Solar panels are already cheap enough for me. In NYC, Con Ed charges $0.20+ per KWh, so installed panels at about $3:Wp pay off in under 7 years: a 14% ROI, better than the stock market ever gets (so I almost wish they cost more:).
My problem is that my roof is largely covered by trees, so I get only about 20% of the sunshine past them. So I've been considering building a platform above the roof, above the trees, though that's going to be something like 10m above the roof, which is about 7m above the ground. I don't know if it will be stable, or how many years of solar power it will cost to pay back the extra infrastructure costs. We don't have enough wind to make turbines on the platform worth their investment.
Where can I research whether a raised platform is feasible?
You have some money. Otherwise Google wouldn't get any money for selling the info about you to someone who has money. And in fact they don't sell info about you, they use that info about you to sell you, or at least the part of you that spends money. The people whose money Google takes for access to you get their money from you. Google's model is for advertisers to aggregate through sales lots of small amounts of money into piles of large amounts of money, from which Google takes a small amount for each of the many piles. That is the classic advertising model, which Google reinvented with microtargeted marketing interactive with the actual sales transaction. It's extremely efficient, and the info model that controls distribution of the microtargeting lends itself to scale economies.
So like I said, Google is an excellent example of a company that wants your money, even just a little bit of it, and whatever power it needs to somehow get it. It turns out that the power it needs requires a global surveillance of everyone's research and telecommunications. Which it's got, despite the obviously overwhelming power to do more than just "get everyone's money" Google also now has. The fact that (AFAWK) Google uses that power only to get as much money as it can from us shows what it wants.
You're missing the government pointer, too. Democracy is rule by the people; America's people elect the government that rules. Those elected people are representatives, because we have a democratic republic: the public is represented by other people, not directly represented by itself. As far back as Plato (in "The Republic") people have wrestled with how to get representatives to represent the people. The challenge is to give representatives the power to lead the people when a meeting is better than a mob. America's democratic republic balances that challenge on a constitution, that prevents both the representatives and the people from doing whatever they have the power to do in the moment. Further our constitution specifies judges and processes that limit the power of the people and the representatives to act, at least not without the public cooperating with the representatives to do so. It also specifies an executive to represent what the representatives collectively would do, but accountable directly to the people so also embodying the cooperation between the public and the representatives. Indeed our entire Constitution specifies a machine to balance the people against ourselves, against our representatives, our representatives against each other, and all against fundamental principles that are rights of the people which would be ignored or violated by some of these other people if they weren't specified as the basis of any and all power.
The people are stupid because they ignore how private powers lie them into consenting to be ruled wrong, the purpose of the propaganda machine. Even today the people increasingly insist that corporations, which is private people forming a private government for concentrated private power akin to the public government's power, take the power to educate the people away from the government. The representatives who are sponsored more by corporations than by people are of course leading that conversion. Some people are stupider than others, even those who are cunning in their ways to get short term power for a few people including themselves, but who are stupid enough to wreck the balance that first put them in power (and educated their cunning), and later will be unavailable to protect them and their friends/family/neighbors when they've outlived their utility.
You are exactly right where you make the distinction that leaves the people both vulnerable and active against ourselves: organization. The government is deliberately organized to resist rapid action that any substantial amount of people, even a minority, prefer. However, the people organized into corporations do have a lot of competition with each other, which inhi
The corporation doesn't just want your money. It wants whatever possible power might be used somehow to get any of your money, even a little bit of it.
At least the government is controlled by a majority of voters, each of whom gets one vote. With exceptions where corporations have actually rigged the vote. The main problem is getting a majority of adult citizens to vote for people they're adequately informed about. Which fails mostly where corporations actually rig the turnout and the informing.
Democratic government is a problem that can be solved adequately. Corporate government, or corporate anarchy, cannot be solved adequately except by democratic government.
This "association" is a gang of monopolists who grudgingly admit they can't eliminate each other as competition, so they join together to avoid competing. In other words, a cartel. That plans to enforce their cartel with government power.
Why not? They're basically 21st Century phone companies. The telco cartel worked out so well in the 20th Century that it hauled in many hundreds of $BILLIONS, and even wiretapped every American for years with impunity - forging the basis of power for this new generation cartel.
Which drug cartels? The ones that make many $billions off their government-enforced monopolies ("patents"), one of the main drivers of bankrupting medical expenses?
