Bell Labs was a subsidiary of the Bell Telephone company. Since the telephone company was a regulated utility, and a monopoly, the US government did not allow it to commercialize many of its discoveries and inventions. UNIX for instance was "given away" with a license to universities (e.g. UC Berekely), companies, and the government.
I believe the conclusion you drew is incorrect because it was based on the faulty assumption that Bell Labs tried to commercialize and profit off its products, when in fact it could not.
Operating a laptop computer in a vacuum would probably overheat the device. There is no air (or any convection medium) to cool the hardware.
In addition, outside the spacecraft in space, there is a significant amount of radiation in from the solar wind, among other sources. This would most likely disrupt the operations of the transistors in the hardware as they are not radiation hardened.
You are correct, humidity plays a larger role in barrel aging. But in my defense, temperature and humidity are not purely independent variables. Of course you can have high temperatures and low humidity and vice-versa, but for the most part there is a correlation between the two.
Pi_rules response to your post is correct, I just want to add some pedantic commentary.
People think "whisk(e)y" refers to something specific. Instead whisk(e)y is the most generic term for a family of alcoholic beverages. I usually use a geometry analogy: whisk(e)y==quadrilateral. A quadrilateral is any four sided shape (in two-dimensions).
If we start demanding more definitions on our quadrilateral we use different terms. If one pair of sides are parallel to each other, the shape is a trapezoid (trapezium). And if both pairs of sides are parallel to each other, this is a parallelogram. However, both trapezoids and parallelograms are still quadrilaterals.
Parallelograms can be broken down even further. A parallelogram with four 90-degree/right angles is a rectangle. A parallelogram with four equal sized sides is a rhombus. Likewise, a rhombus with four right angles is a square. Squares are also rectangles by construction. And all these shapes are still quadrilaterals. I might not be 100% correct in my geometric definitions, but the point of my analogy is that there is a family of shapes, starting with a quadrilateral, and additional definitions result in different names.
Whisk(e)y just means any grain that has been fermented, distilled, and then aged in wood barrels. Whisk(e)y can be made from wheat, corn, rye, barley, and malted barely. In fact it could be made of rice, oats, millet, etc. although I don't know if any whisk(e)ys that are made from these grains. (Aside: Sake is made from rice but not distilled and thus not a whisk(e)y). Not surprisingly, rye whisk(e)y is made from rye.
Scotch whisky comes from Scotland. Single malt scotch whisky means that the whisky is made in Scotland and comes from a single distillery where malted barley was used as the grain. Bourbon is an American whiskey which is made from at least 51% corn which is aged in new barrels only (so barrels can't be reused). Bourbon must also be distilled in Kentucky.
As you can see these definitions start to get myriad and confusing. Some of these terms are codified by law. To call a whiskey a bourbon you must follow a certain prescription by law, or else you cannot label it as bourbon.
Perhaps to be explicit and answer multipart/mixed question, the term whisk(e)y is not dependent on the grain the product was made from nor where the product originated. There are American malt whiskeys, made from malted barley and even roasted over peat to give it a the smoky flavor some Scotch whiskies have. There are Scotch whiskies made from wheat and unmalted barley, named single/blended grain whiskies depending on whether the whisky comes from a single distillery or whether it is blended from many sources. Rye whiskey was historically distilled in large quantities in the USA. Today Canada is a major source of rye whisky. Ireland, Japan, Austraila, etc. There are distilleries in many European countries, even in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, etc. etc. All make whisk(e)y.
So in conclusion, please don't assume that the name whisk(e)y denotes what ingredient was used to distill the product or where it was made. Whisk(e)y can come from any grain, and is worldwide in production.
Yes you are correct. My OP implied otherwise. It should be spelled based on where the product is from. I guess I was trying to make the point that since the article dealt with The Macallan, the spelling should have been whisky, with out an "e".
Bourbon is a whiskey, with more strict definitions. It's like the adage that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
Aging can mean two things. 1) The passage of time. So a whiskey stored in any container gets physically older.
2) But aging a whiskey is a specific process. Whiskey is created by the interaction of a spirit with the wood that it is in contact with. In effect you distill a "solvent" and that solvent dissolves chemicals in the wood. Thus when you remove the whiskey from a barrel you are in effect stopping the "aging process."
