then you are supposed to be teaching the scientific method (the core of "science") and things that have been learned and proven using the scientific method.
That's fine, as long as you realize that there are limits to how provable evolutionary science is under the classical "hypothesis-test-theory" scientific method we are teaching the kids. "Evolution" is not a single, clean, well-tested theory like "universal gravitation." It's a broad field of inquiry. We can do some predictable tests on either end (we can predictably mutate viruses, and predictably breed larger animals). But as far as I'm aware, we've never so much as synthesized even a single-celled organism from "primordial soup," much less grown it into a donkey by applying some well-tested formula.
For contrast, relativity is a theory that we can test, and although it has limits, we can predictably use it to do useful things like calibrating our GPS satellites. We can't do that with protozoa-to-mammal evolutionary theory, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit that it has gaps and limitations. Teach evolution, but teach it for what it is: a best-available composite model compiled from an entire field of investigations and discoveries, with lots of "we suspects" and "we're not sures." If we teach children to believe in the "Gospel of Evolution," like it's some kind of unerring, unassailable single Truth, handed down in its pure and unalterable form by the Gods of Science, then we are cutting off honest inquiry just as surely as a preacher who tells them that they will definitely burn in hell if they don't confess that the universe was conjured out of nothing exactly 6,000 years ago.
You keep arguing that Snowden clearly broke the law. Yeah, I agree. But that says nothing about whether what he did was right. Not everything lawful action is good, and not every unlawful action is evil. A government illegally or unethically spying on its citizens is certain to deem its actions legal by its own fiat. That doesn't make the spying right.
That's a neat tautology you've constructed. "It was illegal for Snowden to reveal PRISM, because the people running PRISM deemed it illegal to reveal PRISM.
And Wyden's stunt doesn't affect the ethical question. Assuming the article is true and Wyden was fully briefed on PRISM before the hearing, that just makes him complicit with General Clapper in conspiring to violate the Constitution.
No, not every single cop everywhere carries specifically a Glock 17. But a numerical majority of them do carry Glocks, which was the point I made first ("They carry Glocks" is a fair generalization when it applies to well over 50% of police). Then I gave an example of a specific Glock that many of them carry, and used that to illustrate the fact that your typical cop is packing a lot more than just six rounds. When was the last time you saw a cop carrying a six-round service revolver (even if some of them theoretically can if they want to)? Are you asserting that a significant number of them still do? Maybe your experience is different from mine, but none of the cops I see in 2014 are carrying a.38 Special.
That I can appreciate his likely skill with a service revolver
Cops don't carry those anymore. They carry Glocks. 9mm, 17+1 capacity. Yes, it's a technical nit to pick, but it means that the cop has 3x more bullets than you think he has if you think he's carrying a service revolver*. Also, he's probably carrying one or two spare magazines. In other words, Rain Man is screwed. Not only can he shoot you dead. He can shoot you very dead.
*I'm not saying this is always a bad thing. Cops deal with some seriously bad people sometimes, and I'm all for them being able to defend themselves. It just means that if you get a hotheaded cop on a power trip, there's potentially a lot of damage for IA to sweep under the rug in their coverup.
No, it's their cousin species, the Weeping Jelly Doughnuts, who are much less of a menace to the universe. Instead of zapping you back in time 80 years and feeding on your residual potential, they zap you back in time to last Tuesday, where you eagerly devour an unwitting jelly doughnut that will now never get a chance to zap you back in time to last Tuesday, thus creating a paradox and canceling its own existence. There's a reason they're all but extinct.
More to the point, it doesn't matter if the NSA had high definition video of Feinstein fornicating with Osama bin Laden's corpse while worshiping Adolf Hitler and singing patriotic Soviet hymns. The people of California would still re-elect her, and she would still sponsor the Feinstein Sanctity of Remains Act that prescribes death for mishandling the body of a deceased U.S. Senator.
Your average voter, be s/he a Democrat or Republican, is not interested in liberty in any meaningful sense. S/he is interested in license. "Give me license to do what I want, and if anything bad happens, fix it and let me go back to doing whatever caused it."
It should be far more useful than it has been. So far, it's been useless, according to all of the Snowden documents.
You seem to be confusing the actual purpose of this program with the snake oil sold to people (which they are increasingly reluctant to buy). I do not doubt that this program has been immensely useful for its actual purpose.
Given her uber-wealthy backers and the overall ideological tilt of California?
They'll likely keep sending her embalmed corpse back to DC each term for approximately the next 600 years or so.