A "drug cartel" is like a "religious cult" or a "freedom fighter": the definition depends on which tribe you belong to, pointing at the others.
The way to fight drug cartels, like any cartels, is to stop creating artificial supply/demand shortages with a "Drug War". And treat people who do drugs but can't handle it for their actual medical problems (addiction, underlying psychology seeking abuse, complications of toxicity). And tax the people who can handle it for the privilege of living in a civilization that manages their hobby while protecting them from its actual harm.
Of course "the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offense." But publishing always requires technology. That's why there's a difference between slander and libel: the harm is different when technology (the "press") is used to lie in public.
Of course, the main harm is not the technology, but the publishing, by whatever means. Some publishing does more and different harm than others. But when people do harm by doing it in public, that's a police matter. Police are required to protect the public, especially in public.
The police are just lazy, fearful and stupid. They want to fight crime they can brag about in the locker room, not "just talk about". But that's why proper police forces don't get to choose what to police. The public executive in their jurisdiction, like governor, mayor or county commissioner, follows laws set by the legislature to command the police do their job. Otherwise they'd do nothing but bust donuts and teenage potheads.
You don't know what a military dictatorship actually is. The US has a lot of problems. Crimped freedom and police state problems among them. But it is not a military dictatorship.
Thailand is a military dictatorship. Egypt was until last year, and likely will be again. Syria is now. Most officially Muslim states are, though the military is a tool of the theocracy, and sometimes the dictatorship is by church committee. Many African states are, especially Somalia. The tribal states studded around South Asia are. Plenty of counties throughout Latin America are, under the local warlord. Russia is heading back into military dictatorship, after a century with different styles. North Korea. Many more, especially if the "military" is solely an internal police force.
The US is far freer, far more a republic, far more democratic, than any of those countries.
No, we're not finished. And indeed we've had ups and downs. But even the US has had more military dictatorship than it has now. Lincoln overruled habeas corpus - so did Bush. FDR sent people to concentration camps by racial profiling - so did Bush. In fact we just backed away from some of the most severe military dictatorship through 2008 than we'd had in generations - possibly more than during Vietnam (eg. Kent State).
Keep some perspective. Don't accept the talk that we're in a military dictatorship, because that just lowers your standards. The military dictatorship is always out there trying to come back. Apathy gives it the way in.
The O-ring that blew up the McAuliffe shuttle wasn't known, nor would it have been known, during whatever "political pressure" there was to launch McAuliffe. Her teacher status had nothing to do with the disaster, even indirectly.
I read _Surely You're Joking..._ too. Those managers said so in meetings with Feynman, and probably with each other (and with other bureaucrats, and with engineers who thought "surely you're joking").
But they didn't announce it. And the risk did not depend on McAuliffe's teacher vs "professional astronaut" status.
What they did was expand the space programme to people with skills and assets outside those people who were nothing but astronauts. Which did indeed require a far increased safety standard, which they achieved. But even teaching isn't 100% safe, as any NYC or Detroit (or many other) teachers would tell you (if they're alive).
They didn't announce it was perfectly safe. They merely let someone not as expendable as previous astronauts take the risk. McAuliffe's schoolteacher status didn't contribute to the Challenger disaster.
The amount of risk mitigation isn't inversely proportional to an astronaut's bravery (or recklessness). It's determined by the value of the mission and the programme to the government. "Volunteer for a suicide mission" isn't the basis for funding NASA.
Neither is NASA denying that space travel is inherently dangerous. Indeed, its extensive risk mitigation, and followup missions after disasters, are proof it embraces that danger. But embraces it as a challenge, while reducing the danger. Which is what, after several decades and many hundreds of $billions, has produced the only viable private space industry in the world. It's what is putting humanity, not just a few rich governments, into space in the brief time it took the global car industry to give automatic transmissions to the masses.
You can't do it. Just because you would doesn't mean you're qualified. And a lot of making an astronaut qualified costs the astronaut program (ie. the government) a lot of money. Paying the astronaut is a tiny, though not negligible, part of the expense.
If you realized that, you might be more convincing as an astronaut candidate.
And when the military dictators ("royals") were responsible for that, they didn't spend on the people enough. Violating the "social contract" (which is why people noticed there is a "social contract"). That's when the people pushed as hard as they could to convert the military dictatorship into a democratic republic - punctuated with civil wars, revolutions, royal executions, etc.
