"The Russian government is responsible for shooting down a passenger jet and murdering hundreds of people."
Not only the Russian government: "Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes.... All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died."
Wikipedia also says this: "At present only Russia has maintained consistent 238Pu production, while the USA restarted production at ~1.5 kg a year in 2013 after a ~25-year hiatus."
The same article lists other isotopes that could be used, though all have disadvantages compared to Pu-238.
Not to mention that NASA doesn't have a stellar record on risk evaluation. They used to say the chance of a fatal event on the Space Shuttle was 100,000 to 1. Then there were a couple of really unlucky, totally unpredictable occurrences.
There are really several questions often conflated: Is the global average climate getting warmer? If it is, is the change caused by human action? If the climate is getting warmer, should we do something about it? If so, what? If not, should we do something to mitigate the harm?
I don't know the answers, but I know that anyone who claims the climate is not getting warmer based on one event must be either deliberately deceptive or too culpably ignorant to understand the concept of "average". Sadly, the American political system rewards the most deceptive.
Crisis sort of suggests something that needs to be dealt with Right The Fuck Now, not in twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or one hundred years.
What if it takes 20, 30, 40, 50, or a hundred years to fix the problem? When does an oil tanker heading for the rocks become a crisis? When it hits? Or some time before that? Is there a better word? I do suspect "crisis" might be chosen because it does imply a need for immediate action.
Mr Adams's list is highly selective and, in some cases, actually counter-factual. For example, "Social security was supposed to go broke." There was, and still is, a prediction that Social Security will eventually run out of money, but the date is always 50 years or more in the future. "The Y2K problem was supposed to break computers and plunge the planet into an agrarian society." Only a few kooks made claims that exaggerated. There were real problems, and it took until mid-1998 to start really fixing them, and it's true that most got fixed before there were serious consequences.
On the other hand, all the societies that have ever existed are now gone, except the ones present now. Jared Diamond's book Collapse documents several. The Aztec, Maya, and Roman Empires are well-known examples. I see no reason to believe the present US or global society will survive indefinitely, which means it will eventually fail. That could happen fifty or a hundred or maybe two hundred years from now, but it will probably be less than 500 years from now.
One of the problems with anthropogenic climate change[1], if it's real, is that the countries that did the most to cause it also benefit the most from the status quo and have the most to lose by making changes. The first to suffer will be the people with the least wealth, the least political clout, and the least ability to adapt, like Bangladesh and Somalia.
[1] Note that this literally means "man-created", so apparently women had nothing to do with it.
What's a "significant chunk"? 1%? 10%? 50%? I've been doing parkour since it was called PT. I'm not much for team sports, though.
I bet the robot can't anticipate the steep cliff behind the object it's jumping over, or the edge of the building behind the parapet. So some humans still have a few advantages. We can still trap the bloody things in pits.
Come to think of it, there were robot attack dogs in Fahrenheit 451. With procaine.
... black men are about 7%. this 7% committed 52% of all homicides in the USA between 1980 and 2008. look it up yourself if you doubt me.
Actually, about half of all homicides are unsolved, so you don't know the race of the perpetrators. What you meant is that 52% of people arrested for homicide were Black. You can look that up, if you like, and maybe look up "selection bias" while you're at it. You fail statistics, but you win a prize for a particularly off-topic post.
Do you have any idea how much those things cost to maintain and operate? Not to mention the detrimental effects on performance, handling, and fuel economy of a 12-foot-tall, 12,000-pound turret on top of your vehicle. Though it would be good for attracting attention. And the torque it generates could probably spin your car around. I'll stick with a modest MRAP, with optional CROWS, just so I can feel safe when I drive to the grocery store. Besides, MRAPs are a bargain: $700,000 new, the US Department of Defense was selling them to local police departments for as little as $2500: "...all Page County had to pay was the cost of shipping it from a refurbishing plant in Texas."
