On the other side of this debate, there's someone saying that trying to teach abstinence at 14 is culturally perverse. (I am in favor of sex education, by the way. Preferably by the parents, but that doesn't exclude the schools, since so many parents don't.)
I've been listening. I'm also pro-choice, but I'm not in favor of abortion.
It's just so difficult to stake out some sort of place in the middle. Personally I'm pro-abstinence before marriage, but I'm also intelligent enough to know what chance that has of working as a social policy. Since that has a snowball's chance of working, I'm also in favor of birth control. There are too many people in the world already, and parenting is a difficult enough task, that if someone doesn't want to be a parent, I don't want to force them to, "as a consequence of their actions." Every child coming into the world should be loved and wanted.
But none of that makes me think abortion is a good thing, or a casual choice, nor the choice my wife and I would make.
By the way, somewhere along the line, I do believe the fetus deserves human rights, but I don't believe it's as a fertilized egg. If abortion is chosen, it needs to be early, and IMHO "delaying tactics" are bad, too. "Safe, but seldom" were good words, IMHO.
Physical, intellectual, and emotional maturity are all different things, and can and usually do occur in different times. Sex is a powerful force, and if you're not ready for it on all fronts development can be hindered, diverted, or stalled. This doesn't just apply to girls, either.
By the way, do you have either a son or daughter? I have both, and they're both past 14. Unless you can say the same, I'd say that I'm "living this" more than you. That is, unless you're 14, in which case you're "living it", but I've been through both perspectives, child and parent.
You can't cover every base, you can just do your best, and hope.
I have a tremendously stubborn 19-yo daughter, and from everything we've seen, we think she's well set. No guy is going to pressure her into bed. She's smart, and understands odds and statistics. At some point, you have to trust your kid, and hope that you did a good enough job.
By the way, I don't think there's any one silver bullet to this problem. You just have to do your best at chipping away at it. But I still believe that working at the causes is better than simply forbidding.
No,sex isn't bad. But sex at 14 isn't the wisest course of action either, and pregnancy at 14 can really put a damper on life plans. That is, unless you're in the "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant," (and likely keep 'em ignorant, too) camp.
I don't dispute a word you said, and I'll add to it. The same fundamentalists who want to forbid (while thinking they're stopping) all abortions also want to forbid birth control. It's the same wishful thinking. Perhaps Monty Python said it best in "The Meaning of Life" in the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" sketch - when they viewed the Protestant side of the fence.
I still believe there is positive value in true "family values", and raising a girl who's self-esteem isn't so low that she feels she has to give in to sex in order to feel accepted. I have no illusions that that is a complete "fix," but I believe there is value to it, sex or no sex.
If you really want to get frosted, think about a foreign policy that pushes "abstinence-only" as a^H THE policy to combat AIDS in Africa, and tries to withhold funding for anything else. (Like condoms)
One of the most sensible things ever said about the whole matter. (especially on/.) I said one of the other most sensible things about abortion, when talking to a pro-life friend:"
"Do you want to forbid abortion, or do you want to stop it?"
Abortion isn't a hobby, people don't do it for fun. I don't even think people do it lightly - I think most people feel that they are forced into it by circumstances. (Whether or not those feelings are "valid" or not is a different matter.)
But I think things can be done to address the underlying circumstances that cause people to feel that they need an abortion, and perhaps one of the foremost is to instill in girls the self-esteem that can help in postponing sexual activity. I once heard, "The most important give a father can give his daughter is to love her mother." Model a healthy relationship. We're talking *real* family values, not the fake tripe generally peddled by politicians.
My biggest fear about overturning Roe v Wade is that people will feel that the job is done, and even start dismantling the things that are in place now, like counseling, adoption assistance, etc. Oh boy, we've written a rule! That'll stop it! Then self-righteous heads will plop back down into the sand.
Sorry, doesn't wash. The probes are not in powered flight, they're simple ballistic projectiles. No ion engines at work, which might show the effects you suggest.
