A signing statement is not "a petulant child whining about the rules he is told to follow". Nor is it law, and I don't think I've ever seen any serious claim that it is. It's more akin to "legislative history", congressional "fact finding", and executive orders, which also aren't "law" in the Constitutional sense. A signing statement is nothing more than a statement by the executive branch on what IT thinks a law just signed means, on its reach in the face of conflicting requirements that arise in other laws, treaties, and the Constitution, and how the executive intends to comply with the statutory text consistent with those other constraints. You can agree with those interpretations or not, but the text isn't legally binding on anyone. To the extent that they influence the outcome of court actions, they carry no more weight than "legislative history" and "fact finding" statements, the arguments of parties to a lawsuit, or opinions requested by a court from the Solicitor General's office, for instance. They are hardly a threat to the constitutional order of our republic.
Out of curiosity, why don't you see an explicit statement from the executive branch on how it interprets statutory text as a good thing? Isn't it better for the executive to be public, open, andd consistent about its interpretation of the law and Constitution, than to hide its interpretation behind closed doors, or even worse, to change its theory from day-to-day or state-to-state or official-to-official?
Personally, I think you'll be seeing more signing statements from President's of both parties in the future, and I don't see that as a bad thing at all.
Publicly funded results should be made available, but the funding source should also provide the funding to do so.
If by "results" you mean raw data, then the funding is a significant problem in almost every field of scientific endeavor. But it's not just the funding. For any non-trivial experiment, the raw data is meaningless to all but a very small number of actively involved investigators. To make that raw data available in a form that would be potentially useful to the vanishingly small fraction of people capable of doing something would add months or years of work to most projects (documenting, archiving, documenting, and documenting some more, etc.). A large fraction of useful and important projects could become fiscally infeasible to operate. Further, funding for short projects would have to be continued for years or decades to maintain and support archival maintenance of data that no one (including the original collectors!) cares about any longer.
Take an example from my own current research work in high energy physics: I work on a "small" experiment involving about 20 physicists. Over the 7-10 year life of the project, we'll collect about 200TB of data... that's almost nothing in the grand scheme of modern high energy physics experiments. We already have to deal with not having enough funding to maintain all that data live _for our own analysis_, much less for public consumption; we need months of CPU time just to convert the raw data to an intermediate format for further analysis. The goal of the experiment is a measurement with a precision of 1 part per million; nderstanding the detailed subtleties of the physics, geometry, hardware, software, firmware, human interaction, numerics, mathematics, external influences like cosmic rays, etc. is the work of a number of PhD, Master's and Bachelor's theses over that 10 year period. We're talking a few hundred man-years of work here. And when the work is all done, we'll publish a few papers, and then the collaboration will scatter to the proverbial winds, moving on to other projects. There won't be anyone left to spend their time and energy maintaining the raw information that went into the experiment, documenting things at the level necessary for outsiders to be able to do anything with it, answering questions, etc. More importantly, no outsider will ever be able to understand the experiment at the level necessary to get the "right result" from it, because they won't have ever gotten their hands dirty with the hardware and data taking.
This is the sort of idea that is emotionally compelling, but makes little sense to anyone that has actually done the hard work of taking and analyzing data in the real world. The immense fiscal costs of such a policy will bring nothing more than illusory benefits, and are just not justified in my opinion.
What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?
Rewind to the turn of the last century, and the invention of the mechanical vote tabulating machines. You know, the machines with the big levers that closed the curtain behind you? You selected your candidate by pushing a little lever down, and then registered your votes by pulling the big lever the other way. The machine went "CHUNK", registered your vote, reset all the little levers, and opened the curtain so you could leave. What was one of the major motivations for the rapid and widescale implementation of that radical new technology? Elimination of massive and widespread errors and outright fraud in the hand counting of paper ballots.
I'm not arguing that recently introduced computerized vote counting systems are a good or bad thing. I'm only pointing out that things come full circle given enough time, and that paper ballots are hardly a panacea for ensuring fair, clean elections.
