Hussein was delivered to justice only because the air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 19 March 2003, which was intended to kill him, missed. This preceeded the actual invasion by regular forces by 4 days. I noticed that Hussein's heinous sons didn't get "delivered to justice". If I were in a country harboring terrorist leaders wanted by an outside major power, I'd rather they come after them with a drone than with an invasion -- much less risk to me personally. Actually my opinion would be that it wouldn't be a good idea to provide those guys safe harbor in the first place. The options of just letting them go about their business or asking them to turn themselves in doesn't seem realistic.
"Big rockets were needed for big nukes." -- at least this was factually incorrect by the time NASA came around in 1958. The military originally developed the Saturn I, predecessor to Apollo's Saturn IB and Saturn V in the late 50's/early 60's but gave it up to NASA when they determined that they had no military use for a rocket that big -- the nukes were coming down nicely in size. When the military later needed boosters bigger than their biggest ICBM (Titan II) they independently developed the Titan III and its successors which were cheaper than the Saturns. I've also heard the "Skylab Spy Station" theory before but don't buy it because the Air Force had their own spy station in the works (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) pretty far along in the 60's with astronauts and everything then gave it up because their unmanned spy satellites were doing the job.
According to the airline, a senior colleague with more experience landing 777s, including at San Francisco, sat beside him as co-pilot. and "Ultimately, it’s the trainer pilot who is responsible for the flight,” Mr. Yoon, the Asiana president, said, referring to Lee Jeong-min, 49, the more experienced pilot who sat in the co-pilot’s seat when Lee Kang-guk was landing the plane. He had 3,220 hours of flying time with 777s. These are from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-airlines-san-francisco-plane-crash.html?_r=0
How about, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes." and, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Both from Lincoln's second inaugural address. The whole thing is worth a read. Which American (or any other nation's) leader would you consider profound if Lincoln doesn't make it into that class?
I did something similar -- flew tactical jets for 10 years then went into Engineering (electrical/computer). My first bit of advice is: Stay in the military and complete 20 years of service. Military salaries for mid-grade officers and above are competitive with engineering salaries once the untaxed benefits are figured in. If you really want to get over towards engineering, work your way over to the Systems Commands (Naval Air Systems Command for USN, USAF has something similar). You will be doing an engineering job there, systems and engineering management, but that's what mid-career engineering mostly is anyway. If you are like me, you will miss the military, especially the aircraft, stay in the cockpit as long as you can; it will feel strange looking back in as a civilian especially if you end up in a defense company. I was very happy to get back into the military cockpit for a couple of years on a recall to active duty after seven years out. Unless you just have to get out for some reason, the advantages of staying in for 20 years are compelling, and starting something new in your early 40's isn't that much different from doing it in your mid-30s. As far as getting going again when you get out -- I don't know if its feasible for you but I went straight into grad school for a Master's degree. Once in the civilian world, I found that my jet fighter experience was an interesting novelty but it didn't really count for a whole lot, even in the defense companies. Military experience in the Systems Commands would be better. Or just go fly for the airlines.
The AC just stated this, but I'll expound -- the "Fourier transform" uncertainty you describe comes from the simple mathematics of the basics of Quantum theory and I don't really see a way to refute it if you accept those basics (observables of position and momentum are described by linear operators which don't commute). Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (observation of position disturbs momentum and vice versa) is usually described as limitation in the way we can make observations and as such seemed to be (at first glance at least) to be not fundamental and something that could be defeated with clever experimental apparatus.
Correct, but incomplete -- By 1976 (only 19 years after Sputnik 1) we had two nuclear powered, robot laboratories (Vikings 1 and 2) on Mars looking for life and signs of life and taking awesome pictures. So now it is 37 years later and we have Curiosity, a nuclear powered, robot laboratory looking for signs of life and taking awesome pictures, which can move around on Mars. The leap from Sputnik to Viking sure seems to be a lot more than that from Viking to Curiosity. Not to dismiss the awesomeness of Curiosity, but most of the really incredible stuff in space exploration had already been done by the first 25 years. I'll go out on a limb here but say that for pure wonder at the advancement of space exploration, science, and engineering I doubt we'll see anything in the next 50 years which matches 1950-2000 or 1900-1950 before that.
Doesn't London have about four cameras trained on each resident 24/7? Last I heard, England was supposed to be a free democracy, too. Where are your protests and riots?