It costs a lot to create each astronaut. There are the early costs to the astronaut's family and to themself. There are the costs to society (public education, their residential share of overall national defense, other public expenses). And then there's the very large amount spent on turning a candidate into an astronaut, and ongoing expenses keeping them an astronaut. And then there's the loss to the astronaut's estate of all their future earnings, which can be substantial. Those expenses seem certainly in the hundreds of $millions, and possibly in the $billions (for those who get launched).
But losing an astronaut loses a lot more than the astronaut. It loses all the equipment and vessel lost with them. It loses all the value of the mission that is depreciated by using it for that mission. And then there's the expense of the investigation and other reactions to the loss.
Plus there's the loss to prestige, which is possibly the largest. There's the extra cost of insurance and other finance costs.
By the time you're done accounting all the costs that are higher because of the "lost astronaut", you probably are talking about far more than just $4B. And just because the odds are 4:1 with current mitigations doesn't mean that the costs are multiplied by four.
So even without considering how wrong it is to launch people into space without ensuring you can bring them back alive, the pure economics make spending hte money worth it.
Just another case of a "free marketeer" who's qualified to be Mayor of Sim City, not to criticize actual government operations and expenses. Especially since they don't even consider how wrong it is to launch people into space without ensuring you can bring them back alive. That's why they First Post as AC.
Libertarians are the answer to Somalia's and China's space ambitions, not America's.
Electrons with different quantum states aren't identical. They differ in their quantum states. If the quantum states differ in energy, the difference is hardly negligible:they have different masses.
Keep in mind that AC current just jiggles the same electrons in place, back and forth in a sine wave of velocity. The net number of electrons transferred past a point over time is approximately zero, modulo net jitter.
The problem isn't so much the (in)durability and bulk of the reference kilograms. It's more that our measurements of the kilograms' mass aren't precise enough (eg. sampling error greater than an electron's mass).
And more importantly, the transience of the mass in the kilogram. It does have a decay half life, though long, and is subject to electrostatic and photoelectric fluctuations in its electron population, and even migration of whole atoms in/out of the sample. And then there are relativistic differences when the kilogram and the sampler are accelerating relative to each other, which even thermal jiggling can achieve in significance at these tiny mass differences.
Now that we've identified the Higgs boson, we'll learn more about the Higgs field, and learn to measure mass at extremely precise degrees. The "standard" kilograms' measured mass will be seen to fluctuate both over time and among the standard samples by several orders of magnitude (or rather "minitude";).
I hope these new quantum experiments at nanoscale (and even femtoscale) give us fundamental measures that count tiny things (including energy cycles) like "electrons per coulomb" from the bottom, rather than statistically survey large things like kilograms and scale down. Both for the more precise and reliable measurements, and to study the tiny deviations among previously believed "identical" particles like electrons. I expect different quantum states of the same particle type will have different masses due to different energy levels among the states. Perhaps we'll establish reliable equivalencies between information and mass, an "E=mc^2" for "joules per iota". And perhaps due to other factors yet undetermined, like perhaps energy in entanglement, or perhaps other "subquantum" effects yet unobserved until our measuring devices are more precise than the variations in their states.
How much energy difference is there between the two electron spin states?
Could a device like this electron streamer have added a nanodevice that sets the electron's spin before it's emitted? What's the practical minimum feasible energy consumption of setting each electron's spin? And thus the energy efficiency of such a spin setter.
It apparently escaped your notice that legislation proposed and promoted by the president, negotiated by him and his team using the many powers in his office, are part of his executive record.
You just pointed out some of Obama's record that neither you nor I like, that isn't Constitutional, but is certainly part of his record, and therefore certainly no "paperweight".
If you want to argue about whether Obama's significant achievements are good or bad, Constitutional or otherwise, that's a different story than the subject here. The subject is whether Obama's executive record is a "paperweight", as Ron Paul's Congressional record clearly is. Obama's is not.
Why do you think that astrophysicists assume that the matter lensing the light is uniformly distributed? They're the most sophisticated experts in the actual distribution of the matter, which they say is uneven.
Slashdot Mirror
Solar panels are already cheap enough for me. In NYC, Con Ed charges $0.20+ per KWh, so installed panels at about $3:Wp pay off in under 7 years: a 14% ROI, better than the stock market ever gets (so I almost wish they cost more :).