This may not be a bad thing. As long as they don't find a way to reanimate her, she'll have to keep her mouth shut and won't be able to vote on anything. I'd call that an epic win.
(I was reading just the other day that a vacuum tube will still handle higher voltages than semiconductors. Or something like that.)
That's a serious understatement. It's like saying a Mack truck can haul more than a Porsche. If there is ever a nuclear war, tube-based electronics will still be humming along quite happily long after EMP has wiped out every single transistor on the planet.
Any change that reduces the intrusion of government into my daily habits is a good change, regardless of party.
Then you should move to Haiti or Somalia. They are a paradise on earth with all that non-government intervention.
Next time you parrot a meme such as "less government is always better", feel free to engage your brain first. Just saying.
Next time you parrot a meme such as the false dichotomy that Somalia and Haiti are the only possible alternative to our current federal nanny state that thinks it needs to micromanage every aspect of every citizen's life, feel free to engage your brain first. Just saying.
And how will those nuclear weapons be delivered to their target without chemical energy? Do we strap them to swallows? Yes, I know that missiles can run on liquid hydrogen/oxygen propulsion, but I think most modern missiles use chemical propellants.
That depends---African or European swallows. Or are you suggesting ICBMs migrate?
Yes, I know. Silo-based missiles are only one of three prongs of U.S. nuclear capabilities (I said we have 450 MT in silos. Your graph shows about 2,000 total, which seems about right). Your graph actually makes my point, though it seems I was off saying less than one percent. According to your graph, our current stockpile is a few percent (maybe as high as 10%---As I said, it's been a while since I looked at actual numbers, and I'm not above correction) of our peak stockpile. But the larger point stands: we have only a fraction of our peak capability.
And why do we feel the US is more trusted with this than anybody else?
Because we already have enough warheads to destroy the entire planet 100x over? How is a bit more Uranium going to help us? So we can destroy it 101x over?
No, we really don't. Nuclear stockpiles are a fraction of 1% of their cold war peaks (I calculated it once, but don't remember the exact number). I believe our silo-based missiles in the U.S. are down to 150 single-warhead Minuteman IIIs, at around 300 kT each. That's about 450 MT, which is still a lot of destructive power, but the largest single device ever detonated was 50 MT all by itself, and was supposedly capable of being boosted to 100 MT.
And the OP entirely missed the point: This was not "giving" new nukes to the U.S. This was taking old nukes out of circulation and using them for energy. Using your analogy, this is going from 100x to 99x or lower, not the other way around.
From the Wikipedia article you accuse me of misreporting:
Ernest Duchesne documented it in an 1897 paper,[18] which was not accepted by the Institut Pasteur because of his youth. In March 2000, doctors at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in San José, Costa Rica, published the manuscripts of the Costa Rican scientist and medical doctor Clodomiro (Clorito) Picado Twight (1887–1944). They reported Picado's observations on the inhibitory actions of fungi of the genus Penicillium between 1915 and 1927. Picado reported his discovery to the Paris Academy of Sciences, yet did not patent it, even though his investigations started years before Fleming's. Joseph Lister was experimenting with Penicillum in 1871 for his aseptic surgery. He found that it weakened the microbes, but then he dismissed the fungi.
2. That is a big problem and something hard to deal with. From my knowledge current US patent laws are first to file not first to discovery. So either you collect results and don't make them accessible to anyone or you collect results and make them open and hope that they are used to help people.
Not really that hard. The Wiki pretty much takes care of this. Under the new U.S. patent law, the first one to publish blocks all others from getting a patent. As long as the Wiki is publicly viewable, it's a publication. And one year after it's published, the patent rights die forever.
I'd be more concerned about the penicillin effect: a French guy discovered it first, but didn't patent it (anecdotally, because he wanted to "do the right thing" and give it to the world, though I don't have a verified source for that). Since it wasn't patented and wasn't patentable, it wouldn't be profitable. So the drug companies (again, anecdotally) ignored it. Until the 1940s, when (1) there were patentable improvements in the process, (2) there were suddenly a LOT of injured people who could use an antibacterial agent, and (3) (related to 2) the U.S. military heavily subsidized it.
Slashdot Mirror
then you are supposed to be teaching the scientific method (the core of "science") and things that have been learned and proven using the scientific method.
That's fine, as long as you realize that there are limits to how provable evolutionary science is under the classical "hypothesis-test-theory" scientific method we are teaching the kids. "Evolution" is not a single, clean, well-tested theory like "universal gravitation." It's a broad field of inquiry. We can do some predictable tests on either end (we can predictably mutate viruses, and predictably breed larger animals). But as far as I'm aware, we've never so much as synthesized even a single-celled organism from "primordial soup," much less grown it into a donkey by applying some well-tested formula.
