. Don't take it personally. I guess I'm just tired and I probably shouldn't even be posting on slashdot in the first place.
-b
Dulce bellum inexpertis.
I joined up because of a desire to give something back to my country, Starship Troopers-style. I know war sucks. I've deployed to Iraq twice. I think it's the most terrible thing I'll every experience in my life. And I'm signing up to go again.
I did not join to finance my education; scholarships would have covered that.
I am a citizen (politicians are scumbags who would kill me to win an election) AND a solder (I will do everything in my power to get the job done). That is a lot to wrap your mind around if you haven't been in the same situation. And I won't get on some moral high horse about it, because before I joined and before I went off to war, I didn't know what it was like, really. There just isn't a way to prepare for it. It changes you. But on the other hand, I'm going to have to take exception to this:
"Am I not allowed to abhor natural disasters as I have not been in any?"
There is 'abhor' and then there is hiding under your couch on July 4th, keeping your bags packed, staying armed, staying isolated, jumping at every slammed door...
It is one thing to hate something on the principle that it is something that deserves to be hated, and quite another thing to hate something because it has power over you.
So anyways... I see your point- and it is worth reflection- but there is another side to the story. I just thought I'd give you a soldier's perspective.
-b
I just had to throw in my two cents here (SSgt speaking)-
I know you're not lying about the state of the computers you fix. But I would like to say that, given ANY large group of 18-24-year-olds, you will find the same thing. Young men are young men. All I'm saying is that it's good to take a step or two back every now and then to get some perspective.
-b
You know, the interesting thing is that people do drink in Iraq. I can't remember the day, but there is a day each week in Baghdad where beer comes in or something like that. I'm sorry that I don't remember the specifics. Anyways, the point is that you have these soldiers who cannot drink (General Order 1A, no wait, we're up to 1B now), and they're watching over this muslim country where beer is sold out of people's cars. A little bit of irony there- decadent western lifestyle meets austere muslim lifestyle, but all turned around.
Something else that I found really interesting/weird was that our cooks on base (who are almost all third-country nationals, mostly malaysian and mostly muslim) cooked our pork for us. I mean whole roasted pigs and sausage and bacon and pork chops and anything else you can imagine. Even when I was stationed in a hostile country, I still felt bad that our American dollars meant enough to certain people that they would sacrifice some of their core values in order to support themselves and their families.
And then of course we had the uncannily accurate mortar attack, and subsequent search of third-country national living quarters, and found maps of our housing areas, work/shift schedules, maps, U.S. uniforms, etc. So the whole thing is really thorny, ethically speaking.
If you have 17-20-year-old kids, please try to dissuade them from joining up right now...
-b
I have spent a good deal of time at these markets, and I can testify that I saw no porn. Ever. I never saw porn, alcohol, or drugs at these markets. Maybe these porn DVDs were passed around sub rosa or something.
:)
Here is what you CAN find in the markets (even on base): Fake cigarettes, fake cigars, fake Rolexes, fake Nikes, fake anything. Imitation Apple products- headphones, iPod cases, even fake iPods. No fake zunes, though...
In an area about the size of a high school gymnasium, about 80% of the space was filled with bootleg DVDs and software. I don't mean bootleg like the MPAA wants you think bootleg; I mean actual printed DVDs out of japan or taiwan. Some were really crappy theater-cams but many were very good copies of promos and the like. I watch 300, letters from Iwo Jima, Black Snake Moan, and many others before or very shortly after theater release. It was awesome
I also got all ten (at the time) seasons of south park on 4 DVDs for $25. Sweet.
So, here we have this article that, while it may be true, seems to completely miss the point. It's like saying that, "Magazines such as hustler are causing massive deforestation and are filling our landfills." It is just trying to sensationalize the situation. Which is weird, since there are so many other, BIGGER things out there to write about. Try this, RIAA: The base media server, loaded with ~180 GB of music, is free to anyone who wants to download from it. You can get 180 GB hdds at the BX. Oh and there is the movie server, loaded with hundreds of titles. All free for the taking. And this author chose to write about porn? Whatever. Iraq is the wild, wild middle east. Everything goes.
-b
>>But then a majority of people would be judged for hate speech.
What part of "democracy" do you not understand?
If they made brushing your teeth 'politically incorrect', would you stop brushing your teeth?