It would clearly be interesting to construct a probe to test this effect using a greater distance that the difference between the Earth's perihelion and apihelion
These laptops are convenience machines, for writing reports, spreadsheets, maybe even a little gaming. There is no connection between the laptops and the embedded computers that actually run the ISS systems, and those computers do NOT run Windows. For that matter, they probably don't run Linux, but more likely some 10 or 15 year old Unix variation that was already well proven when the ISS bids went out. The laptops may connect to experiments - that I don't know.
Since they are convenience machines, with no planned networking, and since when they were put out for bid, Windows was the most convenient OS to use, that's what they have. That's also not to say that Linux laptop may not make it up there, some time.
Don't pretend that there's any sort of IT architecture on the ISS for anything but the base plan. Everything is spec and bid.
I would hope that they have image CDs up there, and not just for virus removal. I can see wanting to reimage some of the laptops for each new ISS crew, and some for each new shuttle visit. I wouldn't want to keep "history" on any of them - not without backup.
I'd rather see them showing another form of commitment to open governance, by making sure their communications are in open and non-encumbered formats. Not to mention not aiding and abetting a convicted monopolist in continuing and extending their monopoly.
The thing to remember is that "Project managers generate revenue," while "(real) workers are a cost." It's the goal of every company to maximize revenue while minimizing cost.
So of course if you can wrap your head around that kind of thinking, you'd expect the results you see.
The obvious flaw in this reasoning is recognizing that project managers are responsible for revenue, they don't generate it. The second flaw is simply the nearly universal lack of recognition for people with real skill who do real work.
Shaftoe and Waterhouse were a lot of fun in Cryptonomicon, and I liked the way they recurred and interacted in the two-era setting. It's just when you put them both in what is temporally, if not thematically, a prequel that I had a problem.
It was a lot of fun in Cryptonomicon. It was my first clue to not even bother starting to read the Baroque Cycle, and opinion reinforced by pretty much everything I later heard about the books.
Sometimes I think that there is a great deal of nudge-nudge, wink-wink between Washington and Tehran, a kind of "You be our bogeyman and we'll be yours," so that leaders of each country can keep their citizens in fear of the other, and therefore under tighter rein. We certainly dealt under the table with them in 1980, and I've heard that at least Halliburten was dealing with them long after they were identified as being in the "Axis of Evil."
Then there's Richard Clarke's "Scorpion's Gate", fiction written by an informed author...
TFA (I read it a day or two ago, before it was posted to Slashdot.) mentions this as a "cube" attack, along with the low-order polynomial stuff, etc.
Does this also mean that TIMECUBE is busted? I know it's been a while since TIMECUBE reared its ugly head here, but it would be good to hear that it's fully busted, not just sleeping.
(For the humor impaired, I know the cube attack has nothing to do with TIMECUBE other than sharing 4 letters, but it seemed like a neat idea.)
Musharriff just resigned. Pakistan isn't *all* fundamentalist, but there's a split in that country far worse than the red vs blue split in the US. Let it tip the wrong way, and don't forget that hard-core fundamentalists (of ANY stripe, Islamist, Christian, what have you) are willing to do practically anything, especially to infidels, and we won't have to wait for nuclear development, because Pakistan already has warheads, missiles, and more refined material.
I expect to see the political fallout from this within the next 10-20 years, assuming there isn't fallout of a more physical nature before then. There is something of an unholy alliance between China and the Islamic world, IMHO driven by pragmatism on China's part, and "enemy of my enemy is my friend" on the Islamic part. But at some point the Islamic side will wake up and see just how godless the Chinese can be, and the Chinese will wake up and see just how unsensibly non-pragmatic the Islamic fundamentalists can be, and things will become "interesting", in the Confucian sense.