When I said "[the whiskey] no longer ages." I mean this specific process (#2), not that the passage of time stops.:-)
As a whisk(e)y connoisseur let me add my 2 cents with following points.
1. The older a whiskey is the more expensive it gets due to rarity, not quality. Many people have a bias toward older whiskeys (whiskies) because they think they are better. Like wine, some whiskeys age well, others don't.
2. Whiskey must be stored in oak barrels to age. Once it is out of the barrel, and in a bottle or steel vat, it no longer ages. So a 10 year old whiskey sitting in a bottle for 50 years is still a 10 year old whiskey.
3. Whiskeys in barrels lose about 2% a year due to evaporation, known as the angel's share. That 2% is mostly water in hotter climates, but in cooler ones, like Scotland, what is lost is mostly alcohol. Thus a spirit which is put into a barrel at 60% alcohol by volume (ABV) will be reduced to 50% ABV then 40% ABV as time goes one. This is important because once the produce drops below 40% ABV, it can no longer legally be named whiskey. Thus whiskeys are usually never older than 40 years of age to due the angle's share.
4. Whiskey is how it's spelled in the USA (where I am writing this.) In Britain and Canada it is spelled whisky. Since the article discusses whisky from The Macallan distillery (yes the "T" is capitalized), the article's title and summary misspelled "whisky."
I use mplayer for ripping the DVD and avidemux for the transcoding the video.
Specifically I use mplayer to dump the VOB files on the disk. Then I use avidemux, which in turn uses x264, ffmpeg, lamemp3, etc. to transcode the video to any format I want. This process is not a "one-click solution," but I find that going through the process for each DVD title manually gives fine-grain control over the final product.
I'm no expert, but many of their Flying Circus episodes were filmed in front of studio audiences. In addition, there was a laugh track that was inserted in post-production.
I really don't want to get into a debate on whether or not guns (in general) should be legal, illegal, regulated, restricted, etc. But I will refute a point you make.
Hear, hear! Groups with small arms have never been a match for a modern mil... Oh, wait.
Insurgency or guerrilla war relies more weapons like mortars, rockets, RPGs, mines (IEDs), etc. than on small arms. This is because a symmetric battle between a trained military force with small arms and insurgent forces (also with small arms) usually is a loss for the insurgents. Explosives and other munitions are usually more valuable.
Thus I personally find the argument that firearm ownership help in any "revolution" to be dubious. More useful would be explosives and skills in bomb-making.
I suspect the original poster is trying to imply an illegal link between the candidate and industry. I can't comment if one exists. But what I recommend is you go to Center for Responsive Politics which will tell you where the source of campaign contributions of all presidential candidates.
The Web site aggregates company donations by industrial sector. Thus to see which candidate gets the most money from "Telephone Utilities" you can try clicking on this link:
Telephone Utility Totals to Candidates As you can see Sen. McCain has received $345,945 from said utilities while Sen. Obama has received $203,546.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
N.B. I should note that the last election fund-raising report was due on 20-May-2008 and that was for donations received in April, so the information on this Web site is usually two months old.
Let me clarify. The building is built in such a way that there is a ground floor, a mezzanine, then the 1st floor. The 1st floor is the floor with the lobby, cafeteria, and the main entrances. The reason there is a ground floor is that the building resides of a man-made hill. You can enter the building through the main entrance which sits atop a large stairway and you will find yourself on the 1st floor. Or you can go into the building through a side entrance and you will be on the ground floor. Lastly, buildings in Europe are numbered differently from those in the USA. This building more or less follows the American standard where the "bottom" floor is the 1st floor. There is a ground floor below it but that's only because of the man-made hill.
To answer sporkme's question below, there is a 13th floor in Wilson hall, but yes some buildings omit floor 13.
The 15th floor is of Wilson hall is the observation deck. While giving a tour I pressed the 16 button in the elevator accidentally. This lead me the 16th floor which is one large "room" that was basically full of machinery. Think of it as a attic or facilities room.
My point being is that all this is probably a red herring. And in my opinion Wilson Hall has nothing to do with this note/code. This is just my opinion, you are free to speculate otherwise.
The image you posted is of Wilson's Los Alamos ID badge not a FermiLab badge. The two institutions are distinct and they would not (and do not) share the same badge numbering system.
As someone who works at FNAL as a grad. student I believe that the 16th floor of Wilson Hall is the "attic" I believe the observation deck is on floor 15. IMO, I doubt that the message is referring to anything up there.