There is a saying- I think it's something like, "Behind every argument is someone's ignorance." Sometimes you need to wonder if it's your ignorance that is causing the disagreement. While many of the author's opinions and predictions are up for debate, he does quote and cite many self-professed muslims. It is not hate speech, IMO, to quote verbatim an Imam saying something like he was proud of muslims for breeding like mosquitoes. The hate speech part could be in the auguring of future doom, but I'd even disagree with that. If his book was hate speech, it would somehow _incorrectly_ (not based on facts) call out for action against a (self-defined) group of people based on their socio-religious beliefs. I personally don't think that a book claiming that 43.5-year-old white far-sighted left-handed dog-owning blood type A+ men are bad drivers would be hate speech IF it was true (repeatable, demonstrable, etc.).
Sorry for rambling.
-b
I don't think this article is a troll. I'm not even sure how I feel about what the OP is saying, but I do know that he/she is simply stating their opinions on the discussion at hand.
Can we please focus on modding _up_ instead of down? I don't think I've ever modded anyone down. There is no need for that. I've been seeing a lot of posts labeled Troll of Flamebait that are just personal responses by regular people. The negative mods should be reserved for gratuitous violations of slashdot's discussion policies.
Sorry if I sound angry- I'm not- but I like balanced and fair discussions, at least as much as I can reasonably expect them.
-b
What would happen is that the claim would be heard by a regular court, and of course if would quickly be dismissed. The problem is that this human rights tribunal is free to interpret its cases in any way it sees fit. Your claim of violations of your human rights would qualify for a 'real' court, where more often then not spurious cases are quashed. That pretty much is the problem: In a 'real' court, you need evidence, damages, etc. while in this human rights thingy you do not. And since none of the human rights judges have said anything hateful about you, you have no recourse. I would say that I'm happy I'm not Canadian, but... Even with this, I'd still rather be Canadian :) If only because their dollar is stronger.
-b
The laws aren't against pooping, they are against not cleaning it up afaik. You are adding an unnecessary layer of abstraction to this.
-b
You don't happen to be in Hawaii, do you? The reason I ask is that I seem to recall pooka meaning 'hole' in Hawaiian. Maybe completely unrelated, who knows.
-b
Well, I'm an OED man myself, and here is what IT has to say:
----------
Profligate
Adj; Recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources:Profligate consumers of energy.;
Licentious, dissolute: He succumbed to drink and a profligate lifestyle.
Noun; A licentious, dissolute person.
Derivatives:
Profligacy; Noun
Profligately; Adverb
--------------
Profligate isn't a verb. What the OP said is equivalent to saying, "The were desperating new cameras all over the place."
Profligate belongs to a family of adjectives that end in -ate and sound like verbs, but aren't: Insensate, desperate, profligate, sedate, etc.
So the sentence doesn't mean anything, yes, but in an unintentionally insightful way, what with the misuse of a word that means extravagant or wasteful. But then maybe I have a weird sense of humor.
-b
Ok I'm about to go to bed, but here. Take your equation to the limit where the angle is very small- let's say 3 or 4 degrees. The area described by this cone would fit inside the area of the aircraft. You would be saying that there was a shockwave inside the aircraft. That doesn't make sense. The shockwave must follow a line from origination to a point outside of the aircraft. As I mentioned before, operational restrictions are in place to keep the shockwave from hitting the wings. Physics keeps the shockwave from existing solely inside the airplane (not that the airplane would exist long enough for that to happen).
Your equations assume a _point_ traveling at speed and causing a shockwave. Aircraft are not points, and this needs to be taken into account in your equations. Two points, traveling at identical speeds in the same direction would cause the results you are finding. Two points traveling in water in the same direction would create congruent wakes if their respective wakes did not interfere with each other. This is obviously not the case in practice. Hopefully someone who is more awake than me can weigh in here and make sense of all this to us both.
-b
Why does it matter if the person who robbed you is black or white or homeless? Board up your windows and toss out your reliance on the one saving grace of The State: law enforcement. If you don't like keeping your property secure, then don't be a property owner!
Having an officer arrest people for breaking into homes or mugging people is yet more proof that society has failed.
Also, stray dogs are much less statistically likely to crap on your sidewalk. Sidewalks are where people go, not dogs. A dog crapping on a sidewalk is a sure sign of a nearby owner. I don't see how this is even up for debate, unless you are about to go in front of parliament and make your case to recover you lost right to allow your dog to crap anywhere it wants and then not clean it up. Which, by the way, I'd love to watch.
-b
>>I don't think these cameras who were installed for a loftier purpose should be used to catch them.
That's like saying, "The 20 new police officers who were hired to help reduce drunk driving should not be used to catch burglars even if they happen to be the closest officer at the time."
If your job was traffic law enforcer, and you saw a murder, would you just ignore it? What are you trying to say, that you believe that millions of taxpayer euros should be thrown away to prove some kind of point purely out of spite?
