Some of us (e.g. anyone who works for the federal government and many federal contractors) are required to use the cheapest available tickets. It's not like we have a choice. The airlines, in pursuing lower base ticket prices at the expense of even minimal service, have completely screwed us, because we have to buy them.
I'm very tall (2 m) and regular economy seats are, quite literally, torture. I succeeded in convincing my organization to let me upgrade to Economy Plus (or the equivalent) by claiming that, for me, it's an ergonomics issue. But it took months of fighting.
That is incorrect. WAAS stations create a model for the ionospheric propagation delay over the entire network and use that to provide corrections for receivers located anywhere in the area covered by the network.
WAAS also provides corrections for ephemeris and clock errors.
Look around, and the misery increases, globally. Tensions, stupidity, misguided masculinity, religious stupidity; all those are coming closer by the day; encircle us.
If CO2 is having no effect, it is not pollution, if it does, it is.
So if CO2 is a pollutant, then I suppose the optimal concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero?
The term "pollutant" applied to CO2 doesn't make sense. Not everything that changes the environment is, by definition, a "pollutant." Too much water can kill you. Does that make water a poison? It's pretty much the same thing.
Wine grape grows pretty succesfully in england now. Google 'English Sparkling Wine'. It's been getting easier to do this for the last twenty years, and the results are winning awards internationally.
And what does this have to do with the post to which you were responding?
Nobody sane questions the established fact that the global temperature is increasing. That's been true, on average, since the last Ice Age.
The issue is whether man-made CO2 emissions are the main cause of the warming in the 20th century or not.
It's impossible to have a scientific discussion when people misrepresent the sides of the discussion like this.
But the timing will not be known perfectly and neither will the height of the plane, so the location of the arc will not be known perfectly. Knowing how imperfect the information is and hence how wide an area on either side of the arc needs to be searched would seem rather important.
The fact that you cite the altitude of the plane as a potential source of error pretty much demonstrates that you have no idea what you are talking about. The satellite is in GEO, which means it is about 36,000 km above the surface. You think that an effect from 10 km elevation would show up?
Likewise, the timing is probably known to about a few microsec, which amounts to a distance of a few km. Once again, not a big error.
Universal, no, but physicists agree, and, really, who else matters? X-rays are emitted by electrons (atomic transitions or bremsstrahlung); gamma rays by nuclear transitions. Those definitions have been pretty well agreed upon by physicists for at least the last 15 years.
Astronomers, however, seem to characterize photons only by energy, which kind of makes sense if you realize that they frequently don't know the origin of the observed photons and build instruments for energy ranges instead.
But nonetheless it is still incorrect to characterize these photons as "x-rays."
Unfortunately, in this case the observed photons were actually low-energy gamma rays. I guess they are called "x-rays" in the article because they fall into the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is usually associated with x-rays. Ti-44 undergoes electron capture to Sc-44, which emits the two gamma rays at 78 and 68 keV, and then the Sc-44 decays (again by electron capture) to Ca-44.
But the entire purpose of mass transit is social engineering. It has nothing to do with getting people from one place to another safely and efficiently. That's just the bait they use to get voters to approve the systems.
God I love how you guys (both sides) goes totally ballistic about some minor detail of a post. No point in trying to deduce what someone said, if there is the smallest amount of unfactual commentary or the slightest error, they will be bombed back to kingdom come.
The statement to which I responded was not wrong in some minor detail, but completely wrong.
How are scientists ever going to convince a doubting public when we endorse complete nonsense like this just because it doesn't contradict our favored position?
You may not like it, but science is (at least partly) about facts, and facts matter.
Which of course begs the question of why if its not getting warmer all the world's glaciers are simultaneously receding a a record pace not previously observed in human history.
Really? All of them? Wow! Who knew?
At a pace never previously seen in human history? Including the end of the last Ice Age? Amazing!
I'm not sure where exact comes into the picture when you use US data to talk about increasing typhoon activity (or the lack thereof) in Asia or globally. Irrelevant comes to mind.
So in your mind Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have no correlation. OK. Go here:
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php
Global data. Western Pacific ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) is still slightly below average for the year, and worldwide ACE is only about 75% of normal. Does that help?