Forcing major sites to redesign after they're established seems mean spirited and expensive.
I'm not a lawyer of course, but perhaps there is a parallel with the requirements for bringing buildings into compliance that applies here. I believe the ADA requires that a building complies if they are "places of public accomodation", and are either new or undergoing major renovation work. On the web, most "major sites" undergo major renovation work fairly regularly, with new look and feel, or new functionality. If we've decided that ADA compiance is generally speaking a "good thing", and they are doing all that work for their own business purposes, I don't have a problem requiring them to spend an equivalent in resources making their sites ADA compliant.
Should be require every mom-and-pop store and restaurant to buy a TDD?
That's an interesting parallel case. However, in this case, the law requires that the PHONE company (and hence you) find a way to make the PSTN work for the deaf. There are organizations (names escaping me right now) that have non-deaf operators that provide the interface between the deaf and the non-deaf worlds: if you are deaf, you call these operators via TDD, and they make a voice call to the destination, translating back and forth.
Should the law perhaps require ISPs to fund a similar service for the web? The blind call up the service, and operators with special training "translate" the essentials of the page into spoken word? I don't think that's a great idea, but until the technology of screen readers and authoring tools catches up, maybe they should?
The OED knows about "vrow" (and its alternates vrouw and vroa), and claims it's derived from the German "frau", by way of Dutch and Flemish, and dates the first appearance in English to about 1620.
Actually it's a federal offence to kill a US citizen through a terrorist act anywhere in the world (punishable by death Reference). Yes, you heard right, US federal law declares it's juristiction to cover the entire world.
And the law in Belgium defines "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" and declares that the state of Belgium has jurisdiction over such crimes and their perpetrators anywhere on the globe, whether or not their citizens are involved. And Spain delares that it has jurisdiction over crimes that might occur in former colonial possessions (and have indicted Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed in Chile). And the UK arrested and held him for crimes that occurred in Chile, hardly within their territorial jurisdiction. And Iranian law holds that it is has jurisdiction over any Muslim anywhere in the world for apostasy, or blasphemy against Islam. And the laws of most ocean-going nations declare jurisdiction over piracy on the high seas, and legal authority over activities on the high seas for ships that stop in their ports.
US law is hardly unique, nor was it first, in declaring its extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain matters; there real question is whether those countries have the capabilities or resources to enforce that jurisdiction. Note that I make no comment on whether I think any of these laws are just or moral, or whether the declaration of extraterritorial jurisdiction is just or moral.
the way it's currently set up, the FED is separate and pays no taxes, which to me is a problem as well
The Federal Reserve Banks and System may not pay taxes, per se (the System is an independent governmental body after all), but it does turn over the vast majority of the System's yearly "profits" to the Treasury of the United States: http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqf rs.htm. The Fed pays (by law) 6% in "dividends" on the stock that chartered banks are required to purchase (and can't sell), and pays all it's own expenses: same FAQ. The rest of it's net income is transfered to the Treasury at the end of the year. That amounted to just over $21B in 2005: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongres s/annual05/ar05.pdf, Table 10, Page 282. Total transfers to the Treasury since the System's inception in 1914 has exceeded $589B, Table 11, Page 287.
Nobody said the winner had to have the majority of the votes, just more than any other candidate.
Actually, that's exactly what the rules say currently. Whereas you think the rules should say the candidate that gets a plurality of the "popular" vote should be declared the winner, our current Constitution says that the candidate must get a majority of the Electoral College or House vote to be declared the winner. I don't much care which system we use... each has its own benefits and drawbacks, on both theoretical and practical levels. In either system, you can find corner cases that result in "unfair" outcomes or where the winning candidate "lost" the "real vote". The point is simply that the current rules do, in fact, require majority... and that's one of its strengths.
I think a better indicator of the demand for *real* trains is in the ridership on short-range airline shuttles. Those planes are packed, causing enormous airport congestion and worsening the already significant hassles inherent in modern air travel.