For contrast, relativity is a theory that we can test, and although it has limits, we can predictably use it to do useful things like calibrating our GPS satellites. We can't do that with protozoa-to-mammal evolutionary theory, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit that it has gaps and limitations. Teach evolution, but teach it for what it is: a best-available composite model compiled from an entire field of investigations and discoveries, with lots of "we suspects" and "we're not sures." If we teach children to believe in the "Gospel of Evolution," like it's some kind of unerring, unassailable single Truth, handed down in its pure and unalterable form by the Gods of Science, then we are cutting off honest inquiry just as surely as a preacher who tells them that they will definitely burn in hell if they don't confess that the universe was conjured out of nothing exactly 6,000 years ago.
But, the New Testament doesn't really go into the creation of species, so Christians default to the Old Testament.
The Old Testament doesn't go into the creation of species either. It says that God made animals. It doesn't say how.
You keep arguing that Snowden clearly broke the law. Yeah, I agree. But that says nothing about whether what he did was right. Not everything lawful action is good, and not every unlawful action is evil. A government illegally or unethically spying on its citizens is certain to deem its actions legal by its own fiat. That doesn't make the spying right.
That's a neat tautology you've constructed. "It was illegal for Snowden to reveal PRISM, because the people running PRISM deemed it illegal to reveal PRISM.
And Wyden's stunt doesn't affect the ethical question. Assuming the article is true and Wyden was fully briefed on PRISM before the hearing, that just makes him complicit with General Clapper in conspiring to violate the Constitution.
No, not every single cop everywhere carries specifically a Glock 17. But a numerical majority of them do carry Glocks, which was the point I made first ("They carry Glocks" is a fair generalization when it applies to well over 50% of police). Then I gave an example of a specific Glock that many of them carry, and used that to illustrate the fact that your typical cop is packing a lot more than just six rounds. When was the last time you saw a cop carrying a six-round service revolver (even if some of them theoretically can if they want to)? Are you asserting that a significant number of them still do? Maybe your experience is different from mine, but none of the cops I see in 2014 are carrying a .38 Special.
That I can appreciate his likely skill with a service revolver
Cops don't carry those anymore. They carry Glocks. 9mm, 17+1 capacity. Yes, it's a technical nit to pick, but it means that the cop has 3x more bullets than you think he has if you think he's carrying a service revolver*. Also, he's probably carrying one or two spare magazines. In other words, Rain Man is screwed. Not only can he shoot you dead. He can shoot you very dead.
*I'm not saying this is always a bad thing. Cops deal with some seriously bad people sometimes, and I'm all for them being able to defend themselves. It just means that if you get a hotheaded cop on a power trip, there's potentially a lot of damage for IA to sweep under the rug in their coverup.
I'm disappointed that of all the people who whooshed your last line, none of them complained about "free reign". :-(
I could care less. It's a mute point anyway.
Perhaps the news is that someone from Utah accepts the principles of evolution?
That's cute and all. But my brother, who is a devout Mormon, got an MS in evolutionary biology. At BYU.
No, it's their cousin species, the Weeping Jelly Doughnuts, who are much less of a menace to the universe. Instead of zapping you back in time 80 years and feeding on your residual potential, they zap you back in time to last Tuesday, where you eagerly devour an unwitting jelly doughnut that will now never get a chance to zap you back in time to last Tuesday, thus creating a paradox and canceling its own existence. There's a reason they're all but extinct.
More to the point, it doesn't matter if the NSA had high definition video of Feinstein fornicating with Osama bin Laden's corpse while worshiping Adolf Hitler and singing patriotic Soviet hymns. The people of California would still re-elect her, and she would still sponsor the Feinstein Sanctity of Remains Act that prescribes death for mishandling the body of a deceased U.S. Senator.
Your average voter, be s/he a Democrat or Republican, is not interested in liberty in any meaningful sense. S/he is interested in license. "Give me license to do what I want, and if anything bad happens, fix it and let me go back to doing whatever caused it."
It should be far more useful than it has been. So far, it's been useless, according to all of the Snowden documents.
You seem to be confusing the actual purpose of this program with the snake oil sold to people (which they are increasingly reluctant to buy). I do not doubt that this program has been immensely useful for its actual purpose.
When is California going to recall her?
Given her uber-wealthy backers and the overall ideological tilt of California?
They'll likely keep sending her embalmed corpse back to DC each term for approximately the next 600 years or so.
