Thalidomide is a really good example. In that case the victims and the guilty parties were very easily identifiable. The problem with reparations for slavery or for indigenous people is that there has been so much mixing in the time since the crime was committed, and that inter-mixing (as in my example of the mixed marriage) is what makes it such a complex problem.
My stance is that it is complex to the point of being unsolvable.
Perhaps instead of righting the wrongs of previous generations, we should be working directly on the problems, i.e. instead of giving handouts to people due to the details of their parentage, give handouts based on their wealth and social status -- that way poor white folk get as much help as poor navajo folk. (I understand this is a dumb example, but you get my point -- instead of trying to un-knot the genetic flow of blame through the generations, work on directly on things you would classify as social problems.)
We did it, and we still benefit from the economic prosperity of our forefathers.
You may have done it, but I didn't. I moved to the US 6 years ago, so neither I, nor my wife and child owe anything to anyone. Just because I'm a white westerner doesn't mean I'm guilty by association. And just because I'm a white westerner, doesn't mean I'm guilty due to descending from governments who abused the poor native. I'm Irish. I have a good claim to whinge about my ancestors being abused by a rich European government.
In case your sarcasm detector is broken, I'm not claiming anyone owes me anything. I'm just trying to point out the idiocy (and horrendous complexity) in trying to figure out who owes who what.
Do people who's families have been here for 6 generations owe more than people who have only just arrived? What about kids of mixed marriages? In terms of slave reparations, do we just go on skin colour, or do people have to prove that their ancestors were slaves and didn't move here 50 years ago? What about a slave descendant who married a non-slave descendant -- do their kids get less?
What about someone who is half Native American, a quarter German and a quarter English, married to someone who is half Irish, and half Polish-Jewish? How do you settle the English/Irish, German/Jewish, English/Indian, debts there?
It's complicated to the point of being unsolvable, and it's too old. Forget it.
No one gets government handouts due to the particulars of their parentage.
It impressed me that she said she'd change her behaviour if a law were passed, but it annoyed me that she knows this is dangerous, but continues to do it any way. Her and her like are putting me and my family/friends at risk for very little apparent gain, and that kinda pisses me off. Admitting that something you do while driving is dangerous, while still doing it, is just like admitting to driving drunk.
How about I soften my tone, and only hope that she wrecks her car (and comes out completely unscathed) without hurting anyone else?
TFA says that they let the subjects see a stream of letters pass the screen, and let them decide when to push with their left or right hand. Maybe all they've detected is the moment the candidates decided, "The next time I see the letter 'R', I'm gonna push the left button"?
I could imagine that the average time to see the letter of your choice would be ~10 s, give or take.
As someone with a physics doctorate, I am appalled to hear physicists suggesting the use of Excel for real scientific studies. What are those physicists going to do when faced with (for example) particle physics data stored in C++ objects? Or face a control system dominated by Matlab? Or are handed a simulation package built in Fortran?
I'm not suggesting that all physics students must learn C++ and Matlab, but they should be taught a grown-up computer language so that they at least understand the concept of C++ objects, or how to begin solving the problem of communicating with a machine via a Matlab environment.
My examples are very specific, but you get the idea. Physicists need to be aware of certain computer programming concepts (which cannot be gleaned from experience with spreadsheets) otherwise they will fall flat on their face when faced with a real research environment.
The specific language is not very important, but physics tends to be dominated by C/C++ and Fortran, so these would definitely be a good place to start.
How do you decide i have been missing against my will? You can't. That's why they have to make a judgment call, and, in many cases, they will attempt to err on the side of caution
By your logic i must inform the local police office about my whereabouts all the time. Not at all. By his logic, if you go missing, they'll try to find you using your cell phone. If you don't want to be found, just switch it off. If you want to ensure your privacy, don't carry a cell phone at all.
Didn't the Gestapo have the same requirement in occupied France? I'm pretty surprised how quickly Godwin was invoked here!!
I thought the definition for a star was that there had to be fusion occurring at its core. TFA doesn't mention it, but I'm amazed that this object can be this cool, yet still have a nuclear furnace at its heart.
The Higgs field is supposed to suffuse everything. We're constantly immersed in it, and it is responsible for both some of the fundamental properties of the basic constituents of the universe and its largest features. That is, it sticks its fingers in pretty much everything Qui-Gon Jinn? Is that you?
Actually, the fact that the Higgs field is universal makes it much like gravity or electromagnetism. Theoretically, these fields extend to infinity, and, especially in the case of gravity, have/had a very profound effect on the evolution of the Universe. Perhaps gravitons should be considered the "God Particle"?