At this point I should probably cry "tilt" and say that they don't really cool the water at all. Either turbine or piston, the effective energy you can get out of the thing is dependent on the heat of the steam going in minus the heat of whatever it is you get out. When I talk about cooling, and in all of these things you do cool, I suspect it's because when you're done with the steam you don't have water, you have "wet steam". (Incidentally, ISTR that for at least turbines, they have "driers" to get any liquid water droplets out and make sure that "dry steam" goes in. I'm not sure how important that is for a piston steam engine.) The cooling is to get it back to water - something that the boiler can use. I don't know, but strongly suspect that the water in the boiler is kept under pressure, and not permitted to expand into steam until it comes out.
In any case, to get back to the original point, you're heating hot water, not cold water.
When I was a teenager there were all sorts of tinfoil hat theories that the 100mpg carbeurator(s) had been invented, but Big Oil bought out the patent(s) and sat on the invention(s) in order to keep demand up.
The simple and obvious debunking to such an idea is that once issued, patents can be searched, and that any patents granted while I was a teenager are long expired. Incidentally, a search for "carbeurator" at USPTO of the post-1976 full-text database yields 5 hits, and only 4,349,002 looks terribly relevant to me. Of course an earlier search would be better, but I just tried it, and there's no full-text, only date and issue numbers. Maybe the 100mpg carbeurator really is in there, buried by the detritus of years and trivia like "method of exercising a cat" and "one-click shopping".
You heat hot water to get hotter water, or better yet, steam. In fact one of the limiting factors in steam power isn't the hot side, but the cold side, assuming you want to have your water in a closed cycle. Once the steam has done its work, lost its energy, and condensed back into water, it's not cold water. The most visible feature of a nuclear power plant is usually the cooling tower, not the containment vessel. That tower and the energy to run it is a testimony to how important it is to efficiency to cool the outgoing water - and we still wouldn't call it "cold" with all of that.
It didn't go "whoosh", I simply chose to respond seriously, for some odd reason.
Slashdot Mirror
My credit card has no signature. In the signature space, it says "Check ID". Whenever a retailer asks to see my ID, I thank him/her.
I don't disagree. You assigned to me something I didn't say. I recognize that best intentions don't work wonders.
Oh, I forgot to mention...
On the other side of this debate, there's someone saying that trying to teach abstinence at 14 is culturally perverse.
(I am in favor of sex education, by the way. Preferably by the parents, but that doesn't exclude the schools, since so many parents don't.)
I've been listening. I'm also pro-choice, but I'm not in favor of abortion.
It's just so difficult to stake out some sort of place in the middle. Personally I'm pro-abstinence before marriage, but I'm also intelligent enough to know what chance that has of working as a social policy. Since that has a snowball's chance of working, I'm also in favor of birth control. There are too many people in the world already, and parenting is a difficult enough task, that if someone doesn't want to be a parent, I don't want to force them to, "as a consequence of their actions." Every child coming into the world should be loved and wanted.
But none of that makes me think abortion is a good thing, or a casual choice, nor the choice my wife and I would make.
By the way, somewhere along the line, I do believe the fetus deserves human rights, but I don't believe it's as a fertilized egg. If abortion is chosen, it needs to be early, and IMHO "delaying tactics" are bad, too. "Safe, but seldom" were good words, IMHO.
Physical, intellectual, and emotional maturity are all different things, and can and usually do occur in different times. Sex is a powerful force, and if you're not ready for it on all fronts development can be hindered, diverted, or stalled. This doesn't just apply to girls, either.
By the way, do you have either a son or daughter?
I have both, and they're both past 14.
Unless you can say the same, I'd say that I'm "living this" more than you.
That is, unless you're 14, in which case you're "living it", but I've been through both perspectives, child and parent.
You can't cover every base, you can just do your best, and hope.
I have a tremendously stubborn 19-yo daughter, and from everything we've seen, we think she's well set. No guy is going to pressure her into bed. She's smart, and understands odds and statistics. At some point, you have to trust your kid, and hope that you did a good enough job.
By the way, I don't think there's any one silver bullet to this problem. You just have to do your best at chipping away at it. But I still believe that working at the causes is better than simply forbidding.
No,sex isn't bad.
But sex at 14 isn't the wisest course of action either, and pregnancy at 14 can really put a damper on life plans. That is, unless you're in the "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant," (and likely keep 'em ignorant, too) camp.