In that market, Amtrak already IS a big player. They move roughly half of the non-driving intercity passengers between NY and Washington, as much as the shuttles. In the NY to Boston segment, they move 1 for every 2 airline customers.
I'll elaborate a bit... imagine going Boston to Washington in 3.5 hours, with no security checkpoint, room to stretch your legs, no seat belt sign, quiet (and the ability to change cars to get away from screaming babies), enjoyable scenery out the window, the train station a short cab ride from where you want to go on both ends, no mad scramble for seat assignments, and no need to pay outrageous change/cancel fees.
You don't have to imagine it... I did it last week. It's called the Acela Express. Eight weekday roundtrips Boston to NY, and 14 weekday roundtrips NY to Washington. The US already HAS a reasonable _short-haul_ intercity passenger rail system. The Northeast Corridor, California Coast, and the Northwest function well, with continually increasing ridership numbers. And many of hte markets you mentioned are under consideration for the development of highspeed rail. Beyond those limited corridors, however, the time penalty in crossing between populated areas of the country by rail is prohibitive given the cheap domestic airline market.
And it's probably not a cover if you aren't a state government employee! It sounds like the judge applied definitions of "reasonable private use of public property" from the civil service rules of New York to a penalty against a civil service employee.
If and when this does go to legal grounds, it will most likely be a huge landmark case that could open the floodgates for other cities to establish a municiple wireless system.
I'm guessing that's not going to be the case. Note that this law is not a constraint on corporations or private citizens; it is a constraint on a political subdivision (New Orleans) by a sovereign state (Loisiana). The States have almost unlimited authority to constrain what their political subdivisions are allowed to do, far more authority than they have in limiting what citizens can do. Unless the specifics of this law violate the Louisiana constitution (which is generally a question for the State, not Federal Courts, despite the statement in the article), I find it hard to see how the Courts could take any suit seriously. The law may be bad public policy, but that's hardly grounds for interference in the decisions of the political branches by the courts. Of course, I'm not a lawyer... blah blah blah.
A question for our British friends: the Guardian article, at least three times, refers to the "constitutional implications" of this proposed legislation. But the UK has no written constitution (I realize there are charters and precedent and common law heritage and all that, but there is no constitution in the sense that most nations have "A Constitution" that sets out the structure of the government). As I understand it, the "constitution" (little c) of British government is (more or less) whatever Parliament decides it is; there are essentially no fundamental "restrictions" on what Parliament can decide to do. Is the article trying to imply anything more than "constitutional implications" in the sense of modifying centuries of precedent, or is it something deeper that I am not seeing? Thanks!
In many states there's only one number to call, not several. Anywhere you live in MA (and a bunch of other NE states), you call "Dig Safe" at 1 888 DIG SAFE, tell them the date and location of the dig, and they make sure all the appropriate companies are contacted.
Perhaps you meant "In the morning, when the university is empty...." Night is the only time you're likely to find large concentrations of students on the MIT campus:-)
Eminent domain powers are not granted by the 5th Amendment... it's a restriction on the extent of those powers. My understanding is that the "necessary and proper" clause of Article I, Section 8 is the Constitutional basis permitting "takings". The 5th Amendment provides that IF the federal government exercises eminent domain, then it MUST provide you "just compensation"; previously, takings did not require compensation of any kind. The 14th Amendment extends those protections against state and local governments.
This isn't an answer, and I have to admit that I have no idea of what is involved, but would the analysis be something that might be suitable for a distributed computing project along the lines of Folding@Home or SETI@Home?
Probably not... the costs of computer time for processing are going to be dwarfed by the expenses incurred for people and services that are provided by other parts of NASA (the DSN, as has been mentioned, data archiving services, secretaries, etc.)