An AC basically just said the same thing -- Slashdot seems to have a very large contingent of "Libertarians", some rational, some unhinged. How this happened continues to be a subject of discussion among my techy friends. This isn't "News for Nerds" but it does cater to much of the Slashdot readership, both the Libertarians and we who are interested, but not convinced, by their arguments.
I see that you already responded to the question I just posed to you. No need to reply to mine. I'm not sure that climatology is quite to the rigor that astronomy is due to the complexity of the field, but that doesn't mean it isn't -- I just don't know. It is certainly at the point where the argument for AGW is easier to make than the argument that all the observations in favor of it, "just happened to fall in line at this time in history". Maybe that's not enough to be actionable at this time, maybe it is; that is really probably an argument for the risk management experts, whoever they are.
By your definition astronomy, paleontology, and any part of geology which hypothesizes the formation of rocks and major landforms are not proper science. There are sciences which are not experimental sciences but still make testable predictions. The predictions are along the line of, "if you make the following observation, you will observe this..", or, "if you build this type of instrument and look in this place, you will observe this phenomenon...". The theory of the big bang cosmology made a testable prediction that the cosmic microwave background radiation would be observed, if someone would build the right radiotelescope and look for it. As it turned out the CMB was first observed accidentally but soon was recognized as the observation predicted by the big bang theory. Since then there have been other predictions made by the big bang cosmology theory such as cosmic helium abundances and structure in the CMB spectrum; all were subsequently observed. So was this speculation or science?
"And the same data tells us that this is far below the carbon or temperatures that Earth experienced during most of the time that mammals and primates evolved and that there is no reason to believe that higher CO2 concentrations are anything but favorable." -- true but those conditions (CO2 and temperature) are not the ones under which Human Civilization evolved over the last several thousand years, and so is almost certainly best adapted for. Doesn't matter what was better for the tree sloths and lemurs before us.
1, as the multiplicative unit in the algebraic ring of integers, has a special significance and does not work like the other integers in almost all number theory discussions. Same goes for 0 as the additive unit. These two "numbers" have special properties in most algebraic constructions (groups, fields, rings, etc.). A legitimate question you ask there, but the answer pretty much is just that 1 is "special" and doesn't "count" for this issue. Perhaps a better answer might be that because of 1's special properties in the ring of integers, including it in many theorems, formulas, etc, causes the construction under study to collapse to a trivial subset of the complexity of the actual problem and so become not useful in studying the general problem -- not sure what I just said there!
To all the uninformed -- being on the State Dept's Munition's List just means that the US will not allow US developed technology to be exported without a license. The US Government has no issue with items or technology developed by OTHER countries which fill the same function. So anyone in Canada, Russia, Somalia, whatever, is free to develop their own commercial manned spacecraft and launch them as much as they want, unaffected at all by this State Dept decision. They just can't do it using US parts or technology without an export license and in some cases they can't do it from US territory without a license. So, all you non-USians upset about this, get off your butts and develop your own, independent manned spacecraft, and show the US up! Or quit whining.
Let's examine the event -- a private citizen associated with a group which opposes the party in power (remember, this is Progress KENTUCKY) secretly records a powerful government official and then releases the recordings for public review. So far, this sounds like the exact OPPOSITE of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. What unpleasant things will next happen to Morrison will determine how close the analogy turns out to be.
For one example, thousands of Japanese-American citizens interred during WWII can tell you all about bypassing the Constitution. Everyone has their underpants in a wad now bemoaning the recent "shredding of the Constitution". Well it was no better in the past and if anything, the abuses were worse before -- try the Anti_Sedition laws of WWI or Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. So, yeah, these NSLs are a problem, but no worse than what came before and the Constitution is as strong as it ever has been, for what that is worth. Eternal vigilance is required to keep it that way. The previous abuses were eventually recognized for what they were.
Native Texan here -- all those places in Texas where people are moving to for those jobs -- Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas -- what are the politics there? They are all blue (lefty). There is a real dichotomy in Texas -- the bastions of 'conservative Texas values', -- East and rural Texas aren't doing so well, especially with the drought in the central and western parts of the state. The fracked oil and gas boom has given some parts of rural Texas a reprieve for now. As the big cities become even more dominant in the state, I don't see Cruz and his tea party throwbacks lasting much longer.
Damn, when I said "not white enough" was not socially popular, I meant it was a division made by the racists at the time and they decided it was "not socially acceptable" for people they didn't like to be in certain places, not that it is or was really "socially not popular". You know what I 'm trying to say here...
