> I'd guess it is good enough to be useful, but you'd not want to rely on that test alone.
Perhaps not, but if this test is cheap and easy it offers something very valuable nonetheless. You go to your doctor with some symptoms that seem fairly generic and non-serious, like many cancers do in the early stages. Your doctor knows there are cancers that present that way, he also know there is a much higher chance it's a pulled muscle. Right now he'd most likely recommend going to a physio (this is exactly the course it took in a friend of mine who recently passed away from lymphatic melanoma - it was misdiagnosed as a sprained groin muscle until well after it metastacized), in part because testing for the cancer on such a long shot is very expensive- and your medical insurance may not want to pay for it.
But now imagine a quick, cheap and easy blood test - it won't give you absolute confirmation but since it's cheap it's not worth it NOT to do it, and then if that says "red flag" he sends you for the more expensive and reliable tests. Even if it's only 50% successful that's twice as many cancers caught really early - and taken care of while it's still easy and likely to work.
There are plenty of cancers that can be entirely prevented if you catch the risk early. Bowel cancer can be guaranteed prevented with annual colonoscopy's - but that's a painful and uncomfortable and expensive procedure, hardly something you want to do if you're not at risk (especially for a cancer that runs so strongly in families) so a lot of people don't. But if you could catch it early, you can actually CURE early stage bowel cancer with this simple process, once it metastasises it's usually a death sentence.
Anything that makes early detection cheaper, will save millions of lives.
>On the other hand, if the +apple runs into a brick wall at several km/sec, itâ(TM)s going to make a fair-sized hole. Where did the energy to break the bricks come from? You donâ(TM)t expect the wall to reform as the â"apple deals it a second blow, do you?
Nope, nothing of the kind, at most I would expect the bricks it knocks lose to land a tiny bit further away. The +apple hits, transferring kinetic energy to the wall (it had to have a lot if it was moving at several km/h as in your hypotheses) - which knocks the bricks out and makes the hole.
Now what happens when the -apple hits depends on what the nature of the particle's are, more specifically whether they obey the Pauli exclusion principle. If not, it passes straight through the wall without breaking it at all (though the repelling between the particles as it passes through might cause some micro-cracks). This is the prevailing theory. If it does obey the exclusion principle - then you have energy transfer just like with the +apple, and the +bricks move WITH the energy regardless of the source, so the bricks fall in the same direction - however because as they are knocked out they are ALSO repelled by the -apple's negative mass, they fall a few microns further than when the +apple hit.
At least, that's my understanding. I am not a physicist, just a fan of physics.
If it exists, we can do something so much better - we can build Alcubiere Drives - that is, the real version of what Star Trek called "Warp Drives".
(This reference is not accidental - Star Trek inspired Alcubiere's research as he himself pointed out in an e-mail to Shatner - he wanted to test if Star Trek's loophole was really possible, and he found out it is at least theoretically possible, but only if negative mass exists).
>As it should be. We need fewer laws, not more of them.
While I agree with the general principle you DO need enough of a functioning system to be able to actually pass the good laws and revoke the bad ones. A government that cannot get either done at all (which is what the US has today) is nothing but a massive and worthless expense.
As an anarchist the system I favour would make new laws much easier to suggest and pass than any govenrment but, with a much greater level of oversight (since everybody votes on every proposed law) and by removing politicians you make corruption far more difficult and oligarchy all but impossible. On the other hand - libertarians generally hate the idea because they know that an anarchism is likely to be stronger welfare state with the sensible ideas from socialism in place and the bad ones ignored (or rapidly revoked) instead of their "unregulate everything" madness. A small government gives you all the downsides of a government with none of the potential benefits. No government or big government are both better ideas (actually - I would argue that no government is the biggest government of them all - since now EVERYBODY is part of the government).
So, considering that the average person is still paying in almost 4 times as long as they are gaining, there should be no reason why this cannot be solved.
On the other hand - that should pretty much destroy your unemployment worries, since you'll have more retirees than new entrants - looking for work should become a seller's market (which I consider the ideal economic situation) - where wages once again rise, benefits are stronger and quality-of-life over-all goes up tremendously for the entire population. The happiest and wealthiest nations are the ones where for each job-seeker you have several companies competing for their services, trying to outbid one another to get you to work for them.