I don't dispute a word you said, and I'll add to it. The same fundamentalists who want to forbid (while thinking they're stopping) all abortions also want to forbid birth control. It's the same wishful thinking. Perhaps Monty Python said it best in "The Meaning of Life" in the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" sketch - when they viewed the Protestant side of the fence.
I still believe there is positive value in true "family values", and raising a girl who's self-esteem isn't so low that she feels she has to give in to sex in order to feel accepted. I have no illusions that that is a complete "fix," but I believe there is value to it, sex or no sex.
If you really want to get frosted, think about a foreign policy that pushes "abstinence-only" as a^H THE policy to combat AIDS in Africa, and tries to withhold funding for anything else. (Like condoms)
>Both sides of the abortion debate are wrong.
One of the most sensible things ever said about the whole matter. (especially on /.) I said one of the other most sensible things about abortion, when talking to a pro-life friend:"
"Do you want to forbid abortion, or do you want to stop it?"
Abortion isn't a hobby, people don't do it for fun. I don't even think people do it lightly - I think most people feel that they are forced into it by circumstances. (Whether or not those feelings are "valid" or not is a different matter.)
But I think things can be done to address the underlying circumstances that cause people to feel that they need an abortion, and perhaps one of the foremost is to instill in girls the self-esteem that can help in postponing sexual activity. I once heard, "The most important give a father can give his daughter is to love her mother." Model a healthy relationship. We're talking *real* family values, not the fake tripe generally peddled by politicians.
My biggest fear about overturning Roe v Wade is that people will feel that the job is done, and even start dismantling the things that are in place now, like counseling, adoption assistance, etc. Oh boy, we've written a rule! That'll stop it! Then self-righteous heads will plop back down into the sand.
Sorry, doesn't wash. The probes are not in powered flight, they're simple ballistic projectiles. No ion engines at work, which might show the effects you suggest.
It would clearly be interesting to construct a probe to test this effect using a greater distance that the difference between the Earth's perihelion and apihelion
Isn't this an FAQ?
These laptops are convenience machines, for writing reports, spreadsheets, maybe even a little gaming.
There is no connection between the laptops and the embedded computers that actually run the ISS systems, and those computers do NOT run Windows. For that matter, they probably don't run Linux, but more likely some 10 or 15 year old Unix variation that was already well proven when the ISS bids went out.
The laptops may connect to experiments - that I don't know.
Since they are convenience machines, with no planned networking, and since when they were put out for bid, Windows was the most convenient OS to use, that's what they have. That's also not to say that Linux laptop may not make it up there, some time.
Don't pretend that there's any sort of IT architecture on the ISS for anything but the base plan. Everything is spec and bid.
I would hope that they have image CDs up there, and not just for virus removal. I can see wanting to reimage some of the laptops for each new ISS crew, and some for each new shuttle visit. I wouldn't want to keep "history" on any of them - not without backup.
I'd rather see them showing another form of commitment to open governance, by making sure their communications are in open and non-encumbered formats. Not to mention not aiding and abetting a convicted monopolist in continuing and extending their monopoly.
Sounds like a business plan to me, one that any contemporary CEO would certainly buy into.
The thing to remember is that "Project managers generate revenue," while "(real) workers are a cost." It's the goal of every company to maximize revenue while minimizing cost.
So of course if you can wrap your head around that kind of thinking, you'd expect the results you see.
The obvious flaw in this reasoning is recognizing that project managers are responsible for revenue, they don't generate it. The second flaw is simply the nearly universal lack of recognition for people with real skill who do real work.
Congress??
That's what signing statements are for.
Shaftoe and Waterhouse were a lot of fun in Cryptonomicon, and I liked the way they recurred and interacted in the two-era setting. It's just when you put them both in what is temporally, if not thematically, a prequel that I had a problem.
Please. Please. Make it stop.
It was a lot of fun in Cryptonomicon.
It was my first clue to not even bother starting to read the Baroque Cycle, and opinion reinforced by pretty much everything I later heard about the books.