I ride about 2500 miles a year, mostly in a city, without a helmet. Haven't had any head injuries so far. The risk-benefit calculation gets complicated. Essentially, wearing a helmet shifts the curve downward from serious to less-serious injuries. If this turns minor injuries into no injuries, good. If it turns permanent brain damage into recoverable injury, also good. If it turns quickly-fatal injuries into long-term spinal-cord or serious brain damage, maybe not so good. It depends on the shape of the curve, which is information I don't have. Wearing a helmet may also increase the risk of having a crash.
Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Statistics: "In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians and 726 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts)." Sounds like it's the pedestrians who need to wear helmets.
I seem to remember a case in Britain a few years ago: a man found that his bank account had been broken into and some money stolen. He reported this to the bank. The bank had him arrested on suspicion of fraud. They claimed their security was so good that no one could possibly have broken in; therefore, ipso facto, he must be lying. He must have withdrawn the money himself and was fraudulently attempting to get a reimbursement. He was eventually exonerated, but the experience is not one to be recommended. In that case, the bank itself was at fault, but for me to believe that a bank would be liable in case someone stole my password from me seems like wishful thinking. In the US, there are specific laws limiting liability for lost or stolen credit cards; I think these have now been extended to debit cards, but I doubt they apply to other bank transactions.
Actually, it doesn't even say humans, it says "houris", a type of angel who have a permanent state of spiritual purity. According to Wikipedia, "the Quran states that all believers (not just martyrs, and nowhere either is it said it's just men) who go to Heaven shall be granted the company of more than one houris".
Worse even than that. The original article, Nature Communications (link somewhere below) only says they found anomalies in electrical resistance indicative of sub-surface lakes of briny water, "at temperatures well below freezing and considered within the range suitable for microbial life." No actual water seen, no actual life found. Nice innovative use of new technology, but evidently that isn't exciting enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only the Russian government: "Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes. ... All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died."
It's actually several kilograms, but you were within a factor of a few thousand.
Just for the record, there's no overlap at all between radioisotope generators and nuclear bombs; they don't even use the same isotopes.
Can't we all just take a minute to be happy the thing is working again? That's fantastic!
The same article lists other isotopes that could be used, though all have disadvantages compared to Pu-238.
Not to mention that NASA doesn't have a stellar record on risk evaluation. They used to say the chance of a fatal event on the Space Shuttle was 100,000 to 1. Then there were a couple of really unlucky, totally unpredictable occurrences.
There are really several questions often conflated: Is the global average climate getting warmer? If it is, is the change caused by human action? If the climate is getting warmer, should we do something about it? If so, what? If not, should we do something to mitigate the harm?
I don't know the answers, but I know that anyone who claims the climate is not getting warmer based on one event must be either deliberately deceptive or too culpably ignorant to understand the concept of "average". Sadly, the American political system rewards the most deceptive.
Purity of Essence. Don't let them fluoridate your water!
Crisis sort of suggests something that needs to be dealt with Right The Fuck Now, not in twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or one hundred years.
What if it takes 20, 30, 40, 50, or a hundred years to fix the problem? When does an oil tanker heading for the rocks become a crisis? When it hits? Or some time before that? Is there a better word? I do suspect "crisis" might be chosen because it does imply a need for immediate action.
Mr Adams's list is highly selective and, in some cases, actually counter-factual. For example, "Social security was supposed to go broke." There was, and still is, a prediction that Social Security will eventually run out of money, but the date is always 50 years or more in the future. "The Y2K problem was supposed to break computers and plunge the planet into an agrarian society." Only a few kooks made claims that exaggerated. There were real problems, and it took until mid-1998 to start really fixing them, and it's true that most got fixed before there were serious consequences.
On the other hand, all the societies that have ever existed are now gone, except the ones present now. Jared Diamond's book Collapse documents several. The Aztec, Maya, and Roman Empires are well-known examples. I see no reason to believe the present US or global society will survive indefinitely, which means it will eventually fail. That could happen fifty or a hundred or maybe two hundred years from now, but it will probably be less than 500 years from now.