>How would you resolve this in law? I'm assuming you want to allow this guy not to make a cake for the KKK, but wouldn't want him to be allowed to put up a sign saying "no disabled" or "no whites" in his shop. Or are you saying you would just let people arbitrarily discriminate on the grounds of personal bigotry?
Actually - much as I despise the KKK I would say the real matter comes down to the cake. If it's just a plain cake with no symbols or anything- then he SHOULD have to bake it, he may dislike their beliefs but the mere fact that they would consider coming to him proves they can't be all that sincere in them to begin with. He can't deny little Timmy a birthday cake because he thinks Timmy's dad may belong to the Klan. On the other hand if it's a Swastika Cake with the letters "KKK" on it he can freely refuse to bake it.
There is no discrimination involved in that at all - he is simply choosing not to sell a particular product, that's no more discrimination than Herbalife having qualms about selling heroine.
And what about that same right for workers ? Should employers be able to mandate what religion their workers ascribe to ? If not, then they also do not get to mandate which religious morals their workers have to obey on their own time. And that means- their right to religious freedom on contraception ENDS at whether THEY (the employers) USE it. They get ZERO say in whether anybody else does, OR how said people obtain it.
Your freedom ENDS where mine begins. My sex life is none of my employer's business, nor is what contraception I use or do no use. They have no right to know it, and any opinions they have on it they can keep to themselves since they have no right to enforce those opinions on me.
>If it's not testable, then by definition it is not science.
I said it's HARD to test, I didn't say it's impossible. The REASON it's hard to test is because it's a theory about what may have happened billions of years ago - and billion year old samples are kind of rare. The big bang theory was hard to test for the same reasons and took decades to become accepted - back in the 1960's it was laughed of as glorified creationism.
The whole point is to test the theory because this IS a 2 billion year old sample.
>What bollocks. I think the actual question to ask is how it's possible to create the conditions for an very large (the size of the mine)and extremely low density (the concentration of natural ore) nuclear reactor.
No bollocks involved - those laws depend on the fundamental constants. Scientists have speculated for decades about the possibility that these may have been slightly different in the distant past - and thus the laws of physics would not be exactly the same.
This is quite controversial, mavericky science because it's very hard to test - but it's actually become less so in the past 20 years or so because some evidence from astronomy (in particular the cosmic background radiation) is suggesting that they may have been slightly different in the very early days of the universe. Oklo offers a chance to look more recently (on a universal scale) but still a long time ago - 2 billion years, about half the lifetime of the planet.
If there had been subtle and slight changes over the years - then 2 billion years ago should be enough to detect some - much smaller even than what cosmic radiation data has hinted at, but on the same line (that said there are other theories that could explain the radiation data - the question is unanswered at the moment since none of them have any other supporting evidence yet either).
Now there's no proof the fundamental constants have changed at all since the big bang, but there's no proof they haven't. For most physics it's perfectly adequate to assume they have always been constant, but if they weren't and we could determine that, it would change a lot of our understanding of physics - particularly the physics of the early universe. By factoring in those different values we could possibly explain a lot of the other things which currently remain open questions.
So while it's unlikely - it's nevertheless and most decidedly NOT bollocks. It's maverick science for sure - but it's still science and still done according to the scientific method. If it yields results those results will be greatly valuable. Just because there's a 99.999% chance your theory is a dead end, doesn't mean it's not proper science to damn well test it and make sure.
Don't be so sure, we think of history as the big things politicians, generals and kings do - but historians tend not to care much about those, if only because they are already as well documented as they are going to be. Generally historians are more interested in the end in how ordinary people LIVED at that time.
One of the most valuable archeological digs ever found from the Roman occupation in Britain was an old trash-heap, because on it we found lots of things which were thrown away as worthless then - but because of that were valuable now as they hadn't been preserved through the usual channels. We found a letter sent from Rome to the wife of a Roman soldier telling stories of what the family has been up to. We found an early forerunner of the ipad (a wax covered slab on which you could scribble notes with a stylus, a quick heat-up let you smooth out the scribbles and reuse it).
Some of the most insightful pictures we have of more recent events like the American Civil War or the Anglo-Boer war were pictures no newspaper would publish - family pictures which show what the fashions were for example.
