First off, a tradition violated for the first time only 23 years ago, and violated only a hadnful of times, is not "long gone". Second, it just means that those earlier namings were also in error. And since it has led to things like naming ships after, say, the sitting chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the potential for political abuse is -- I would think -- blindingly obvious. Let's go back to the tradition.
I think it's a fitting memorial, even if you may not.
It would be a fine memorial, if it were in memory of him. But in fact he is not dead, so it cannot be a memorial. This was shoe-horned in as a political act because it will be quite a while before the next carrier is commissioned after this.
A president's library is often constructed before they die.
A presidential library generally has, as its signature collection, the writings, papers, and products of that president's administration. In many ways it is not named for the president per se but for the 4 or 8 year period during which he was president.
This is not being named the Reagan to denote anything about it. It's being done so to score political points.
We now have a carrier named after the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And that's exactly the sort of thing I was inveighling. It becomes too tempting for synchophants and bootlickers to curry favor. What Senator is going to kill a project with his name on it? At least, if the person had to be dead, it'd be a more level field -- no one would be looking for that honor.
Too many specialized ship types uses up the good names quickly.
Well, I don't think we've run out of (safely dead) Presidents yet. I would think that in a century that saw World War I and II there would be more than enough heros to find.
I don't want to get into the flamewars over whether Ronald Reagan was the savior of the US or its most disastrous President, whether he trampled Communism or got lucky, whether his rising tide lifted all boats or swamped the poor and middle class. But I have to say this:
It is simply wrong, indeed, dangerous, to name anything after a living personage, especially a politician. And double especially a President.
This is cult-of-personality gone extreme. It's a small step from this to granting titles to retired Presidents, to granting titles to current Presidents. Rather than an occasion for a solemn acknowledgement of a person's contributions -- as validated by the sweep of history -- we get partisanship, triumphialism, and politicking.
It might sound morbid but they should have waited until he was dead.
This, I am pretty sure, is not true. What about ASCAP etc.? I think there might be a compulsory-license thing going on, but I know that radio stations can't go down to Wal-Mart, buy some CDs, and just start playing them.
The crime is, Congress mandated that webcasters be treated in a ridiculously more harsh manner than regular broadcasters, all in the name of "market consolidation".
Instead of being free market, laisez-faire capitalists, we (by which I mean you, I don't subscribe to this) have turned into whiny littly communists
Um, "free market"? That is, without government interference, right? So let's remove the government from the debate -- extend no artificial protections to intellectual property. Allow it to settle to its free market price -- which is infinitesimally above zero. The marginal cost to replicate information is almost zero. Sure, there's usually a huge upfront cost, but really, that doesn't set the price. The price is set by, How cheap can I get it? Since copying is free (almost), you can't charge anything.
But then those whiny communists come along and say, "Waaah. The government should protect me, by giving me an artificial monopoly. If the essentially unlimited abundance of information would drive me out of business, then we must dam that flow and create scarcity -- because my business model depends on scarcity." Doesn't sound all that "laissez-faire" to me. But then, alleged free-market capitalists seem always to lose their faith in the market when it turns against them.
Re:No, it IS a heat engine. But he's still wrong.
on
Solar Sailing and Physics
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· Score: 2, Insightful
OK, the bit about the photon gas being the working fluid is clever. But Gold's point is, solar sails would violate the Carnot condition. Carnot's analysis applies only to closed, cyclic engines. No one is proposing this as a closed, cyclic engine.
Nearly entirely correct, except fot the comets. That's caused by the solar wind.
Are you saying the particle outflux exerts more pressure than the photons? I had always heard that they were of comparable magnitude, but I will admit to never having done either the calculation or the observation myself.
Comets actually have two tails: the dust tail and the gas or ion tail.... Both tails always point *away* from the Sun, independent of the comet's motion.
though intellectual honesty impels me to concede it also says
When you have a cool concepy like a solar sail, why let little things like laws of physics get the in the way?
When you can bandy about cool names like "the Carnot cycle", why let actual facts get in the way?
This guy is wrong. Period. The solar sail would not be a heat engine -- it's not an engine of any kind -- so Carnot's analysis does not apply. Radiation pressure does exist and can be used to blow objects away from the Sun. Don't believe me? Too bad, because we have photographic evidence: The tails of comets always point away from the Sun (during the approach and departure of the comet), in part due to the radiation pressure on the dust that makes up the tail.
The crucial bit is, Carnot's argument holds for a heat engine, a device that executes a cycle and returns to its original state. The solar sail is not returning to its original state.
Actually, the number of misconceptions and errors in this "article" boggle the mind... For example,
From a formal point of view, it is clear that one could not equate radiative momentum content with Newtonian momentum. Newtonian momentum is Mv, clearly a vector, while the momentum attributed to radiation is E/c, a scalar, since E is a scalar and c is a universal constant of nature.
Except, of course, that that expression is for the magnitude of the momentum. Duh. The momentum carried by the photons emitted by the Sun lies in the direction those photons take; for any given photon, the momentum is radially away from the Sun. For all of them together, the momentum is zero because they all cancel -- but that happens only when you integrate over the entire sphere. For the tiny portion hitting a sail, there would be net momentum.