It's not $4.2million to analyze data... it's that much to run "the mission". The mission includes the cost of salaries/benefits/overhead for secretaries, support staff, technicians, and scientists, graduate students, costs for hardware, maintainance contracts, portions of other programs of which the mission is a "client" (like the Deep Space Radio network telescopes, for instance, or computing services). And there's a ton of other costs that will nickle and dime you to death. The actual data analysis is probably done by a graduate student who's getting paid next to nothing:-)
And you couldn't possibly support 80 PhD astrophysicists on that amount of money. You could support MAYBE 40 postdocs, early in their caeers. And no, they don't take home $100k per year... closer to $50k. Then, you figure 2 to 3 times take home for benefits and overhead, and you get 30-40 per year, if you're lucky
In the last election cycle, computer companies gave money at the rate of 53/47 to Democrats over Republicans. Does that indicate a new conspiracy on the left wing that we should be worried about? source
There are numerous sites that report Microsoft donations were even more lopsided: they gave at the rate of 58/42 to Democrates. Where's the big stink being made by the "right wing"?
What is Microsoft extorting from the Democrats, hmm? Why aren't you complaining about that as well?
All politicians accept money from many sources, and most industries/companies donate pretty evenly to the major parties. Your obvious statement that one party is obviously doing favors for a particular company because of those donations, while the other party that got almost exactly the same amount of money isn't doing them favors, is unsupported by any facts that you've presented.
Depending on the size of your institution, it costs between $17k and $25k per year for online and print access to all the APS journals, including the PhysRev and RMP. Online only access is about $4k per year less than that. It ain't cheap...
BTW, PhysRev isn't an author pays journal... well, they charge you if you don't submit in approved electronic formats, but I haven't met anyone who has done that in the last 10 years.
That's not correct. The shuttle _is_ designed to return to earth with cargo, and has on numerous missions. The Hubble has a mass of about 11 metric tons. This is well below both the takeoff and landing mass limits of the Shuttle. For instance, the ESA Spacelab module that rides to space on the Shuttle has an upper mass limit of 14.5 metric tons... and the shuttle has landed with this module still in the cargo bay.
Slashdot Mirror
So the work is not volunteered, it is a component of an agenda.
Doesn't the same argument apply to non-monetarily-compensated "volunteers"? Don't they have an agenda as well?
A signing statement is not "a petulant child whining about the rules he is told to follow". Nor is it law, and I don't think I've ever seen any serious claim that it is. It's more akin to "legislative history", congressional "fact finding", and executive orders, which also aren't "law" in the Constitutional sense. A signing statement is nothing more than a statement by the executive branch on what IT thinks a law just signed means, on its reach in the face of conflicting requirements that arise in other laws, treaties, and the Constitution, and how the executive intends to comply with the statutory text consistent with those other constraints. You can agree with those interpretations or not, but the text isn't legally binding on anyone. To the extent that they influence the outcome of court actions, they carry no more weight than "legislative history" and "fact finding" statements, the arguments of parties to a lawsuit, or opinions requested by a court from the Solicitor General's office, for instance. They are hardly a threat to the constitutional order of our republic.
Out of curiosity, why don't you see an explicit statement from the executive branch on how it interprets statutory text as a good thing? Isn't it better for the executive to be public, open, andd consistent about its interpretation of the law and Constitution, than to hide its interpretation behind closed doors, or even worse, to change its theory from day-to-day or state-to-state or official-to-official?
Personally, I think you'll be seeing more signing statements from President's of both parties in the future, and I don't see that as a bad thing at all.
Publicly funded results should be made available, but the funding source should also provide the funding to do so.
If by "results" you mean raw data, then the funding is a significant problem in almost every field of scientific endeavor. But it's not just the funding. For any non-trivial experiment, the raw data is meaningless to all but a very small number of actively involved investigators. To make that raw data available in a form that would be potentially useful to the vanishingly small fraction of people capable of doing something would add months or years of work to most projects (documenting, archiving, documenting, and documenting some more, etc.). A large fraction of useful and important projects could become fiscally infeasible to operate. Further, funding for short projects would have to be continued for years or decades to maintain and support archival maintenance of data that no one (including the original collectors!) cares about any longer.