Ok to all who jumped on me, I was being a bit facetious in my reply, hence the exclamation point, but... if there is a real danger of someone being beaten up just for a legal but not socially popular act then we either need an effective, real-time police presence to prevent it or people really do need to defend themselves, I notice you said the cost of beating the glass wearer is too high for MOST people to consider. No difference in this case from looking "gay" or "not white enough", etc, all socially unacceptable acts which got people beaten up or worse in certain times and places. I don't want to be the guy they name a law after in memory of my gruesome demise.
Don't know why you got modded down -- you are probably right that some people won't take it well and will feel they can take the law into their own hands to express their disapproval. This is a case where handgun concealed carry and 'Stand Your Ground' laws become handy. And with Google Glass you can quickly check the details of the laws in the jursidiction you will be walking around in so your story will be straight when the authorities come to investigate!
The first Soviet A-bomb was practically a copy of the US 'Fat Man' design. From the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDS-1) about it: " At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion weapon similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid plutonium core. The bomb designers had developed a more sophisticated design (tested later as RDS-2), but rejected it due to the known reliability of the Fat Man type design; the USSR having received extensive intelligence on the design of the "Fat Man" bomb during World War II." "Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, includes a good account of the USSR development of their first A-bomb as part of the book's H-bomb story. After this first one, Soviet nuclear technology developed rapidly independently from that of the USA, but at the very beginning they got a lot by spying.
If someone borrows your car and accidently kills seven people you are going to get the living hell sued out of you in civil court as the owner of the car. That's why I am careful with who I loan my car to. The same at least should apply to my gun.
You are right about Venezula and Russia devolving into populist tyrannies of the majority, but how is armed resistance going to help that? You aren't going to shoot the majority into accepting your freedom-loving ideals. As far as I know, neither of those have devolved past that populist/nationalist stage yet.
I can't add anything else to your comment except to relate a conversation I had with a "water the tree of liberty" friend of mine. I pointed out that whatever weapons he and his militia buddies bring, the government can bring more, as was proved to David Koresh in Waco fairly handily. That didn't bother him too much, but I also pointed out that when they go up against the government a bunch of us are going to be on the government's side and we have guns, too. That gave him a bit of a pause.
Slashdot Mirror
Hussein was delivered to justice only because the air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 19 March 2003, which was intended to kill him, missed. This preceeded the actual invasion by regular forces by 4 days. I noticed that Hussein's heinous sons didn't get "delivered to justice". If I were in a country harboring terrorist leaders wanted by an outside major power, I'd rather they come after them with a drone than with an invasion -- much less risk to me personally. Actually my opinion would be that it wouldn't be a good idea to provide those guys safe harbor in the first place. The options of just letting them go about their business or asking them to turn themselves in doesn't seem realistic.
"Big rockets were needed for big nukes." -- at least this was factually incorrect by the time NASA came around in 1958. The military originally developed the Saturn I, predecessor to Apollo's Saturn IB and Saturn V in the late 50's/early 60's but gave it up to NASA when they determined that they had no military use for a rocket that big -- the nukes were coming down nicely in size. When the military later needed boosters bigger than their biggest ICBM (Titan II) they independently developed the Titan III and its successors which were cheaper than the Saturns. I've also heard the "Skylab Spy Station" theory before but don't buy it because the Air Force had their own spy station in the works (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) pretty far along in the 60's with astronauts and everything then gave it up because their unmanned spy satellites were doing the job.
According to the airline, a senior colleague with more experience landing 777s, including at San Francisco, sat beside him as co-pilot.
and "Ultimately, it’s the trainer pilot who is responsible for the flight,” Mr. Yoon, the Asiana president, said, referring to Lee Jeong-min, 49, the more experienced pilot who sat in the co-pilot’s seat when Lee Kang-guk was landing the plane. He had 3,220 hours of flying time with 777s.
These are from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-airlines-san-francisco-plane-crash.html?_r=0
How about, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."
and, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Both from Lincoln's second inaugural address. The whole thing is worth a read. Which American (or any other nation's) leader would you consider profound if Lincoln doesn't make it into that class?