Frank Shoemaker is a Princeton physicist who also does his research at FNAL. Neither his mail station number of phone number match any of the numbers given in the message. (I don't want to give his info out because people will contact him.)
Finally, I believe Robert Wilson's User ID number is 000001. Seriously. He was the founder of the laboratory and its first director.
Anyway, by your reasoning, isn't burning fossil fuels "carbon neutral" as well, over the long term, as that carbon content originally came from the atmosphere as well?
I realize you are asking a rhetorical question to make another point, but to address it anyway: the difference is that the carbon content of fossil fuels was "captured" from the atmosphere over millions of years. While humans have been burning said fuel in quantity for the last 200 years or so, more so today than in the past. So while it is correct to say that we are returning the carbon in coal/oil/gas back to the atmosphere, the problem is that we are dumping it back all at once.
18% is flat out wrong. I would suggest Political Arithmetik for your polling analysis. The writer aggregates the different approval polls into one measurement. According to his Presidential Approval Rating page[1] President Bush stands at 28.9% as of 1 July 2007.
In general, the blog and it's sister blog at Pollster.com are a great source for polls and statistical analysis.
[1] if the link doesn't work you can always go to the home page and click on the chart on the right-hand side.
You are not alone. There is a hypothesis floated[1] by archaeologists and other scientists that the Black Sea was the source of many flood myths that are present in Near East cultures. For instance Greek mythology also has a flood and an ark in it's creation stories. You can read more about it at Wikipedia: Black Sea Deluge Theory
PS[1] Sorry about the pun, I couldn't resist.
Basically, if they find the Higgs boson, every particle physicist can go home and retire...
As one of your aforementioned particle physicist I can say that you are incorrect. First of all we aren't trying to "find" the Higgs boson but observe it. Finding implies that it wasn't there before.
Secondly, after you observe a particle then you go about measuring its properties. For instance the first top quark was observation back in 1995, but now we are involved in studying the top quark's properties. For instance precision measurements of the top quark mass can help constrain the mass of the Higgs boson, thus aiding our ability to observe it (it helps to know where to look).
In addition, there are numerous other particle physics questions that need answering, not just about the Higgs boson. Supersymmetry (SUSY) has been a perplexing question for over three decades. Are there extra-dimensions besides the ones that we are familiar with? Or maybe there is something new and totally unexpected.
I think many people hear the words "standard model" and think that it represents the end of all particle physics. In fact a better phrase it "scientific theory of the standard model of particle physics." It's just the prevailing Theory, not just a hypothesis but a scientific theory, governing particle physics. Upon further observation this Theory could be overturned and replaced by a competing hypothesis. Or perhaps it could be "right" in that it is the best model that explains the experiments that we conduct. One by running more experiments can we try to answer this question.
...Leon Lederman, for coining the greatest misnomer in the history of particle physics and re-naming the Higgs boson to be the "God particle."
As a physicists at Fermilab (CDF grad student) I agree with you that the meme of the Higgs being "god" is utterly stupid, and counter-productive.
But I wonder if Lederman was directly responsible, or if perhaps the publisher of his book insisted he give it a more fanciful title. After all, a book titled "Implications due to the Possible Observation of the Electroweak Symmetry breaking Higgs boson" isn't exactly a title that flies off the shelves.
As once of these "scienticians," I am a physicists working on CDF at Fermilab, this is incorrect. It's just the opposite. If in fact the Higgs boson is observed (discovered implies it wasn't there before, we observe the Higgs boson) we shift our motivation from "discovery" to "measurements." This is how funding is always done.
Here is a historical example. The W and Z bosons, force carries of the (electro)weak force, were theorized in the the 60s and 70s, perhaps even earlier. In the 80s physicists convinced funding agencies to build an accelerator, the SPPS, to collide protons and anti-protons at CERN. Two particle detectors were built: UA1 and UA2. UA1 is credited with being the first to observe and publish the W and Z bosons. Immediately afterwards there was a push to fund and build another accelerator which was built in the 90s. LEP was built and four detectors were funded: OPAL, DELPHI, ALEPH, and L3. Numerous precice measurements of the W and Z were made and hints of more interesting physics such as the top quark and Higgs boson were found.