The point is - there is absolutely no way of predicting upfront what will have historical value someday, and the things we tend to assume will have none have a tendency to become the most valuable EXACTLY BECAUSE it was NOT valued at the time and this means that to future historians - those will be rare finds.
>I think the progression was something like: PCMCIA->CF->MMC->SD, and USB Flash (and other stuff like Sony's MemoryStick) branched off around the same time as MMC.
It's possible that this was a South African magazine - at the time laptops (and thus PCMCIA ports) were pretty much the exclusive terain of executives here - normal folk (even in companies) had desktops.
I do remember that the article itself concluded that the most likely winner was going to be JAZ Zipdrives... instead they died a quiet death not long after.
Indeed, it is still the standard icon for "Save file to disk" almost 2 decades since the most likely disk destination became "the hard drive".
I remember back in 1998/1999 somewhere one computer magazine ran an article on "what will replace the floppy disk" ? Many ideas were touted, in subsequent letters most readers were betting the farm on ever-cheaper and faster rewriteable optical media as cd-burners got cheaper too. Nobody saw the USB flask coming until it was upon us - let alone it's more recent offspring like the MicroSD.
Not to mention: *Measles is fatal in a significant minority of cases - an immune herd rules out those cases being exposed before vaccination. *The people most likely to have side effects from vaccination are the ones who also need it most - they are the people who will DIE if they get the REAL thing.
>Equal opportunity laws already reach such an insane level around here that jobs that can only be done by a certain gender still have to be offered "gender neutral". Dare to show openly that you'd rather hire a man than a woman and be prepared to be sued into oblivion.
You're going to have to give me some examples here because I can't think of a single job that where your capacity to do it is determined by your gender except maybe "wet nurse" and that's hardly a lucrative field these days (not to mention - with modern technology quite feasible for a man to do - they have all the required body parts - they just need the hormones - alcoholics frequently lactate because their damaged livers can no longer filter out their naturally produced progresterone and the build up activates their mammary glands).
Seriously what possible job could be done by only a certain gender ? In fact the concept makes NO sense since gender is a socially defined concept with no physical reality to it at all - even if I assume that when you said "gender" you meant to say "sex" (which is a physical thing) I STILL can't come up with any examples.
>How wrong you are - where I live Muslims are the majority
That doesn't mean you know any of them. In fact - if you express the kind of opinions to them that you express here - then I would be quite surprised if any of them ever wanted to hang out with you, it would be like a black guy going out for a beer with the grand dragon of the KKK.
None of the 35 million Muslims in my city have ever celebrated an atrocity, none of their priests have ever encouraged anybody to do the same. In fact - you walk into a Muslim owned shop here you will see signs on the walls that say things like: I Shall Love All Mankind
Encouraging each other to live in peace with the non-muslim community here ( which is only slightly smaller at around 30 million the vast majority of whom are protestant Christians and who have their shops decorated with signs that spread the same message in the name of Jesus instead) - these communities live among each other, with each other, in perfect peace and harmony - both are convinced that the other's religion is wrong but neither group thinks violence is justified or allowed and in fact both groups spend most of their time trying to convert the other by competing over who can do the most charity for the poor population of the city !
The deadliest religious atrocity we have are pot luck dinners ! The worst problem we face is that these two religions are VERY happy to cooperate on the things they agree on - which means a constant stream of political jockeying against our laws allowing gay marriage and legal abortions which is funded and attended by both groups. A current law banning corporal punishment is being vehemently opposed by religious leaders- FROM BOTH religions, working TOGETHER. These aren't good things to be doing -but it's interesting that they are quite happy to put aside their differences and lobby collectively for the things they agree on (even when those things are wrong).
I LIVE among the proof of how wrong you are.
The only thing I can conclude from your Islamophobia is that you don't actually, personally, KNOW a single Muslim. Not really *know*. Like all discrimination - Islamophobia can ONLY exist in ignorance.
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Except that five posts up we have SCIENTIFIC PROOF that you are wrong about everything you say.
But yeah, ideologues will always choose common sense over evidence based science.
> I'd guess it is good enough to be useful, but you'd not want to rely on that test alone.
Perhaps not, but if this test is cheap and easy it offers something very valuable nonetheless.