The problem isn't getting the visa renewed. It's getting the passport stamp renewed.
I can renew my visa from here, but if I leave the country before updating my passport, then I can't get back into the US without going back to the embassy in London.
And I can't get a new stamp whilst in the US, so if I ever want to travel anywhere outside this country, I have to do so with a ~1 week stop in London.
Who first used the name "The God Particle" for the Higgs? It certainly wasn't a high energy physicist!
The Higgs field is supposedly responsible for mass generation -- and that's it. Nothing else. Maybe something about "spontaneous symmetry breaking...mumble... big bang.. mumble... inflationary expansion... mumble", but hardly anything "God-like".
This nickname comes across as something dumb invented by the popular press in a half-assed attempt to communicate to regular folk how exciting the LHC is to us physicists.
Maybe/. could lead the charge to kill this nickname?
Ridiculous headline.
As a H1B myself, it's great to see someone trying to improve the system, even if it is archetypal/. enemy, Bill Gates. Now we need someone to work on the crazy rule that requires me to return home to renew my visa.
Why can't I do it from here? It's not for security reasons (I'm easier to investigate while in the US, not whilst abroad) and it's not for economic reasons (surely they'd rather I was working, instead of taking weeks off to go home and wait for a new visa), so why is it?
I don't think they'll be able to absorb all the CMB photons, since there would then be no thermal equilibrium. The situation where the black holes would absorb all the CMB is the same as the temperature of the background falling to zero -- in which case they'd evaporate away, regenerating the photon background.
In this case the endgame is identical to the situation where the Universe contains nothing more than very cold photons.
The Universe will continue to cool, tending asymptotically towards zero, which means that, as it cools below the temperature of individual black holes, they will begin to lose mass through Hawking radiation (rather than absorbing it from the CMB).
But those black holes that are cooler than the CMB (i.e. the larger ones) will continue to absorb mass from it -- thereby cooling and requiring the Universe to cool even more for them to reach the stage where they're hotter than the background.
So, is the rate of their cooling faster or slower than the rate of the cooling of the CMB photons? If they cool faster, they will *always* grow in size, never decaying. The Universe will be occupied only by supermassive black holes, whose temperature, due to their size, is always lower than the CMB. That's the end game.
If they cool more slowly than the CMB, all black holes will eventually decay, releasing all their mass into photons, which will themselves cool (redshift) due to the accelerating expansion of the Universe. The endgame is a Universe filled with highly redshifted (therefore very very cold) photons, and nothing else.
In the case where there are lots of black holes and nothing else, there's still no reason to think they will merge into one. Sure, they gravitationally attract each other, but for many of them the expansion of the space between them will be faster than they can ever catch up with. To me it sounds like we'll be left with a relatively smooth scattering of black holes throughout the Universe, not just one tera-giga-mega black hole.
Slashdot Mirror
Thalidomide is a really good example. In that case the victims and the guilty parties were very easily identifiable. The problem with reparations for slavery or for indigenous people is that there has been so much mixing in the time since the crime was committed, and that inter-mixing (as in my example of the mixed marriage) is what makes it such a complex problem.
My stance is that it is complex to the point of being unsolvable.
Perhaps instead of righting the wrongs of previous generations, we should be working directly on the problems, i.e. instead of giving handouts to people due to the details of their parentage, give handouts based on their wealth and social status -- that way poor white folk get as much help as poor navajo folk. (I understand this is a dumb example, but you get my point -- instead of trying to un-knot the genetic flow of blame through the generations, work on directly on things you would classify as social problems.)
We did it, and we still benefit from the economic prosperity of our forefathers.
You may have done it, but I didn't. I moved to the US 6 years ago, so neither I, nor my wife and child owe anything to anyone. Just because I'm a white westerner doesn't mean I'm guilty by association. And just because I'm a white westerner, doesn't mean I'm guilty due to descending from governments who abused the poor native. I'm Irish. I have a good claim to whinge about my ancestors being abused by a rich European government.
In case your sarcasm detector is broken, I'm not claiming anyone owes me anything. I'm just trying to point out the idiocy (and horrendous complexity) in trying to figure out who owes who what.
Do people who's families have been here for 6 generations owe more than people who have only just arrived? What about kids of mixed marriages? In terms of slave reparations, do we just go on skin colour, or do people have to prove that their ancestors were slaves and didn't move here 50 years ago? What about a slave descendant who married a non-slave descendant -- do their kids get less?
What about someone who is half Native American, a quarter German and a quarter English, married to someone who is half Irish, and half Polish-Jewish? How do you settle the English/Irish, German/Jewish, English/Indian, debts there?