Take an example from my own current research work in high energy physics: I work on a "small" experiment involving about 20 physicists. Over the 7-10 year life of the project, we'll collect about 200TB of data ... that's almost nothing in the grand scheme of modern high energy physics experiments. We already have to deal with not having enough funding to maintain all that data live _for our own analysis_, much less for public consumption; we need months of CPU time just to convert the raw data to an intermediate format for further analysis. The goal of the experiment is a measurement with a precision of 1 part per million; nderstanding the detailed subtleties of the physics, geometry, hardware, software, firmware, human interaction, numerics, mathematics, external influences like cosmic rays, etc. is the work of a number of PhD, Master's and Bachelor's theses over that 10 year period. We're talking a few hundred man-years of work here. And when the work is all done, we'll publish a few papers, and then the collaboration will scatter to the proverbial winds, moving on to other projects. There won't be anyone left to spend their time and energy maintaining the raw information that went into the experiment, documenting things at the level necessary for outsiders to be able to do anything with it, answering questions, etc. More importantly, no outsider will ever be able to understand the experiment at the level necessary to get the "right result" from it, because they won't have ever gotten their hands dirty with the hardware and data taking.
This is the sort of idea that is emotionally compelling, but makes little sense to anyone that has actually done the hard work of taking and analyzing data in the real world. The immense fiscal costs of such a policy will bring nothing more than illusory benefits, and are just not justified in my opinion.
Rewind to the turn of the last century, and the invention of the mechanical vote tabulating machines. You know, the machines with the big levers that closed the curtain behind you? You selected your candidate by pushing a little lever down, and then registered your votes by pulling the big lever the other way. The machine went "CHUNK", registered your vote, reset all the little levers, and opened the curtain so you could leave. What was one of the major motivations for the rapid and widescale implementation of that radical new technology? Elimination of massive and widespread errors and outright fraud in the hand counting of paper ballots.
I'm not arguing that recently introduced computerized vote counting systems are a good or bad thing. I'm only pointing out that things come full circle given enough time, and that paper ballots are hardly a panacea for ensuring fair, clean elections.
I'm not a lawyer of course, but perhaps there is a parallel with the requirements for bringing buildings into compliance that applies here. I believe the ADA requires that a building complies if they are "places of public accomodation", and are either new or undergoing major renovation work. On the web, most "major sites" undergo major renovation work fairly regularly, with new look and feel, or new functionality. If we've decided that ADA compiance is generally speaking a "good thing", and they are doing all that work for their own business purposes, I don't have a problem requiring them to spend an equivalent in resources making their sites ADA compliant.
That's an interesting parallel case. However, in this case, the law requires that the PHONE company (and hence you) find a way to make the PSTN work for the deaf. There are organizations (names escaping me right now) that have non-deaf operators that provide the interface between the deaf and the non-deaf worlds: if you are deaf, you call these operators via TDD, and they make a voice call to the destination, translating back and forth.
Should the law perhaps require ISPs to fund a similar service for the web? The blind call up the service, and operators with special training "translate" the essentials of the page into spoken word? I don't think that's a great idea, but until the technology of screen readers and authoring tools catches up, maybe they should?
The OED knows about "vrow" (and its alternates vrouw and vroa), and claims it's derived from the German "frau", by way of Dutch and Flemish, and dates the first appearance in English to about 1620.
Actually it's a federal offence to kill a US citizen through a terrorist act anywhere in the world (punishable by death Reference). Yes, you heard right, US federal law declares it's juristiction to cover the entire world.