For speech to be useful, doesn't it need to have an audience?
The point of free speech is not, necessarily, that "useful" speech occur. It's more a bastion against the thinking that the government can say, a priori, what is "useful", or what is "true". Should everything that can be said, be said? Probably not. Who should make that determination? The citizens, through the discourse they choose to hold.
you can bet your bottom dollar that the US government would intervene if a movie were to be released in the country showed terrorism in a positive light
You know, I'm fairly out there on the cynical limb right now, but I don't think this is true. They might want to ban something that affected national security -- say, detailed classified info on Secret Service procedures -- but they wouldn't try to stop a pro-terrorist message. For now, at least, free speech is respected.
Which is irrelevant, of course, because Media, Inc. would never dream of inconveniencing its masters with such a film. It would never get made because the sheep would bleat too loudly. The American public, informed or not, would likely avoid such a movie; its prospects for profit would be small; and Hollywood would not back that horse.
Which raises the question (a la Matrix): What good is freedom of speech, if no one is saying anything?
, they might have grabbed all of that too, but Earth has more, and it's in a form that's probably easier to obtain
Hmm, in solid form at the bottom of a shallow gravity well, compared to in liquid form at the bottom of a deep well... no, Europa wins on that. Of course, the comets, rings of Saturn, and other chunks of flying ice win even more easily.
Sorry, there's no way to make the premise of V work... they're expending far more resources just reaching Earth than they'll ever recover. You need a non-economic motivation (imperial instinct, for example) for this to make sense.
Leaving aside that Mr. Safire is not nearly the monolithic authority he likes to pretend to be, there's nothing wrong with "diagram that sentence", as diagram actually is a (transitive) verb.
On a larger point, the sheer fluidity of English -- the fact that anyone who speaks English "owns" it -- is one reason for its vitality. Verb nouns all you want -- we'll make more.:)
You're asking if the NYTimes bothered to check their facts before they published a story. Think long and hard about how silly that sounds.
Hmmm. Or maybe the fact that she was Miss Vermont in the Miss America Pageant in one year and Miss Vermont in the Miss USA Pageant the other, means that the big nasty New York Times can, in fact, do the fact-checking open to anyone with an Internet account, and did.
I think over time the guidelines on privacy may have to change, first amendment or not.
To the extent that anything in American political life can be sacred, the First Amendment is. It is the greatest contribution of the US to human politics. It saddens me to witness the increasing frequency with which the citizens -- and leaders -- of this country are willing to toss it aside. If the statements are untrue, there are well-established mechanisms for Ms. Johnson to collect damages or have the statements removed. But if they are true then she has no leg to stand upon.
The privacy to which Ms. Johnson is entitled -- celebrity or not -- involves restrictions upon other people investigating her, not upon statements about situations into which she has entered voluntarily. If the story is about, say, a party she attended, I don't see how she can possibly claim that she has a right to suppress it.
But the most disturbing thing is the issuance of an order of prior restraint, something that has long been anathema to American jurisprudence. It might have been a simple temporary restraining order but the reaction of people quoted in the Times article seems to imply that this was not routine. I find it ironic and sad that, in the middle of the Viet Nam war, the Pentagon could not obtain a prior restraint upon the Time to prevent publication of the actually secret Pentagon Papers, but Miss Vermont can pre-emptively gag this guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Best summed up by the slogan:
Not yet, anyhow...
And every one a good reason why this sort of thing should be banned.
First off, a tradition violated for the first time only 23 years ago, and violated only a hadnful of times, is not "long gone". Second, it just means that those earlier namings were also in error. And since it has led to things like naming ships after, say, the sitting chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the potential for political abuse is -- I would think -- blindingly obvious. Let's go back to the tradition.
It would be a fine memorial, if it were in memory of him. But in fact he is not dead, so it cannot be a memorial. This was shoe-horned in as a political act because it will be quite a while before the next carrier is commissioned after this.
A presidential library generally has, as its signature collection, the writings, papers, and products of that president's administration. In many ways it is not named for the president per se but for the 4 or 8 year period during which he was president.
This is not being named the Reagan to denote anything about it. It's being done so to score political points.
And that's exactly the sort of thing I was inveighling. It becomes too tempting for synchophants and bootlickers to curry favor. What Senator is going to kill a project with his name on it? At least, if the person had to be dead, it'd be a more level field -- no one would be looking for that honor.
Well, I don't think we've run out of (safely dead) Presidents yet. I would think that in a century that saw World War I and II there would be more than enough heros to find.
It is simply wrong, indeed, dangerous, to name anything after a living personage, especially a politician. And double especially a President.
This is cult-of-personality gone extreme. It's a small step from this to granting titles to retired Presidents, to granting titles to current Presidents. Rather than an occasion for a solemn acknowledgement of a person's contributions -- as validated by the sweep of history -- we get partisanship, triumphialism, and politicking.
It might sound morbid but they should have waited until he was dead.
This, I am pretty sure, is not true. What about ASCAP etc.? I think there might be a compulsory-license thing going on, but I know that radio stations can't go down to Wal-Mart, buy some CDs, and just start playing them.