It's complicated to the point of being unsolvable, and it's too old. Forget it.
No one gets government handouts due to the particulars of their parentage.
I love that this has been moderated "+5 Interesting" :D
Obviously lots of people moderating without clicking on the link.
Because most new machines come with Vista preinstalled. Not XP.
Now who looks dumb?
It impressed me that she said she'd change her behaviour if a law were passed, but it annoyed me that she knows this is dangerous, but continues to do it any way. Her and her like are putting me and my family/friends at risk for very little apparent gain, and that kinda pisses me off. Admitting that something you do while driving is dangerous, while still doing it, is just like admitting to driving drunk.
How about I soften my tone, and only hope that she wrecks her car (and comes out completely unscathed) without hurting anyone else?
I also hope her insurance company reads time.com.
I could imagine that the average time to see the letter of your choice would be ~10 s, give or take.
Yeah, I realised that was a dumb thing to say just after hitting the submit button. Ah well.
I'm not suggesting that all physics students must learn C++ and Matlab, but they should be taught a grown-up computer language so that they at least understand the concept of C++ objects, or how to begin solving the problem of communicating with a machine via a Matlab environment.
My examples are very specific, but you get the idea. Physicists need to be aware of certain computer programming concepts (which cannot be gleaned from experience with spreadsheets) otherwise they will fall flat on their face when faced with a real research environment.
The specific language is not very important, but physics tends to be dominated by C/C++ and Fortran, so these would definitely be a good place to start.
Even BASIC is better than Excel.....
Calvin says "The best proof for the existence of intelligent life is the fact that none of it has ever tried to contact us!"
Well if C.S.Lewis AND the Pope say there's intelligent life out there, then it *must* be true!
Only if you prove the Invisible Pink Unicorn doesn't exist.
That 4chan link is 404
Fascinating stuff indeed.
Of course, I'm not an expert on this, so I'm prepared to be wrong.
Actually, the fact that the Higgs field is universal makes it much like gravity or electromagnetism. Theoretically, these fields extend to infinity, and, especially in the case of gravity, have/had a very profound effect on the evolution of the Universe. Perhaps gravitons should be considered the "God Particle"?
...He is definitely a high-energy physicist, he was director of Fermilab for years and won a Nobel Prize for discovering the bottom quark....Ooops. Now I'm embarrassed. Got that pretty wrong, didn't I? :S
I still think it's a crap nickname though.
It *is* exciting. I just think that the nickname is dumb.
I can renew my visa from here, but if I leave the country before updating my passport, then I can't get back into the US without going back to the embassy in London.
And I can't get a new stamp whilst in the US, so if I ever want to travel anywhere outside this country, I have to do so with a ~1 week stop in London.
The Higgs field is supposedly responsible for mass generation -- and that's it. Nothing else. Maybe something about "spontaneous symmetry breaking...mumble... big bang.. mumble... inflationary expansion... mumble", but hardly anything "God-like".
This nickname comes across as something dumb invented by the popular press in a half-assed attempt to communicate to regular folk how exciting the LHC is to us physicists.
Maybe /. could lead the charge to kill this nickname?
Why can't I do it from here? It's not for security reasons (I'm easier to investigate while in the US, not whilst abroad) and it's not for economic reasons (surely they'd rather I was working, instead of taking weeks off to go home and wait for a new visa), so why is it?
In this case the endgame is identical to the situation where the Universe contains nothing more than very cold photons.
The Universe will continue to cool, tending asymptotically towards zero, which means that, as it cools below the temperature of individual black holes, they will begin to lose mass through Hawking radiation (rather than absorbing it from the CMB).
But those black holes that are cooler than the CMB (i.e. the larger ones) will continue to absorb mass from it -- thereby cooling and requiring the Universe to cool even more for them to reach the stage where they're hotter than the background.
So, is the rate of their cooling faster or slower than the rate of the cooling of the CMB photons? If they cool faster, they will *always* grow in size, never decaying. The Universe will be occupied only by supermassive black holes, whose temperature, due to their size, is always lower than the CMB. That's the end game.
If they cool more slowly than the CMB, all black holes will eventually decay, releasing all their mass into photons, which will themselves cool (redshift) due to the accelerating expansion of the Universe. The endgame is a Universe filled with highly redshifted (therefore very very cold) photons, and nothing else.
In the case where there are lots of black holes and nothing else, there's still no reason to think they will merge into one. Sure, they gravitationally attract each other, but for many of them the expansion of the space between them will be faster than they can ever catch up with. To me it sounds like we'll be left with a relatively smooth scattering of black holes throughout the Universe, not just one tera-giga-mega black hole.