Why do you think that a crime isn't a crime anymore if it is discovered using unorthodox methods?
-b
(oh and for good measure, "Why do you hate Jesus?")
Please mod parent "+1 Best Unintentionally Eloquent Misuse Of An Obscure Adjective."
-b
Hey there. I can understand your bitterness. I work for the gov't, too, and I am very bitter and disillusioned. However, this article was about the UK, which has NOTHING to do with Bush et al.
Sorry to get all "-1 offtopic" on you, but I'm tired of EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE that has ANYTHING to do with big brother being populated primarily by +5 Insightful comments about Bush, even if the article is about another country that isn't even on our CONTINENT.
Sorry... Beer got the better of me. But still. It bugs me.
-b
>>When I could sit in front of my computer and feel smug when this happened in other countries.
Err.... This IS happening in other countries. The title of TFS is "UK Uses CCTC, Terrorism Laws, Against Pooping Dogs."
You can continue feeling smug now. How about getting outraged by something that DOES affect you as an American, like the democratic party not nominating their candidate based on popular vote? Or the republicans getting the support of religious leaders who felt that we deserved 9/11 without any negative coverage? Or Bridges To Nowhere? Or no-bid government contracts? Or Cheney deciding which documents are secret and which are "to be treated as secret"? Or how about the candidates pandering to consumers by promising a gas tax holiday even though they know that it would make matters worse (Price goes up along with demand, unlike taxes)....
How did you get +4 insightful? Do people think that the UK is a US state now? Does Lacrosse, Wisconsin have CCTV cameras on every street corner?
-b
I think it does. Your assumption that the first and second cones share an identical angle is incorrect. The waves take the form of an N (in 2 dimensional depiction). In order for the leading edge V part of the N to not be a negative angle, the trailing I part of the N must compensate. This is easier to visualize in terms of boat wakes. Anyone who has ridden in a boat going at a moderate to high speed can tell you that the bow shockwave and the stern shockwave do not share the same angle of incidence.
Here is the best picture I can find right now:
http://www.iboatnyharbor.com/Vee-wake.jpg
You can see (barely, sorry) that the bow and stern wakes are not congruent. Also of interest is the constructive/destructive interference.
Another way to think about it is this: The shockwave at the bow of a craft can sharpen only slightly with increased speed, while the shockwave at the rear is not constrained by the body of the aircraft itself (avoiding negative angles again). In theory, both shockwaves could approach zero degrees, but in practice the bow shockwave cannot touch aft structures such as leading edges of wings without causing damage. This necessitates the swept wing configuration common to all superconic aircraft (the markedness of the sweep depends on the operational speeds of the aircraft). I guess what I'm saying is that much like a boat's bow wake, a supersonic (bow) pressure wave cannot form an angle that is smaller than the space that the craft itself occupies. Sorry, but I've been tearing down plaster and lathe all day and I'm tired and inarticulate.
I hope this helps.
-b
I don't see how changing air to plasma would help- surely the phase change would require tremendous energy, and it would not get rid of the compression wave at the nose and stabilizers of the aircraft. In fact, I'm almost certain that it would make it worse. Right now, you have only the speed of the aircraft compressing the air and causing the boom; with a plasma layer, you'd have the additional speed of the air expanding to form a plasma. At least in my mind, this is almost what happens with lightning. I realize that the boom is caused by the movement of heated air, but the air is heated and moved by the plasma, right?
-b
I don't want to karma-whore by pasting the wikipedia article in here, but it is actually very informative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom
One thing that never occurred to me is that at high enough speed/altitude, the shock wave won't intersect with earth's surface: Voila, no sonic boom (on the ground, anyways).
Maybe that is where NASA is headed with this research.
-b
>>I don't know about you, but I don't like to drink coffee that can give me 3rd degree burns.
Well then I suppose you also don't own any knives or hammers or maybe an oven or a fragile piece of glass?
And I KNOW that I would NEVER use electricity in my home that could KILL me! Lord no, I only use 9 volt batteries. Better safe than sorry. Except for when they leak acid.
Oh and McDonalds had better start serving everything as a puree, because we all know that you wouldn't want to eat food that could cause choking!
The McDonalds case, while unfortunate, really wasn't as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be. What if the case had been, "The woman choked on a stale french fry after the driver of the car hit a speed bump. The surviving family sued McD's for knowingly selling stale fries"? I don't think that the woman's injuries should affect McD's culpability. As much as I dislike them as a company, I just don't think it's their fault that the woman put the cup of hot coffee in her lap while driving. 170 degree coffee probably would have done the same thing.
-b
>>I wonder what would that Rinzai guy show to a sexual predator.
A mustache?
-b