The crime is, Congress mandated that webcasters be treated in a ridiculously more harsh manner than regular broadcasters, all in the name of "market consolidation".
Um, "free market"? That is, without government interference, right? So let's remove the government from the debate -- extend no artificial protections to intellectual property. Allow it to settle to its free market price -- which is infinitesimally above zero. The marginal cost to replicate information is almost zero. Sure, there's usually a huge upfront cost, but really, that doesn't set the price. The price is set by, How cheap can I get it? Since copying is free (almost), you can't charge anything.
But then those whiny communists come along and say, "Waaah. The government should protect me, by giving me an artificial monopoly. If the essentially unlimited abundance of information would drive me out of business, then we must dam that flow and create scarcity -- because my business model depends on scarcity." Doesn't sound all that "laissez-faire" to me. But then, alleged free-market capitalists seem always to lose their faith in the market when it turns against them.
OK, the bit about the photon gas being the working fluid is clever. But Gold's point is, solar sails would violate the Carnot condition. Carnot's analysis applies only to closed, cyclic engines. No one is proposing this as a closed, cyclic engine.
Are you saying the particle outflux exerts more pressure than the photons? I had always heard that they were of comparable magnitude, but I will admit to never having done either the calculation or the observation myself.
though intellectual honesty impels me to concede it also says
When you can bandy about cool names like "the Carnot cycle", why let actual facts get in the way?
This guy is wrong. Period. The solar sail would not be a heat engine -- it's not an engine of any kind -- so Carnot's analysis does not apply. Radiation pressure does exist and can be used to blow objects away from the Sun. Don't believe me? Too bad, because we have photographic evidence: The tails of comets always point away from the Sun (during the approach and departure of the comet), in part due to the radiation pressure on the dust that makes up the tail.
Actually, the number of misconceptions and errors in this "article" boggle the mind... For example,
Except, of course, that that expression is for the magnitude of the momentum. Duh. The momentum carried by the photons emitted by the Sun lies in the direction those photons take; for any given photon, the momentum is radially away from the Sun. For all of them together, the momentum is zero because they all cancel -- but that happens only when you integrate over the entire sphere. For the tiny portion hitting a sail, there would be net momentum.
The former.
No one can preserve freedom for a people that simply does not care.
The point of free speech is not, necessarily, that "useful" speech occur. It's more a bastion against the thinking that the government can say, a priori, what is "useful", or what is "true". Should everything that can be said, be said? Probably not. Who should make that determination? The citizens, through the discourse they choose to hold.
You know, I'm fairly out there on the cynical limb right now, but I don't think this is true. They might want to ban something that affected national security -- say, detailed classified info on Secret Service procedures -- but they wouldn't try to stop a pro-terrorist message. For now, at least, free speech is respected.
Which is irrelevant, of course, because Media, Inc. would never dream of inconveniencing its masters with such a film. It would never get made because the sheep would bleat too loudly. The American public, informed or not, would likely avoid such a movie; its prospects for profit would be small; and Hollywood would not back that horse.
Which raises the question (a la Matrix): What good is freedom of speech, if no one is saying anything?
Hmm, in solid form at the bottom of a shallow gravity well, compared to in liquid form at the bottom of a deep well... no, Europa wins on that. Of course, the comets, rings of Saturn, and other chunks of flying ice win even more easily.
Sorry, there's no way to make the premise of V work
Leaving aside that Mr. Safire is not nearly the monolithic authority he likes to pretend to be, there's nothing wrong with "diagram that sentence", as diagram actually is a (transitive) verb.
On a larger point, the sheer fluidity of English -- the fact that anyone who speaks English "owns" it -- is one reason for its vitality. Verb nouns all you want -- we'll make more.
Obviously you haven't been paying attention as our society slowly evolves into the panopticon...
Hmmm. Or maybe the fact that she was Miss Vermont in the Miss America Pageant in one year and Miss Vermont in the Miss USA Pageant the other, means that the big nasty New York Times can, in fact, do the fact-checking open to anyone with an Internet account, and did.
To the extent that anything in American political life can be sacred, the First Amendment is. It is the greatest contribution of the US to human politics. It saddens me to witness the increasing frequency with which the citizens -- and leaders -- of this country are willing to toss it aside. If the statements are untrue, there are well-established mechanisms for Ms. Johnson to collect damages or have the statements removed. But if they are true then she has no leg to stand upon.
The privacy to which Ms. Johnson is entitled -- celebrity or not -- involves restrictions upon other people investigating her, not upon statements about situations into which she has entered voluntarily. If the story is about, say, a party she attended, I don't see how she can possibly claim that she has a right to suppress it.
But the most disturbing thing is the issuance of an order of prior restraint, something that has long been anathema to American jurisprudence. It might have been a simple temporary restraining order but the reaction of people quoted in the Times article seems to imply that this was not routine. I find it ironic and sad that, in the middle of the Viet Nam war, the Pentagon could not obtain a prior restraint upon the Time to prevent publication of the actually secret Pentagon Papers, but Miss Vermont can pre-emptively gag this guy.