One of the problems with anthropogenic climate change[1], if it's real, is that the countries that did the most to cause it also benefit the most from the status quo and have the most to lose by making changes. The first to suffer will be the people with the least wealth, the least political clout, and the least ability to adapt, like Bangladesh and Somalia.
[1] Note that this literally means "man-created", so apparently women had nothing to do with it.
It really is a lot like doing magic tricks for dogs.
Ill-tempered mutated sea bass.
I bet the robot can't anticipate the steep cliff behind the object it's jumping over, or the edge of the building behind the parapet. So some humans still have a few advantages. We can still trap the bloody things in pits.
Come to think of it, there were robot attack dogs in Fahrenheit 451. With procaine.
Fry: Besides, it's not like one vote ever made a difference.
Leela: That's not true; the first robot president won by exactly one vote.
Bender: Ah, yes, John Quincy Adding Machine. He struck a chord with the voters when he pledged not to go on a killing spree.
Farnsworth: But, like most politicians, he promised more than he could deliver.
... black men are about 7%. this 7% committed 52% of all homicides in the USA between 1980 and 2008. look it up yourself if you doubt me.
Actually, about half of all homicides are unsolved, so you don't know the race of the perpetrators. What you meant is that 52% of people arrested for homicide were Black. You can look that up, if you like, and maybe look up "selection bias" while you're at it. You fail statistics, but you win a prize for a particularly off-topic post.
Do you have any idea how much those things cost to maintain and operate? Not to mention the detrimental effects on performance, handling, and fuel economy of a 12-foot-tall, 12,000-pound turret on top of your vehicle. Though it would be good for attracting attention. And the torque it generates could probably spin your car around. I'll stick with a modest MRAP, with optional CROWS, just so I can feel safe when I drive to the grocery store. Besides, MRAPs are a bargain: $700,000 new, the US Department of Defense was selling them to local police departments for as little as $2500: "...all Page County had to pay was the cost of shipping it from a refurbishing plant in Texas."
Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Statistics: "In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians and 726 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts)." Sounds like it's the pedestrians who need to wear helmets.
There's also a Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the United States National Rifle Association. Nothing but a meaningless coincidence, of course.
Ah, naivete. Any time I feel like humans are smart, I just come here and read, and I'm cured.
Some humans did go to the Moon. I cling to that when I feel myself sinking in the Slough of Despond.
I seem to remember a case in Britain a few years ago: a man found that his bank account had been broken into and some money stolen. He reported this to the bank. The bank had him arrested on suspicion of fraud. They claimed their security was so good that no one could possibly have broken in; therefore, ipso facto, he must be lying. He must have withdrawn the money himself and was fraudulently attempting to get a reimbursement. He was eventually exonerated, but the experience is not one to be recommended. In that case, the bank itself was at fault, but for me to believe that a bank would be liable in case someone stole my password from me seems like wishful thinking. In the US, there are specific laws limiting liability for lost or stolen credit cards; I think these have now been extended to debit cards, but I doubt they apply to other bank transactions.
Right. As long as they leave me alone and stick to harassing people like Martin Luther King, why should I care?
Not to mention that, in the US, over 90% of cases are settled by plea bargaining, in which case there is no court.
"... don't want to reveal information that would give new ammunition to defense lawyers ..."
Should be "... don't want to reveal information that would allow citizens to exercise their civil rights."
Actually, it doesn't even say humans, it says "houris", a type of angel who have a permanent state of spiritual purity. According to Wikipedia, "the Quran states that all believers (not just martyrs, and nowhere either is it said it's just men) who go to Heaven shall be granted the company of more than one houris".
Worse even than that. The original article, Nature Communications (link somewhere below) only says they found anomalies in electrical resistance indicative of sub-surface lakes of briny water, "at temperatures well below freezing and considered within the range suitable for microbial life." No actual water seen, no actual life found. Nice innovative use of new technology, but evidently that isn't exciting enough.