You go to your doctor with some symptoms that seem fairly generic and non-serious, like many cancers do in the early stages. Your doctor knows there are cancers that present that way, he also know there is a much higher chance it's a pulled muscle. Right now he'd most likely recommend going to a physio (this is exactly the course it took in a friend of mine who recently passed away from lymphatic melanoma - it was misdiagnosed as a sprained groin muscle until well after it metastacized), in part because testing for the cancer on such a long shot is very expensive- and your medical insurance may not want to pay for it.
But now imagine a quick, cheap and easy blood test - it won't give you absolute confirmation but since it's cheap it's not worth it NOT to do it, and then if that says "red flag" he sends you for the more expensive and reliable tests.
Even if it's only 50% successful that's twice as many cancers caught really early - and taken care of while it's still easy and likely to work.
There are plenty of cancers that can be entirely prevented if you catch the risk early. Bowel cancer can be guaranteed prevented with annual colonoscopy's - but that's a painful and uncomfortable and expensive procedure, hardly something you want to do if you're not at risk (especially for a cancer that runs so strongly in families) so a lot of people don't.
But if you could catch it early, you can actually CURE early stage bowel cancer with this simple process, once it metastasises it's usually a death sentence.
Anything that makes early detection cheaper, will save millions of lives.
>On the other hand, if the +apple runs into a brick wall at several km/sec, itâ(TM)s going to make a fair-sized hole. Where did the energy to break the bricks come from? You donâ(TM)t expect the wall to reform as the â"apple deals it a second blow, do you?
Nope, nothing of the kind, at most I would expect the bricks it knocks lose to land a tiny bit further away.
The +apple hits, transferring kinetic energy to the wall (it had to have a lot if it was moving at several km/h as in your hypotheses) - which knocks the bricks out and makes the hole.
Now what happens when the -apple hits depends on what the nature of the particle's are, more specifically whether they obey the Pauli exclusion principle. If not, it passes straight through the wall without breaking it at all (though the repelling between the particles as it passes through might cause some micro-cracks). This is the prevailing theory.
If it does obey the exclusion principle - then you have energy transfer just like with the +apple, and the +bricks move WITH the energy regardless of the source, so the bricks fall in the same direction - however because as they are knocked out they are ALSO repelled by the -apple's negative mass, they fall a few microns further than when the +apple hit.
At least, that's my understanding. I am not a physicist, just a fan of physics.
If it exists, we can do something so much better - we can build Alcubiere Drives - that is, the real version of what Star Trek called "Warp Drives".
(This reference is not accidental - Star Trek inspired Alcubiere's research as he himself pointed out in an e-mail to Shatner - he wanted to test if Star Trek's loophole was really possible, and he found out it is at least theoretically possible, but only if negative mass exists).
>As it should be. We need fewer laws, not more of them.
While I agree with the general principle you DO need enough of a functioning system to be able to actually pass the good laws and revoke the bad ones.
A government that cannot get either done at all (which is what the US has today) is nothing but a massive and worthless expense.
As an anarchist the system I favour would make new laws much easier to suggest and pass than any govenrment but, with a much greater level of oversight (since everybody votes on every proposed law) and by removing politicians you make corruption far more difficult and oligarchy all but impossible.
On the other hand - libertarians generally hate the idea because they know that an anarchism is likely to be stronger welfare state with the sensible ideas from socialism in place and the bad ones ignored (or rapidly revoked) instead of their "unregulate everything" madness. A small government gives you all the downsides of a government with none of the potential benefits.
No government or big government are both better ideas (actually - I would argue that no government is the biggest government of them all - since now EVERYBODY is part of the government).
So, considering that the average person is still paying in almost 4 times as long as they are gaining, there should be no reason why this cannot be solved.
On the other hand - that should pretty much destroy your unemployment worries, since you'll have more retirees than new entrants - looking for work should become a seller's market (which I consider the ideal economic situation) - where wages once again rise, benefits are stronger and quality-of-life over-all goes up tremendously for the entire population. The happiest and wealthiest nations are the ones where for each job-seeker you have several companies competing for their services, trying to outbid one another to get you to work for them.
>How would you resolve this in law? I'm assuming you want to allow this guy not to make a cake for the KKK, but wouldn't want him to be allowed to put up a sign saying "no disabled" or "no whites" in his shop. Or are you saying you would just let people arbitrarily discriminate on the grounds of personal bigotry?