The Tevatron at Fermilab was built between SPPS and LEP. The two detectors at the Tevatron: CDF and D0 managed to observe the top quark. Now we are measuring the properties of the top quark while trying to see if we can observe the Higgs boson. The LHC which is being built at CERN will have two detectors: ATLAS and CMS. It will also try to observe the Higgs, but if it has already been observed, it will measure properties of said particle.
I have ignored all the other important physics that goes on at these particle detectors. There is b-quark physics, QCD physics, other exotic physics such and extra-dimension searches. The physics programs at these accelerators and detectors is a rich collection of different particle physics questions that need answering.
If there is anyone to blame for the one-topic (Higgs discovery) approach to particle physics is it ourselves. We physicists tend to exaggerate the importance of what we feel will give us the most funding at any one time. This it is this one and only one portion of the whole particle physics field that gets presented to the media and thus the world sees and hears about. The truth is that there are plenty of questions that need answering and just because the Higgs is observed, we don't just pack our bags and go home.
It's the same people. We physicists who work at Fermilab are the same people who work at LHC. The community of particle physicists collaborate internationally to build and run particle accelerators and particle detectors. There are friendly rivalries, but that's all.
Particle physics has because a field we resources need to be pooled in order to build an accelerator (and detectors) capable of reaching higher and higher energies. While in the past there may have been nationalistic concerns that "the Europeans" or the "Americans" were pulling ahead of one anther, today both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific collaborate in order to study particle physics. Fermilab is mostly run by the US. But the particle detectors that are operate there are run by international collaborations of Europeans, Americans, and Asians. The LHC is unique in that the Europeans run the laboratory (CERN), but all nations are working together on the effort; thus Fermilab builds some of the magnets for the LHC accelerator, which has gotten all this press.
There is plenty of competition in the field. At both these accelerators there are two large particle detectors; CDF and D0 at Fermilab; ATLAS and CMS at CERN. Each collaboration is independent of the other. Competition between the two helps keep both sides honest, and also drives us to out-do the other. But in the end the similarities are greater than the differences. And we are all trying to reach the common goal of increasing our understanding of particle physics.
I suspect that if you dug a little deeper, you would find that the scientists who are running experiments at Fermilab are, largely, the same scientists that will be running experiments at CERN once it's completed.
As one who works on Fermilab I will elaborate. All these experiments require a large number of people. The particle accelerators and the detectors that we build are so large and complex that thousands of people need to be involved, working together. In addition, no one nation or funding agency has the money to build and maintain such experiments. Thus we must pool our resources together in order to conduct any meaningful science.
So yes, its the same group of people. Also, it is not the accelerators are competing for physicists or experiments. The accelerators are build by physicists who want to perform the experiments. The same physicists then group together to build particle detectors at the accelerator complex in order to actually "see" the physics results.
The competition you always hear about it mainly in the media. It is sponsored by the physicists ourselves, who tell our respective funding agencies patriotic platitudes in order to get said funding. This is not done deliberately, but is result of how the money is distributed; i.e. nationally. However, after we get the funds the competition turns friendly and we work together in order to study particle physics.
That isn't to say there isn't any competition in the field. But it's mostly friendly rivalry. For instance, at Fermilab we have to very large complex particle detectors, CDF and D0. Both are more similar than they are different. But that doesn't stop people from one from trying to outperform the people from the other. In fact this healthy competition, balanced with an understanding that we are all in the same boat, drives all physicists to do better. Likewise at the LHC, there will be two detectors (four but two are very small and they are specialized): ATLAS and CMS.
How do you get into the stockmarket/finance line of work?
There isn't a one size fits all solution, but I would tell you to get a PhD in Physics, Math, Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering. Not because those subjects are relevant, but companies such as Goldman Sachs (finance) and McKinsey (consulting) hire PhD graduates because they are smart and can solve problems. McKinsey for instance holds "boot camps" at my university where PhD students near graduating go through rigorous interviews where their problem solving skills are evaluated. Many PhD students do not pass, but those who do are given very lucrative salaries. The major downside is that they are in high stress jobs.
Some anecdotes: 1) A colleague of mine went to McKinsey boot camp where the interviewer basically gave him a bunch of charts, tables, and graphs and asked, "These are financial data about company X. Tell me about A, B, and C." And then, "Okay, can you tell me about foo?" What are A, B, C and foo in this story? It doesn't matter, the idea is that they want people who can quickly analyze information, form conclusions, and then synthesize solutions to problems.