And the law in Belgium defines "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" and declares that the state of Belgium has jurisdiction over such crimes and their perpetrators anywhere on the globe, whether or not their citizens are involved. And Spain delares that it has jurisdiction over crimes that might occur in former colonial possessions (and have indicted Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed in Chile). And the UK arrested and held him for crimes that occurred in Chile, hardly within their territorial jurisdiction. And Iranian law holds that it is has jurisdiction over any Muslim anywhere in the world for apostasy, or blasphemy against Islam. And the laws of most ocean-going nations declare jurisdiction over piracy on the high seas, and legal authority over activities on the high seas for ships that stop in their ports.
US law is hardly unique, nor was it first, in declaring its extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain matters; there real question is whether those countries have the capabilities or resources to enforce that jurisdiction. Note that I make no comment on whether I think any of these laws are just or moral, or whether the declaration of extraterritorial jurisdiction is just or moral.
When those webmasters step foot on to Chinese soil.
How true that should be! Oh for mod points!
The Federal Reserve Banks and System may not pay taxes, per se (the System is an independent governmental body after all), but it does turn over the vast majority of the System's yearly "profits" to the Treasury of the United States: http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqf rs.htm. The Fed pays (by law) 6% in "dividends" on the stock that chartered banks are required to purchase (and can't sell), and pays all it's own expenses: same FAQ. The rest of it's net income is transfered to the Treasury at the end of the year. That amounted to just over $21B in 2005: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongres s/annual05/ar05.pdf, Table 10, Page 282. Total transfers to the Treasury since the System's inception in 1914 has exceeded $589B, Table 11, Page 287.
Actually, that's exactly what the rules say currently. Whereas you think the rules should say the candidate that gets a plurality of the "popular" vote should be declared the winner, our current Constitution says that the candidate must get a majority of the Electoral College or House vote to be declared the winner. I don't much care which system we use ... each has its own benefits and drawbacks, on both theoretical and practical levels. In either system, you can find corner cases that result in "unfair" outcomes or where the winning candidate "lost" the "real vote". The point is simply that the current rules do, in fact, require majority ... and that's one of its strengths.
In that market, Amtrak already IS a big player. They move roughly half of the non-driving intercity passengers between NY and Washington, as much as the shuttles. In the NY to Boston segment, they move 1 for every 2 airline customers.
I'll elaborate a bit... imagine going Boston to Washington in 3.5 hours, with no security checkpoint, room to stretch your legs, no seat belt sign, quiet (and the ability to change cars to get away from screaming babies), enjoyable scenery out the window, the train station a short cab ride from where you want to go on both ends, no mad scramble for seat assignments, and no need to pay outrageous change/cancel fees.
You don't have to imagine it ... I did it last week. It's called the Acela Express. Eight weekday roundtrips Boston to NY, and 14 weekday roundtrips NY to Washington. The US already HAS a reasonable _short-haul_ intercity passenger rail system. The Northeast Corridor, California Coast, and the Northwest function well, with continually increasing ridership numbers. And many of hte markets you mentioned are under consideration for the development of highspeed rail. Beyond those limited corridors, however, the time penalty in crossing between populated areas of the country by rail is prohibitive given the cheap domestic airline market.
And it's probably not a cover if you aren't a state government employee! It sounds like the judge applied definitions of "reasonable private use of public property" from the civil service rules of New York to a penalty against a civil service employee.
If and when this does go to legal grounds, it will most likely be a huge landmark case that could open the floodgates for other cities to establish a municiple wireless system.
... blah blah blah.
I'm guessing that's not going to be the case. Note that this law is not a constraint on corporations or private citizens; it is a constraint on a political subdivision (New Orleans) by a sovereign state (Loisiana). The States have almost unlimited authority to constrain what their political subdivisions are allowed to do, far more authority than they have in limiting what citizens can do. Unless the specifics of this law violate the Louisiana constitution (which is generally a question for the State, not Federal Courts, despite the statement in the article), I find it hard to see how the Courts could take any suit seriously. The law may be bad public policy, but that's hardly grounds for interference in the decisions of the political branches by the courts. Of course, I'm not a lawyer
A question for our British friends: the Guardian article, at least three times, refers to the "constitutional implications" of this proposed legislation. But the UK has no written constitution (I realize there are charters and precedent and common law heritage and all that, but there is no constitution in the sense that most nations have "A Constitution" that sets out the structure of the government). As I understand it, the "constitution" (little c) of British government is (more or less) whatever Parliament decides it is; there are essentially no fundamental "restrictions" on what Parliament can decide to do. Is the article trying to imply anything more than "constitutional implications" in the sense of modifying centuries of precedent, or is it something deeper that I am not seeing? Thanks!