Actually - much as I despise the KKK I would say the real matter comes down to the cake. If it's just a plain cake with no symbols or anything- then he SHOULD have to bake it, he may dislike their beliefs but the mere fact that they would consider coming to him proves they can't be all that sincere in them to begin with. He can't deny little Timmy a birthday cake because he thinks Timmy's dad may belong to the Klan.
On the other hand if it's a Swastika Cake with the letters "KKK" on it he can freely refuse to bake it.
There is no discrimination involved in that at all - he is simply choosing not to sell a particular product, that's no more discrimination than Herbalife having qualms about selling heroine.
It's not your money.
Health insurance is a benefit- that makes it the EMPLOYEE'S money -to spend as THEY see fit.
And what about that same right for workers ? Should employers be able to mandate what religion their workers ascribe to ?
If not, then they also do not get to mandate which religious morals their workers have to obey on their own time.
And that means- their right to religious freedom on contraception ENDS at whether THEY (the employers) USE it. They get ZERO say in whether anybody else does, OR how said people obtain it.
Your freedom ENDS where mine begins. My sex life is none of my employer's business, nor is what contraception I use or do no use. They have no right to know it, and any opinions they have on it they can keep to themselves since they have no right to enforce those opinions on me.
Didn't you DO that already ?
Or have you forgotten Abu Ghraib already...
He didn't actually do anything different to what every OTHER banker does every day...
>If it's not testable, then by definition it is not science.
I said it's HARD to test, I didn't say it's impossible.
The REASON it's hard to test is because it's a theory about what may have happened billions of years ago - and billion year old samples are kind of rare. The big bang theory was hard to test for the same reasons and took decades to become accepted - back in the 1960's it was laughed of as glorified creationism.
The whole point is to test the theory because this IS a 2 billion year old sample.
>What bollocks. I think the actual question to ask is how it's possible to create the conditions for an very large (the size of the mine)and extremely low density (the concentration of natural ore) nuclear reactor.
No bollocks involved - those laws depend on the fundamental constants. Scientists have speculated for decades about the possibility that these may have been slightly different in the distant past - and thus the laws of physics would not be exactly the same.
This is quite controversial, mavericky science because it's very hard to test - but it's actually become less so in the past 20 years or so because some evidence from astronomy (in particular the cosmic background radiation) is suggesting that they may have been slightly different in the very early days of the universe.
Oklo offers a chance to look more recently (on a universal scale) but still a long time ago - 2 billion years, about half the lifetime of the planet.
If there had been subtle and slight changes over the years - then 2 billion years ago should be enough to detect some - much smaller even than what cosmic radiation data has hinted at, but on the same line (that said there are other theories that could explain the radiation data - the question is unanswered at the moment since none of them have any other supporting evidence yet either).
Now there's no proof the fundamental constants have changed at all since the big bang, but there's no proof they haven't. For most physics it's perfectly adequate to assume they have always been constant, but if they weren't and we could determine that, it would change a lot of our understanding of physics - particularly the physics of the early universe.
By factoring in those different values we could possibly explain a lot of the other things which currently remain open questions.
So while it's unlikely - it's nevertheless and most decidedly NOT bollocks. It's maverick science for sure - but it's still science and still done according to the scientific method. If it yields results those results will be greatly valuable.
Just because there's a 99.999% chance your theory is a dead end, doesn't mean it's not proper science to damn well test it and make sure.
"Do not trust the money, Geeks. Whatever it is, I fear the Redmondians even when they bring gifts."
Don't be so sure, we think of history as the big things politicians, generals and kings do - but historians tend not to care much about those, if only because they are already as well documented as they are going to be.
Generally historians are more interested in the end in how ordinary people LIVED at that time.
One of the most valuable archeological digs ever found from the Roman occupation in Britain was an old trash-heap, because on it we found lots of things which were thrown away as worthless then - but because of that were valuable now as they hadn't been preserved through the usual channels. We found a letter sent from Rome to the wife of a Roman soldier telling stories of what the family has been up to. We found an early forerunner of the ipad (a wax covered slab on which you could scribble notes with a stylus, a quick heat-up let you smooth out the scribbles and reuse it).
Some of the most insightful pictures we have of more recent events like the American Civil War or the Anglo-Boer war were pictures no newspaper would publish - family pictures which show what the fashions were for example.