2) Another friend went to a Credit Suisse interview where they basically had a written exam; math, computer programming, finance. And then an oral exam where the interviewer asked brain teasers. Again, the idea is that financial companies are hiring smart people, not skilled people.
3) I went to a colloquium where a gentleman from wall street talked about options pricing and modeling said options in order to make money. He mentioned that today people with Physics, Math, and EE PhDs are in demand on wall street because they can do the complex math involved to model stock/options/commodities markets. (Interestingly, business oriented degrees such as finance and accounting are not considered for these type of jobs.) Theoretical physics winds up being preferred because Mathematicians are rarely interested in "getting their hands dirty" with real world applications.
So to answer your question, if you really want to get into this line of work, prove to companies that you are smart and a problem solver. Get a PhD in a mathematical rigorous field. But be aware that these types of profession are very high pressure. These people work long hours with short deadlines. Burn-out rates can be pretty high. Some people say you're trading a couple of years (the best years) of your life for a six-figure salary.
Slashdot Mirror
Bell Labs was a subsidiary of the Bell Telephone company. Since the telephone company was a regulated utility, and a monopoly, the US government did not allow it to commercialize many of its discoveries and inventions. UNIX for instance was "given away" with a license to universities (e.g. UC Berekely), companies, and the government.
I believe the conclusion you drew is incorrect because it was based on the faulty assumption that Bell Labs tried to commercialize and profit off its products, when in fact it could not.
Operating a laptop computer in a vacuum would probably overheat the device. There is no air (or any convection medium) to cool the hardware.
In addition, outside the spacecraft in space, there is a significant amount of radiation in from the solar wind, among other sources. This would most likely disrupt the operations of the transistors in the hardware as they are not radiation hardened.
You are correct, humidity plays a larger role in barrel aging. But in my defense, temperature and humidity are not purely independent variables. Of course you can have high temperatures and low humidity and vice-versa, but for the most part there is a correlation between the two.
Pi_rules response to your post is correct, I just want to add some pedantic commentary.
People think "whisk(e)y" refers to something specific. Instead whisk(e)y is the most generic term for a family of alcoholic beverages. I usually use a geometry analogy: whisk(e)y==quadrilateral. A quadrilateral is any four sided shape (in two-dimensions).
If we start demanding more definitions on our quadrilateral we use different terms. If one pair of sides are parallel to each other, the shape is a trapezoid (trapezium). And if both pairs of sides are parallel to each other, this is a parallelogram. However, both trapezoids and parallelograms are still quadrilaterals.
Parallelograms can be broken down even further. A parallelogram with four 90-degree/right angles is a rectangle. A parallelogram with four equal sized sides is a rhombus. Likewise, a rhombus with four right angles is a square. Squares are also rectangles by construction. And all these shapes are still quadrilaterals. I might not be 100% correct in my geometric definitions, but the point of my analogy is that there is a family of shapes, starting with a quadrilateral, and additional definitions result in different names.
Whisk(e)y just means any grain that has been fermented, distilled, and then aged in wood barrels. Whisk(e)y can be made from wheat, corn, rye, barley, and malted barely. In fact it could be made of rice, oats, millet, etc. although I don't know if any whisk(e)ys that are made from these grains. (Aside: Sake is made from rice but not distilled and thus not a whisk(e)y). Not surprisingly, rye whisk(e)y is made from rye. Scotch whisky comes from Scotland. Single malt scotch whisky means that the whisky is made in Scotland and comes from a single distillery where malted barley was used as the grain. Bourbon is an American whiskey which is made from at least 51% corn which is aged in new barrels only (so barrels can't be reused). Bourbon must also be distilled in Kentucky.
As you can see these definitions start to get myriad and confusing. Some of these terms are codified by law. To call a whiskey a bourbon you must follow a certain prescription by law, or else you cannot label it as bourbon.
Perhaps to be explicit and answer multipart/mixed question, the term whisk(e)y is not dependent on the grain the product was made from nor where the product originated. There are American malt whiskeys, made from malted barley and even roasted over peat to give it a the smoky flavor some Scotch whiskies have. There are Scotch whiskies made from wheat and unmalted barley, named single/blended grain whiskies depending on whether the whisky comes from a single distillery or whether it is blended from many sources. Rye whiskey was historically distilled in large quantities in the USA. Today Canada is a major source of rye whisky. Ireland, Japan, Austraila, etc. There are distilleries in many European countries, even in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, etc. etc. All make whisk(e)y.