The mathematics is merely a statistical description of the observations, not details on the mechanism for the underlying process. Please wake me when they describe the actual underlying process.
No. The "wave function" is only tangentially related to the concept of whether light acts like a wave, a particle, or has some kind of duality. It is tangentially related only because as you dig into the quantum mechanical nature of the universe, you end up with this statistical function that we happen to use the word "wave" in its name.
Wow. In the words of Pauli, that is not even wrong.
First off, the wavefunction is not a statistical function. And "wavefunction" includes that "wave" word for a very good reason. You are, I suspect, perfectly capable of reading an introductory quantum mechanics text. You just have chosen not to and yet feel the need to spout nonsense as if you were an expert.
Neither the two-slit experiment nor the three-polarizing filters experiment show anything particularly quantum mechanical. Both would work just fine if light were a pure wave.
Umm.... isn't that what quantum mechanics is about? That everything can be described by a wavefunction (i.e. as a "pure wave?") Even if it weren't so, the three-polarizer experiment is an excellent demonstration of the counterintuitive properties of projections, which is key to understanding QM.
The crime here is our news outlets have such blatant bias, and very little dedication to journalism and conveying the facts to the masses.
That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. My bad.
Of course the answer is that this isn't really about the quality of teaching, it's about xenophobia.
Your mind-reading ability is astonishing! Somehow you are able to get into the minds of the people involved and you know their motivation! Have you ever considered running for office?
Actually, there is a very good psychological term for what you are doing here. It's called projection. Since you would do this from some xenophobic motivation, you assume that everyone else must, as well, since it's impossible to imagine people who think differently than you do.
It's worth pointing out that the mass of neutrinos has never been directly measured. The "mass" to which we refer is the mass required for a mixing matrix between the neutrino flavors. A more exotic definition of "mass" would be required if the current experimental result were to hold, in such a way that neutrinos wouldn't have "mass" in the sense to which we refer today.
That's all speculative, of course, but the important point is, again, that the neutrino mass has never been directly measured. I know. I tried.
Slashdot Mirror
NIST would be more appropriate, methinks.
Some of us (e.g. anyone who works for the federal government and many federal contractors) are required to use the cheapest available tickets. It's not like we have a choice. The airlines, in pursuing lower base ticket prices at the expense of even minimal service, have completely screwed us, because we have to buy them.
I'm very tall (2 m) and regular economy seats are, quite literally, torture. I succeeded in convincing my organization to let me upgrade to Economy Plus (or the equivalent) by claiming that, for me, it's an ergonomics issue. But it took months of fighting.
Wow. Who could possibly have seen this coming?
(yes, that was sarcasm)
WAAS doesn't know about atmospheric corrections.
That is incorrect. WAAS stations create a model for the ionospheric propagation delay over the entire network and use that to provide corrections for receivers located anywhere in the area covered by the network.
WAAS also provides corrections for ephemeris and clock errors.
It's fantastic to hear that Art finally won the Nobel though - many of us were wondering how long it would be before he did!
Indeed he does deserve it. His tenacity is legendary. SNO is amazing.
Oh, and I now feel ever so slightly more important, as he was my thesis advisor.
Umm, no. The Ice Cube detects neutrinos, not cosmic rays. Completely different thing.
Even spelled correctly it is the wrong word. Wow. A new low.
Let me guess: you have a PhD in the humanities?
... the Fraunhofer Society didn't invent mp3 alone.
No, but they led the way to making it needlessly complex! Seriously, the MP3 bitstream format is seriously screwed up.
So if CO2 is a pollutant, then I suppose the optimal concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero?
The term "pollutant" applied to CO2 doesn't make sense. Not everything that changes the environment is, by definition, a "pollutant." Too much water can kill you. Does that make water a poison? It's pretty much the same thing.
And what does this have to do with the post to which you were responding?
Nobody sane questions the established fact that the global temperature is increasing. That's been true, on average, since the last Ice Age.
The issue is whether man-made CO2 emissions are the main cause of the warming in the 20th century or not.
It's impossible to have a scientific discussion when people misrepresent the sides of the discussion like this.