The point is - there is absolutely no way of predicting upfront what will have historical value someday, and the things we tend to assume will have none have a tendency to become the most valuable EXACTLY BECAUSE it was NOT valued at the time and this means that to future historians - those will be rare finds.
So... you want to turn the moon into Australia 2.0 ?
>I think the progression was something like: PCMCIA->CF->MMC->SD, and USB Flash (and other stuff like Sony's MemoryStick) branched off around the same time as MMC.
It's possible that this was a South African magazine - at the time laptops (and thus PCMCIA ports) were pretty much the exclusive terain of executives here - normal folk (even in companies) had desktops.
I do remember that the article itself concluded that the most likely winner was going to be JAZ Zipdrives... instead they died a quiet death not long after.
> signposts the idea of miniature storage.
Indeed, it is still the standard icon for "Save file to disk" almost 2 decades since the most likely disk destination became "the hard drive".
I remember back in 1998/1999 somewhere one computer magazine ran an article on "what will replace the floppy disk" ? Many ideas were touted, in subsequent letters most readers were betting the farm on ever-cheaper and faster rewriteable optical media as cd-burners got cheaper too.
Nobody saw the USB flask coming until it was upon us - let alone it's more recent offspring like the MicroSD.
Not to mention:
*Measles is fatal in a significant minority of cases - an immune herd rules out those cases being exposed before vaccination.
*The people most likely to have side effects from vaccination are the ones who also need it most - they are the people who will DIE if they get the REAL thing.
You're not anti-vaccine... you're just pro-infectious-disease.
Nobody uses wetnurses of either sex anymore, I was being facetious.
You don't think maybe you should let their MOTHER do that ??!
>Equal opportunity laws already reach such an insane level around here that jobs that can only be done by a certain gender still have to be offered "gender neutral". Dare to show openly that you'd rather hire a man than a woman and be prepared to be sued into oblivion.
You're going to have to give me some examples here because I can't think of a single job that where your capacity to do it is determined by your gender except maybe "wet nurse" and that's hardly a lucrative field these days (not to mention - with modern technology quite feasible for a man to do - they have all the required body parts - they just need the hormones - alcoholics frequently lactate because their damaged livers can no longer filter out their naturally produced progresterone and the build up activates their mammary glands).
Seriously what possible job could be done by only a certain gender ? In fact the concept makes NO sense since gender is a socially defined concept with no physical reality to it at all - even if I assume that when you said "gender" you meant to say "sex" (which is a physical thing) I STILL can't come up with any examples.
>How wrong you are - where I live Muslims are the majority
That doesn't mean you know any of them. In fact - if you express the kind of opinions to them that you express here - then I would be quite surprised if any of them ever wanted to hang out with you, it would be like a black guy going out for a beer with the grand dragon of the KKK.
None of the 35 million Muslims in my city have ever celebrated an atrocity, none of their priests have ever encouraged anybody to do the same. In fact - you walk into a Muslim owned shop here you will see signs on the walls that say things like:
I
Shall
Love
All
Mankind
Encouraging each other to live in peace with the non-muslim community here ( which is only slightly smaller at around 30 million the vast majority of whom are protestant Christians and who have their shops decorated with signs that spread the same message in the name of Jesus instead) - these communities live among each other, with each other, in perfect peace and harmony - both are convinced that the other's religion is wrong but neither group thinks violence is justified or allowed and in fact both groups spend most of their time trying to convert the other by competing over who can do the most charity for the poor population of the city !
The deadliest religious atrocity we have are pot luck dinners ! The worst problem we face is that these two religions are VERY happy to cooperate on the things they agree on - which means a constant stream of political jockeying against our laws allowing gay marriage and legal abortions which is funded and attended by both groups. A current law banning corporal punishment is being vehemently opposed by religious leaders- FROM BOTH religions, working TOGETHER.
These aren't good things to be doing -but it's interesting that they are quite happy to put aside their differences and lobby collectively for the things they agree on (even when those things are wrong).
I LIVE among the proof of how wrong you are.
The only thing I can conclude from your Islamophobia is that you don't actually, personally, KNOW a single Muslim. Not really *know*.
Like all discrimination - Islamophobia can ONLY exist in ignorance.