I did something similar -- flew tactical jets for 10 years then went into Engineering (electrical/computer). My first bit of advice is:
Stay in the military and complete 20 years of service. Military salaries for mid-grade officers and above are competitive with engineering salaries once the untaxed benefits are figured in. If you really want to get over towards engineering, work your way over to the Systems Commands (Naval Air Systems Command for USN, USAF has something similar). You will be doing an engineering job there, systems and engineering management, but that's what mid-career engineering mostly is anyway. If you are like me, you will miss the military, especially the aircraft, stay in the cockpit as long as you can; it will feel strange looking back in as a civilian especially if you end up in a defense company. I was very happy to get back into the military cockpit for a couple of years on a recall to active duty after seven years out. Unless you just have to get out for some reason, the advantages of staying in for 20 years are compelling, and starting something new in your early 40's isn't that much different from doing it in your mid-30s. As far as getting going again when you get out -- I don't know if its feasible for you but I went straight into grad school for a Master's degree. Once in the civilian world, I found that my jet fighter experience was an interesting novelty but it didn't really count for a whole lot, even in the defense companies. Military experience in the Systems Commands would be better. Or just go fly for the airlines.
The AC just stated this, but I'll expound -- the "Fourier transform" uncertainty you describe comes from the simple mathematics of the basics of Quantum theory and I don't really see a way to refute it if you accept those basics (observables of position and momentum are described by linear operators which don't commute). Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (observation of position disturbs momentum and vice versa) is usually described as limitation in the way we can make observations and as such seemed to be (at first glance at least) to be not fundamental and something that could be defeated with clever experimental apparatus.
Correct, but incomplete -- By 1976 (only 19 years after Sputnik 1) we had two nuclear powered, robot laboratories (Vikings 1 and 2) on Mars looking for life and signs of life and taking awesome pictures. So now it is 37 years later and we have Curiosity, a nuclear powered, robot laboratory looking for signs of life and taking awesome pictures, which can move around on Mars. The leap from Sputnik to Viking sure seems to be a lot more than that from Viking to Curiosity. Not to dismiss the awesomeness of Curiosity, but most of the really incredible stuff in space exploration had already been done by the first 25 years. I'll go out on a limb here but say that for pure wonder at the advancement of space exploration, science, and engineering I doubt we'll see anything in the next 50 years which matches 1950-2000 or 1900-1950 before that.
Doesn't London have about four cameras trained on each resident 24/7? Last I heard, England was supposed to be a free democracy, too. Where are your protests and riots?
An AC basically just said the same thing -- Slashdot seems to have a very large contingent of "Libertarians", some rational, some unhinged. How this happened continues to be a subject of discussion among my techy friends. This isn't "News for Nerds" but it does cater to much of the Slashdot readership, both the Libertarians and we who are interested, but not convinced, by their arguments.
I see that you already responded to the question I just posed to you. No need to reply to mine. I'm not sure that climatology is quite to the rigor that astronomy is due to the complexity of the field, but that doesn't mean it isn't -- I just don't know. It is certainly at the point where the argument for AGW is easier to make than the argument that all the observations in favor of it, "just happened to fall in line at this time in history". Maybe that's not enough to be actionable at this time, maybe it is; that is really probably an argument for the risk management experts, whoever they are.
By your definition astronomy, paleontology, and any part of geology which hypothesizes the formation of rocks and major landforms are not proper science. There are sciences which are not experimental sciences but still make testable predictions. The predictions are along the line of, "if you make the following observation, you will observe this..", or, "if you build this type of instrument and look in this place, you will observe this phenomenon...". The theory of the big bang cosmology made a testable prediction that the cosmic microwave background radiation would be observed, if someone would build the right radiotelescope and look for it. As it turned out the CMB was first observed accidentally but soon was recognized as the observation predicted by the big bang theory. Since then there have been other predictions made by the big bang cosmology theory such as cosmic helium abundances and structure in the CMB spectrum; all were subsequently observed. So was this speculation or science?
"And the same data tells us that this is far below the carbon or temperatures that Earth experienced during most of the time that mammals and primates evolved and that there is no reason to believe that higher CO2 concentrations are anything but favorable." -- true but those conditions (CO2 and temperature) are not the ones under which Human Civilization evolved over the last several thousand years, and so is almost certainly best adapted for. Doesn't matter what was better for the tree sloths and lemurs before us.
1, as the multiplicative unit in the algebraic ring of integers, has a special significance and does not work like the other integers in almost all number theory discussions. Same goes for 0 as the additive unit. These two "numbers" have special properties in most algebraic constructions (groups, fields, rings, etc.). A legitimate question you ask there, but the answer pretty much is just that 1 is "special" and doesn't "count" for this issue. Perhaps a better answer might be that because of 1's special properties in the ring of integers, including it in many theorems, formulas, etc, causes the construction under study to collapse to a trivial subset of the complexity of the actual problem and so become not useful in studying the general problem -- not sure what I just said there!