My problem is that my roof is largely covered by trees, so I get only about 20% of the sunshine past them. So I've been considering building a platform above the roof, above the trees, though that's going to be something like 10m above the roof, which is about 7m above the ground. I don't know if it will be stable, or how many years of solar power it will cost to pay back the extra infrastructure costs. We don't have enough wind to make turbines on the platform worth their investment.
Where can I research whether a raised platform is feasible?
No, you've got your pointers to streams garbled.
You have some money. Otherwise Google wouldn't get any money for selling the info about you to someone who has money. And in fact they don't sell info about you, they use that info about you to sell you, or at least the part of you that spends money. The people whose money Google takes for access to you get their money from you. Google's model is for advertisers to aggregate through sales lots of small amounts of money into piles of large amounts of money, from which Google takes a small amount for each of the many piles. That is the classic advertising model, which Google reinvented with microtargeted marketing interactive with the actual sales transaction. It's extremely efficient, and the info model that controls distribution of the microtargeting lends itself to scale economies.
So like I said, Google is an excellent example of a company that wants your money, even just a little bit of it, and whatever power it needs to somehow get it. It turns out that the power it needs requires a global surveillance of everyone's research and telecommunications. Which it's got, despite the obviously overwhelming power to do more than just "get everyone's money" Google also now has. The fact that (AFAWK) Google uses that power only to get as much money as it can from us shows what it wants.
You're missing the government pointer, too. Democracy is rule by the people; America's people elect the government that rules. Those elected people are representatives, because we have a democratic republic: the public is represented by other people, not directly represented by itself. As far back as Plato (in "The Republic") people have wrestled with how to get representatives to represent the people. The challenge is to give representatives the power to lead the people when a meeting is better than a mob. America's democratic republic balances that challenge on a constitution, that prevents both the representatives and the people from doing whatever they have the power to do in the moment. Further our constitution specifies judges and processes that limit the power of the people and the representatives to act, at least not without the public cooperating with the representatives to do so. It also specifies an executive to represent what the representatives collectively would do, but accountable directly to the people so also embodying the cooperation between the public and the representatives. Indeed our entire Constitution specifies a machine to balance the people against ourselves, against our representatives, our representatives against each other, and all against fundamental principles that are rights of the people which would be ignored or violated by some of these other people if they weren't specified as the basis of any and all power.
The people are stupid because they ignore how private powers lie them into consenting to be ruled wrong, the purpose of the propaganda machine. Even today the people increasingly insist that corporations, which is private people forming a private government for concentrated private power akin to the public government's power, take the power to educate the people away from the government. The representatives who are sponsored more by corporations than by people are of course leading that conversion. Some people are stupider than others, even those who are cunning in their ways to get short term power for a few people including themselves, but who are stupid enough to wreck the balance that first put them in power (and educated their cunning), and later will be unavailable to protect them and their friends/family/neighbors when they've outlived their utility.
You are exactly right where you make the distinction that leaves the people both vulnerable and active against ourselves: organization. The government is deliberately organized to resist rapid action that any substantial amount of people, even a minority, prefer. However, the people organized into corporations do have a lot of competition with each other, which inhi
The corporation doesn't just want your money. It wants whatever possible power might be used somehow to get any of your money, even a little bit of it.
At least the government is controlled by a majority of voters, each of whom gets one vote. With exceptions where corporations have actually rigged the vote. The main problem is getting a majority of adult citizens to vote for people they're adequately informed about. Which fails mostly where corporations actually rig the turnout and the informing.
Democratic government is a problem that can be solved adequately. Corporate government, or corporate anarchy, cannot be solved adequately except by democratic government.
This "association" is a gang of monopolists who grudgingly admit they can't eliminate each other as competition, so they join together to avoid competing. In other words, a cartel. That plans to enforce their cartel with government power.
Why not? They're basically 21st Century phone companies. The telco cartel worked out so well in the 20th Century that it hauled in many hundreds of $BILLIONS, and even wiretapped every American for years with impunity - forging the basis of power for this new generation cartel.
Which drug cartels? The ones that make many $billions off their government-enforced monopolies ("patents"), one of the main drivers of bankrupting medical expenses?
A "drug cartel" is like a "religious cult" or a "freedom fighter": the definition depends on which tribe you belong to, pointing at the others.