The fact that you cite the altitude of the plane as a potential source of error pretty much demonstrates that you have no idea what you are talking about. The satellite is in GEO, which means it is about 36,000 km above the surface. You think that an effect from 10 km elevation would show up?
Likewise, the timing is probably known to about a few microsec, which amounts to a distance of a few km. Once again, not a big error.
Universal, no, but physicists agree, and, really, who else matters? X-rays are emitted by electrons (atomic transitions or bremsstrahlung); gamma rays by nuclear transitions. Those definitions have been pretty well agreed upon by physicists for at least the last 15 years.
Astronomers, however, seem to characterize photons only by energy, which kind of makes sense if you realize that they frequently don't know the origin of the observed photons and build instruments for energy ranges instead.
But nonetheless it is still incorrect to characterize these photons as "x-rays."
Unfortunately, in this case the observed photons were actually low-energy gamma rays. I guess they are called "x-rays" in the article because they fall into the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is usually associated with x-rays. Ti-44 undergoes electron capture to Sc-44, which emits the two gamma rays at 78 and 68 keV, and then the Sc-44 decays (again by electron capture) to Ca-44.
But they are not true x-rays.
But the entire purpose of mass transit is social engineering. It has nothing to do with getting people from one place to another safely and efficiently. That's just the bait they use to get voters to approve the systems.
God I love how you guys (both sides) goes totally ballistic about some minor detail of a post. No point in trying to deduce what someone said, if there is the smallest amount of unfactual commentary or the slightest error, they will be bombed back to kingdom come.
The statement to which I responded was not wrong in some minor detail, but completely wrong.
How are scientists ever going to convince a doubting public when we endorse complete nonsense like this just because it doesn't contradict our favored position?
You may not like it, but science is (at least partly) about facts, and facts matter.
Really? All of them? Wow! Who knew?
At a pace never previously seen in human history? Including the end of the last Ice Age? Amazing!
With facts like yours, who could possibly doubt?
Um, not exactly.
I'm not sure where exact comes into the picture when you use US data to talk about increasing typhoon activity (or the lack thereof) in Asia or globally. Irrelevant comes to mind.
So in your mind Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have no correlation. OK. Go here:
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php
Global data. Western Pacific ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) is still slightly below average for the year, and worldwide ACE is only about 75% of normal. Does that help?
in the context of these Cat 5 hurricanes and typhoons that are striking all over in increasing frequency.
Um, not exactly.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/11/us-hurricane-intensity-1900-2012.html
The mathematics is merely a statistical description of the observations, not details on the mechanism for the underlying process. Please wake me when they describe the actual underlying process.
Um, no. Ever hear of Bell's inequality?
No. The "wave function" is only tangentially related to the concept of whether light acts like a wave, a particle, or has some kind of duality. It is tangentially related only because as you dig into the quantum mechanical nature of the universe, you end up with this statistical function that we happen to use the word "wave" in its name.
Wow. In the words of Pauli, that is not even wrong.
First off, the wavefunction is not a statistical function. And "wavefunction" includes that "wave" word for a very good reason. You are, I suspect, perfectly capable of reading an introductory quantum mechanics text. You just have chosen not to and yet feel the need to spout nonsense as if you were an expert.
Umm.... isn't that what quantum mechanics is about? That everything can be described by a wavefunction (i.e. as a "pure wave?") Even if it weren't so, the three-polarizer experiment is an excellent demonstration of the counterintuitive properties of projections, which is key to understanding QM.
That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. My bad.
Your mind-reading ability is astonishing! Somehow you are able to get into the minds of the people involved and you know their motivation! Have you ever considered running for office?
Actually, there is a very good psychological term for what you are doing here. It's called projection. Since you would do this from some xenophobic motivation, you assume that everyone else must, as well, since it's impossible to imagine people who think differently than you do.
It's worth pointing out that the mass of neutrinos has never been directly measured. The "mass" to which we refer is the mass required for a mixing matrix between the neutrino flavors. A more exotic definition of "mass" would be required if the current experimental result were to hold, in such a way that neutrinos wouldn't have "mass" in the sense to which we refer today.
That's all speculative, of course, but the important point is, again, that the neutrino mass has never been directly measured. I know. I tried.