To all the uninformed -- being on the State Dept's Munition's List just means that the US will not allow US developed technology to be exported without a license. The US Government has no issue with items or technology developed by OTHER countries which fill the same function. So anyone in Canada, Russia, Somalia, whatever, is free to develop their own commercial manned spacecraft and launch them as much as they want, unaffected at all by this State Dept decision. They just can't do it using US parts or technology without an export license and in some cases they can't do it from US territory without a license. So, all you non-USians upset about this, get off your butts and develop your own, independent manned spacecraft, and show the US up! Or quit whining.
Let's examine the event -- a private citizen associated with a group which opposes the party in power (remember, this is Progress KENTUCKY) secretly records a powerful government official and then releases the recordings for public review. So far, this sounds like the exact OPPOSITE of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. What unpleasant things will next happen to Morrison will determine how close the analogy turns out to be.
Right you are, good point.
For one example, thousands of Japanese-American citizens interred during WWII can tell you all about bypassing the Constitution. Everyone has their underpants in a wad now bemoaning the recent "shredding of the Constitution". Well it was no better in the past and if anything, the abuses were worse before -- try the Anti_Sedition laws of WWI or Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. So, yeah, these NSLs are a problem, but no worse than what came before and the Constitution is as strong as it ever has been, for what that is worth. Eternal vigilance is required to keep it that way. The previous abuses were eventually recognized for what they were.
Native Texan here -- all those places in Texas where people are moving to for those jobs -- Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas -- what are the politics there? They are all blue (lefty). There is a real dichotomy in Texas -- the bastions of 'conservative Texas values', -- East and rural Texas aren't doing so well, especially with the drought in the central and western parts of the state. The fracked oil and gas boom has given some parts of rural Texas a reprieve for now. As the big cities become even more dominant in the state, I don't see Cruz and his tea party throwbacks lasting much longer.
Damn, when I said "not white enough" was not socially popular, I meant it was a division made by the racists at the time and they decided it was "not socially acceptable" for people they didn't like to be in certain places, not that it is or was really "socially not popular". You know what I 'm trying to say here...
Ok to all who jumped on me, I was being a bit facetious in my reply, hence the exclamation point, but ... if there is a real danger of someone being beaten up just for a legal but not socially popular act then we either need an effective, real-time police presence to prevent it or people really do need to defend themselves, I notice you said the cost of beating the glass wearer is too high for MOST people to consider. No difference in this case from looking "gay" or "not white enough", etc, all socially unacceptable acts which got people beaten up or worse in certain times and places. I don't want to be the guy they name a law after in memory of my gruesome demise.
Don't know why you got modded down -- you are probably right that some people won't take it well and will feel they can take the law into their own hands to express their disapproval. This is a case where handgun concealed carry and 'Stand Your Ground' laws become handy. And with Google Glass you can quickly check the details of the laws in the jursidiction you will be walking around in so your story will be straight when the authorities come to investigate!
The first Soviet A-bomb was practically a copy of the US 'Fat Man' design. From the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDS-1) about it:
" At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion weapon similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid plutonium core. The bomb designers had developed a more sophisticated design (tested later as RDS-2), but rejected it due to the known reliability of the Fat Man type design; the USSR having received extensive intelligence on the design of the "Fat Man" bomb during World War II."
"Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, includes a good account of the USSR development of their first A-bomb as part of the book's H-bomb story. After this first one, Soviet nuclear technology developed rapidly independently from that of the USA, but at the very beginning they got a lot by spying.
If someone borrows your car and accidently kills seven people you are going to get the living hell sued out of you in civil court as the owner of the car. That's why I am careful with who I loan my car to. The same at least should apply to my gun.
You are right about Venezula and Russia devolving into populist tyrannies of the majority, but how is armed resistance going to help that? You aren't going to shoot the majority into accepting your freedom-loving ideals. As far as I know, neither of those have devolved past that populist/nationalist stage yet.
I can't add anything else to your comment except to relate a conversation I had with a "water the tree of liberty" friend of mine. I pointed out that whatever weapons he and his militia buddies bring, the government can bring more, as was proved to David Koresh in Waco fairly handily. That didn't bother him too much, but I also pointed out that when they go up against the government a bunch of us are going to be on the government's side and we have guns, too. That gave him a bit of a pause.