The way to fight drug cartels, like any cartels, is to stop creating artificial supply/demand shortages with a "Drug War". And treat people who do drugs but can't handle it for their actual medical problems (addiction, underlying psychology seeking abuse, complications of toxicity). And tax the people who can handle it for the privilege of living in a civilization that manages their hobby while protecting them from its actual harm.
Of course "the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offense." But publishing always requires technology. That's why there's a difference between slander and libel: the harm is different when technology (the "press") is used to lie in public.
Of course, the main harm is not the technology, but the publishing, by whatever means. Some publishing does more and different harm than others. But when people do harm by doing it in public, that's a police matter. Police are required to protect the public, especially in public.
The police are just lazy, fearful and stupid. They want to fight crime they can brag about in the locker room, not "just talk about". But that's why proper police forces don't get to choose what to police. The public executive in their jurisdiction, like governor, mayor or county commissioner, follows laws set by the legislature to command the police do their job. Otherwise they'd do nothing but bust donuts and teenage potheads.
You don't know what a military dictatorship actually is. The US has a lot of problems. Crimped freedom and police state problems among them. But it is not a military dictatorship.
Thailand is a military dictatorship. Egypt was until last year, and likely will be again. Syria is now. Most officially Muslim states are, though the military is a tool of the theocracy, and sometimes the dictatorship is by church committee. Many African states are, especially Somalia. The tribal states studded around South Asia are. Plenty of counties throughout Latin America are, under the local warlord. Russia is heading back into military dictatorship, after a century with different styles. North Korea. Many more, especially if the "military" is solely an internal police force.
The US is far freer, far more a republic, far more democratic, than any of those countries.
No, we're not finished. And indeed we've had ups and downs. But even the US has had more military dictatorship than it has now. Lincoln overruled habeas corpus - so did Bush. FDR sent people to concentration camps by racial profiling - so did Bush. In fact we just backed away from some of the most severe military dictatorship through 2008 than we'd had in generations - possibly more than during Vietnam (eg. Kent State).
Keep some perspective. Don't accept the talk that we're in a military dictatorship, because that just lowers your standards. The military dictatorship is always out there trying to come back. Apathy gives it the way in.
The O-ring that blew up the McAuliffe shuttle wasn't known, nor would it have been known, during whatever "political pressure" there was to launch McAuliffe. Her teacher status had nothing to do with the disaster, even indirectly.
I read _Surely You're Joking..._ too. Those managers said so in meetings with Feynman, and probably with each other (and with other bureaucrats, and with engineers who thought "surely you're joking").
But they didn't announce it. And the risk did not depend on McAuliffe's teacher vs "professional astronaut" status.
What they did was expand the space programme to people with skills and assets outside those people who were nothing but astronauts. Which did indeed require a far increased safety standard, which they achieved. But even teaching isn't 100% safe, as any NYC or Detroit (or many other) teachers would tell you (if they're alive).
They didn't announce it was perfectly safe. They merely let someone not as expendable as previous astronauts take the risk. McAuliffe's schoolteacher status didn't contribute to the Challenger disaster.
The amount of risk mitigation isn't inversely proportional to an astronaut's bravery (or recklessness). It's determined by the value of the mission and the programme to the government. "Volunteer for a suicide mission" isn't the basis for funding NASA.
Neither is NASA denying that space travel is inherently dangerous. Indeed, its extensive risk mitigation, and followup missions after disasters, are proof it embraces that danger. But embraces it as a challenge, while reducing the danger. Which is what, after several decades and many hundreds of $billions, has produced the only viable private space industry in the world. It's what is putting humanity, not just a few rich governments, into space in the brief time it took the global car industry to give automatic transmissions to the masses.
You can't do it. Just because you would doesn't mean you're qualified. And a lot of making an astronaut qualified costs the astronaut program (ie. the government) a lot of money. Paying the astronaut is a tiny, though not negligible, part of the expense.
If you realized that, you might be more convincing as an astronaut candidate.
And when the military dictators ("royals") were responsible for that, they didn't spend on the people enough. Violating the "social contract" (which is why people noticed there is a "social contract"). That's when the people pushed as hard as they could to convert the military dictatorship into a democratic republic - punctuated with civil wars, revolutions, royal executions, etc.
So are the royal's castles. That's why they built castles: to protect the art they stole (or bought with money they stole).
Funny, in America the Republicans are the monarchists. Indeed, in Britain the Republicans are the Tories, who are the monarchists.