In many states there's only one number to call, not several. Anywhere you live in MA (and a bunch of other NE states), you call "Dig Safe" at 1 888 DIG SAFE, tell them the date and location of the dig, and they make sure all the appropriate companies are contacted.
Perhaps you meant "In the morning, when the university is empty...." Night is the only time you're likely to find large concentrations of students on the MIT campus :-)
Eminent domain powers are not granted by the 5th Amendment ... it's a restriction on the extent of those powers. My understanding is that the "necessary and proper" clause of Article I, Section 8 is the Constitutional basis permitting "takings". The 5th Amendment provides that IF the federal government exercises eminent domain, then it MUST provide you "just compensation"; previously, takings did not require compensation of any kind. The 14th Amendment extends those protections against state and local governments.
Not a lawyer blah blah blah...
This isn't an answer, and I have to admit that I have no idea of what is involved, but would the analysis be something that might be suitable for a distributed computing project along the lines of Folding@Home or SETI@Home?
... the costs of computer time for processing are going to be dwarfed by the expenses incurred for people and services that are provided by other parts of NASA (the DSN, as has been mentioned, data archiving services, secretaries, etc.)
Probably not
It's not $4.2million to analyze data ... it's that much to run "the mission". The mission includes the cost of salaries/benefits/overhead for secretaries, support staff, technicians, and scientists, graduate students, costs for hardware, maintainance contracts, portions of other programs of which the mission is a "client" (like the Deep Space Radio network telescopes, for instance, or computing services). And there's a ton of other costs that will nickle and dime you to death. The actual data analysis is probably done by a graduate student who's getting paid next to nothing :-)
... closer to $50k. Then, you figure 2 to 3 times take home for benefits and overhead, and you get 30-40 per year, if you're lucky
And you couldn't possibly support 80 PhD astrophysicists on that amount of money. You could support MAYBE 40 postdocs, early in their caeers. And no, they don't take home $100k per year
In the last election cycle, computer companies gave money at the rate of 53/47 to Democrats over Republicans. Does that indicate a new conspiracy on the left wing that we should be worried about? source
There are numerous sites that report Microsoft donations were even more lopsided: they gave at the rate of 58/42 to Democrates. Where's the big stink being made by the "right wing"?
What is Microsoft extorting from the Democrats, hmm? Why aren't you complaining about that as well?
All politicians accept money from many sources, and most industries/companies donate pretty evenly to the major parties. Your obvious statement that one party is obviously doing favors for a particular company because of those donations, while the other party that got almost exactly the same amount of money isn't doing them favors, is unsupported by any facts that you've presented.
Depending on the size of your institution, it costs between $17k and $25k per year for online and print access to all the APS journals, including the PhysRev and RMP. Online only access is about $4k per year less than that. It ain't cheap...
... well, they charge you if you don't submit in approved electronic formats, but I haven't met anyone who has done that in the last 10 years.
BTW, PhysRev isn't an author pays journal
You're suggesting that the same crowd that can't be bothered to RTFA is going to bother to read an FAQ? :-)
That's not correct. The shuttle _is_ designed to return to earth with cargo, and has on numerous missions. The Hubble has a mass of about 11 metric tons. This is well below both the takeoff and landing mass limits of the Shuttle. For instance, the ESA Spacelab module that rides to space on the Shuttle has an upper mass limit of 14.5 metric tons ... and the shuttle has landed with this module still in the cargo bay.