Sometimes I think that there is a great deal of nudge-nudge, wink-wink between Washington and Tehran, a kind of "You be our bogeyman and we'll be yours," so that leaders of each country can keep their citizens in fear of the other, and therefore under tighter rein. We certainly dealt under the table with them in 1980, and I've heard that at least Halliburten was dealing with them long after they were identified as being in the "Axis of Evil."
Then there's Richard Clarke's "Scorpion's Gate", fiction written by an informed author...
TFA (I read it a day or two ago, before it was posted to Slashdot.) mentions this as a "cube" attack, along with the low-order polynomial stuff, etc.
Does this also mean that TIMECUBE is busted?
I know it's been a while since TIMECUBE reared its ugly head here, but it would be good to hear that it's fully busted, not just sleeping.
(For the humor impaired, I know the cube attack has nothing to do with TIMECUBE other than sharing 4 letters, but it seemed like a neat idea.)
Heck, don't bother with Iran.
Musharriff just resigned. Pakistan isn't *all* fundamentalist, but there's a split in that country far worse than the red vs blue split in the US. Let it tip the wrong way, and don't forget that hard-core fundamentalists (of ANY stripe, Islamist, Christian, what have you) are willing to do practically anything, especially to infidels, and we won't have to wait for nuclear development, because Pakistan already has warheads, missiles, and more refined material.
re: PREEMINENT
I expect to see the political fallout from this within the next 10-20 years, assuming there isn't fallout of a more physical nature before then. There is something of an unholy alliance between China and the Islamic world, IMHO driven by pragmatism on China's part, and "enemy of my enemy is my friend" on the Islamic part. But at some point the Islamic side will wake up and see just how godless the Chinese can be, and the Chinese will wake up and see just how unsensibly non-pragmatic the Islamic fundamentalists can be, and things will become "interesting", in the Confucian sense.
At this point I should probably cry "tilt" and say that they don't really cool the water at all. Either turbine or piston, the effective energy you can get out of the thing is dependent on the heat of the steam going in minus the heat of whatever it is you get out. When I talk about cooling, and in all of these things you do cool, I suspect it's because when you're done with the steam you don't have water, you have "wet steam". (Incidentally, ISTR that for at least turbines, they have "driers" to get any liquid water droplets out and make sure that "dry steam" goes in. I'm not sure how important that is for a piston steam engine.) The cooling is to get it back to water - something that the boiler can use. I don't know, but strongly suspect that the water in the boiler is kept under pressure, and not permitted to expand into steam until it comes out.
In any case, to get back to the original point, you're heating hot water, not cold water.
When I was a teenager there were all sorts of tinfoil hat theories that the 100mpg carbeurator(s) had been invented, but Big Oil bought out the patent(s) and sat on the invention(s) in order to keep demand up.
The simple and obvious debunking to such an idea is that once issued, patents can be searched, and that any patents granted while I was a teenager are long expired. Incidentally, a search for "carbeurator" at USPTO of the post-1976 full-text database yields 5 hits, and only 4,349,002 looks terribly relevant to me. Of course an earlier search would be better, but I just tried it, and there's no full-text, only date and issue numbers. Maybe the 100mpg carbeurator really is in there, buried by the detritus of years and trivia like "method of exercising a cat" and "one-click shopping".
Not content to leave anything short of the point of absurdity...
Has anyone considered the energy needed to fire the bricks for your masonry oven?
I know this is humor, but...
You heat hot water to get hotter water, or better yet, steam. In fact one of the limiting factors in steam power isn't the hot side, but the cold side, assuming you want to have your water in a closed cycle. Once the steam has done its work, lost its energy, and condensed back into water, it's not cold water. The most visible feature of a nuclear power plant is usually the cooling tower, not the containment vessel. That tower and the energy to run it is a testimony to how important it is to efficiency to cool the outgoing water - and we still wouldn't call it "cold" with all of that.
It didn't go "whoosh", I simply chose to respond seriously, for some odd reason.