This may not be a bad thing. As long as they don't find a way to reanimate her, she'll have to keep her mouth shut and won't be able to vote on anything. I'd call that an epic win.
(I was reading just the other day that a vacuum tube will still handle higher voltages than semiconductors. Or something like that.)
That's a serious understatement. It's like saying a Mack truck can haul more than a Porsche. If there is ever a nuclear war, tube-based electronics will still be humming along quite happily long after EMP has wiped out every single transistor on the planet.
Any change that reduces the intrusion of government into my daily habits is a good change, regardless of party.
Then you should move to Haiti or Somalia. They are a paradise on earth with all that non-government intervention.
Next time you parrot a meme such as "less government is always better", feel free to engage your brain first. Just saying.
Next time you parrot a meme such as the false dichotomy that Somalia and Haiti are the only possible alternative to our current federal nanny state that thinks it needs to micromanage every aspect of every citizen's life, feel free to engage your brain first. Just saying.
And how will those nuclear weapons be delivered to their target without chemical energy? Do we strap them to swallows? Yes, I know that missiles can run on liquid hydrogen/oxygen propulsion, but I think most modern missiles use chemical propellants.
That depends---African or European swallows. Or are you suggesting ICBMs migrate?
I like bug suffering, but not people suffering
This is my new motto.
You must have missed the five-day forecast.
Yes, I know. Silo-based missiles are only one of three prongs of U.S. nuclear capabilities (I said we have 450 MT in silos. Your graph shows about 2,000 total, which seems about right). Your graph actually makes my point, though it seems I was off saying less than one percent. According to your graph, our current stockpile is a few percent (maybe as high as 10%---As I said, it's been a while since I looked at actual numbers, and I'm not above correction) of our peak stockpile. But the larger point stands: we have only a fraction of our peak capability.
Some of us enjoy live sports, and are willing to pay the (admittedly ridiculous) price for TV service to watch them.
Just FYI, I think you typed in the wrong address to your web browser. Probably you were going for "si" instead of "slashdot." Common mistake. :-)
And why do we feel the US is more trusted with this than anybody else?
Because we already have enough warheads to destroy the entire planet 100x over? How is a bit more Uranium going to help us? So we can destroy it 101x over?
No, we really don't. Nuclear stockpiles are a fraction of 1% of their cold war peaks (I calculated it once, but don't remember the exact number). I believe our silo-based missiles in the U.S. are down to 150 single-warhead Minuteman IIIs, at around 300 kT each. That's about 450 MT, which is still a lot of destructive power, but the largest single device ever detonated was 50 MT all by itself, and was supposedly capable of being boosted to 100 MT.
And the OP entirely missed the point: This was not "giving" new nukes to the U.S. This was taking old nukes out of circulation and using them for energy. Using your analogy, this is going from 100x to 99x or lower, not the other way around.
You have found your super hero.
Ernest Duchesne documented it in an 1897 paper,[18] which was not accepted by the Institut Pasteur because of his youth. In March 2000, doctors at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in San José, Costa Rica, published the manuscripts of the Costa Rican scientist and medical doctor Clodomiro (Clorito) Picado Twight (1887–1944). They reported Picado's observations on the inhibitory actions of fungi of the genus Penicillium between 1915 and 1927. Picado reported his discovery to the Paris Academy of Sciences, yet did not patent it, even though his investigations started years before Fleming's. Joseph Lister was experimenting with Penicillum in 1871 for his aseptic surgery. He found that it weakened the microbes, but then he dismissed the fungi.
2. That is a big problem and something hard to deal with. From my knowledge current US patent laws are first to file not first to discovery. So either you collect results and don't make them accessible to anyone or you collect results and make them open and hope that they are used to help people.
Not really that hard. The Wiki pretty much takes care of this. Under the new U.S. patent law, the first one to publish blocks all others from getting a patent. As long as the Wiki is publicly viewable, it's a publication. And one year after it's published, the patent rights die forever.
I'd be more concerned about the penicillin effect: a French guy discovered it first, but didn't patent it (anecdotally, because he wanted to "do the right thing" and give it to the world, though I don't have a verified source for that). Since it wasn't patented and wasn't patentable, it wouldn't be profitable. So the drug companies (again, anecdotally) ignored it. Until the 1940s, when (1) there were patentable improvements in the process, (2) there were suddenly a LOT of injured people who could use an antibacterial agent, and (3) (related to 2) the U.S. military heavily subsidized it.
Once they own the patent, they can do whatever they want with it, including negotiate a license.