It costs a lot to create each astronaut. There are the early costs to the astronaut's family and to themself. There are the costs to society (public education, their residential share of overall national defense, other public expenses). And then there's the very large amount spent on turning a candidate into an astronaut, and ongoing expenses keeping them an astronaut. And then there's the loss to the astronaut's estate of all their future earnings, which can be substantial. Those expenses seem certainly in the hundreds of $millions, and possibly in the $billions (for those who get launched).
But losing an astronaut loses a lot more than the astronaut. It loses all the equipment and vessel lost with them. It loses all the value of the mission that is depreciated by using it for that mission. And then there's the expense of the investigation and other reactions to the loss.
Plus there's the loss to prestige, which is possibly the largest. There's the extra cost of insurance and other finance costs.
By the time you're done accounting all the costs that are higher because of the "lost astronaut", you probably are talking about far more than just $4B. And just because the odds are 4:1 with current mitigations doesn't mean that the costs are multiplied by four.
So even without considering how wrong it is to launch people into space without ensuring you can bring them back alive, the pure economics make spending hte money worth it.
Just another case of a "free marketeer" who's qualified to be Mayor of Sim City, not to criticize actual government operations and expenses. Especially since they don't even consider how wrong it is to launch people into space without ensuring you can bring them back alive. That's why they First Post as AC.
Libertarians are the answer to Somalia's and China's space ambitions, not America's.
Electrons with different quantum states aren't identical. They differ in their quantum states. If the quantum states differ in energy, the difference is hardly negligible:they have different masses.
Chuck Norris streams are streams of pure meaningless bullshit.
It would consist of no particles or waves. A dark matter smoke ring would do the trick.
Keep in mind that AC current just jiggles the same electrons in place, back and forth in a sine wave of velocity. The net number of electrons transferred past a point over time is approximately zero, modulo net jitter.
Picograms per bonghit?
The problem isn't so much the (in)durability and bulk of the reference kilograms. It's more that our measurements of the kilograms' mass aren't precise enough (eg. sampling error greater than an electron's mass).
And more importantly, the transience of the mass in the kilogram. It does have a decay half life, though long, and is subject to electrostatic and photoelectric fluctuations in its electron population, and even migration of whole atoms in/out of the sample. And then there are relativistic differences when the kilogram and the sampler are accelerating relative to each other, which even thermal jiggling can achieve in significance at these tiny mass differences.
Now that we've identified the Higgs boson, we'll learn more about the Higgs field, and learn to measure mass at extremely precise degrees. The "standard" kilograms' measured mass will be seen to fluctuate both over time and among the standard samples by several orders of magnitude (or rather "minitude" ;).
I hope these new quantum experiments at nanoscale (and even femtoscale) give us fundamental measures that count tiny things (including energy cycles) like "electrons per coulomb" from the bottom, rather than statistically survey large things like kilograms and scale down. Both for the more precise and reliable measurements, and to study the tiny deviations among previously believed "identical" particles like electrons. I expect different quantum states of the same particle type will have different masses due to different energy levels among the states. Perhaps we'll establish reliable equivalencies between information and mass, an "E=mc^2" for "joules per iota". And perhaps due to other factors yet undetermined, like perhaps energy in entanglement, or perhaps other "subquantum" effects yet unobserved until our measuring devices are more precise than the variations in their states.
How much energy difference is there between the two electron spin states?
Could a device like this electron streamer have added a nanodevice that sets the electron's spin before it's emitted? What's the practical minimum feasible energy consumption of setting each electron's spin? And thus the energy efficiency of such a spin setter.
Every single thing you said is insane. Short term: you need medication. Longer term: therapy. Alternately: straitjacket.
Really. The only surprise in your post was that when you said "helicopters" you didn't start raving about some kind of aliens, too.
It apparently escaped your notice that legislation proposed and promoted by the president, negotiated by him and his team using the many powers in his office, are part of his executive record.
You just pointed out some of Obama's record that neither you nor I like, that isn't Constitutional, but is certainly part of his record, and therefore certainly no "paperweight".
If you want to argue about whether Obama's significant achievements are good or bad, Constitutional or otherwise, that's a different story than the subject here. The subject is whether Obama's executive record is a "paperweight", as Ron Paul's Congressional record clearly is. Obama's is not.
Why do you think that astrophysicists assume that the matter lensing the light is uniformly distributed? They're the most sophisticated experts in the actual distribution of the matter, which they say is uneven.