So in conclusion, please don't assume that the name whisk(e)y denotes what ingredient was used to distill the product or where it was made. Whisk(e)y can come from any grain, and is worldwide in production.
Yes you are correct. My OP implied otherwise. It should be spelled based on where the product is from. I guess I was trying to make the point that since the article dealt with The Macallan, the spelling should have been whisky, with out an "e".
Bourbon is a whiskey, with more strict definitions. It's like the adage that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
Aging can mean two things. 1) The passage of time. So a whiskey stored in any container gets physically older.
2) But aging a whiskey is a specific process. Whiskey is created by the interaction of a spirit with the wood that it is in contact with. In effect you distill a "solvent" and that solvent dissolves chemicals in the wood. Thus when you remove the whiskey from a barrel you are in effect stopping the "aging process."
When I said "[the whiskey] no longer ages." I mean this specific process (#2), not that the passage of time stops. :-)
PS I do happen to a physicist though...
PPS ...not from Scotland.
1. The older a whiskey is the more expensive it gets due to rarity, not quality. Many people have a bias toward older whiskeys (whiskies) because they think they are better. Like wine, some whiskeys age well, others don't.
2. Whiskey must be stored in oak barrels to age. Once it is out of the barrel, and in a bottle or steel vat, it no longer ages. So a 10 year old whiskey sitting in a bottle for 50 years is still a 10 year old whiskey.
3. Whiskeys in barrels lose about 2% a year due to evaporation, known as the angel's share. That 2% is mostly water in hotter climates, but in cooler ones, like Scotland, what is lost is mostly alcohol. Thus a spirit which is put into a barrel at 60% alcohol by volume (ABV) will be reduced to 50% ABV then 40% ABV as time goes one. This is important because once the produce drops below 40% ABV, it can no longer legally be named whiskey. Thus whiskeys are usually never older than 40 years of age to due the angle's share.
4. Whiskey is how it's spelled in the USA (where I am writing this.) In Britain and Canada it is spelled whisky. Since the article discusses whisky from The Macallan distillery (yes the "T" is capitalized), the article's title and summary misspelled "whisky."
I use mplayer for ripping the DVD and avidemux for the transcoding the video.
Specifically I use mplayer to dump the VOB files on the disk. Then I use avidemux, which in turn uses x264, ffmpeg, lamemp3, etc. to transcode the video to any format I want. This process is not a "one-click solution," but I find that going through the process for each DVD title manually gives fine-grain control over the final product.
It's called OpenMoko.
I'm afraid you'll have to do with the laughter.
I'm not that worried. There are still some kinks to be worked out.
I really don't want to get into a debate on whether or not guns (in general) should be legal, illegal, regulated, restricted, etc. But I will refute a point you make.
Hear, hear! Groups with small arms have never been a match for a modern mil... Oh, wait.
Insurgency or guerrilla war relies more weapons like mortars, rockets, RPGs, mines (IEDs), etc. than on small arms. This is because a symmetric battle between a trained military force with small arms and insurgent forces (also with small arms) usually is a loss for the insurgents. Explosives and other munitions are usually more valuable.
Thus I personally find the argument that firearm ownership help in any "revolution" to be dubious. More useful would be explosives and skills in bomb-making.
I suspect the original poster is trying to imply an illegal link between the candidate and industry. I can't comment if one exists. But what I recommend is you go to Center for Responsive Politics which will tell you where the source of campaign contributions of all presidential candidates.
The Web site aggregates company donations by industrial sector. Thus to see which candidate gets the most money from "Telephone Utilities" you can try clicking on this link: Telephone Utility Totals to Candidates As you can see Sen. McCain has received $345,945 from said utilities while Sen. Obama has received $203,546.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
N.B. I should note that the last election fund-raising report was due on 20-May-2008 and that was for donations received in April, so the information on this Web site is usually two months old.
Let me clarify. The building is built in such a way that there is a ground floor, a mezzanine, then the 1st floor. The 1st floor is the floor with the lobby, cafeteria, and the main entrances. The reason there is a ground floor is that the building resides of a man-made hill. You can enter the building through the main entrance which sits atop a large stairway and you will find yourself on the 1st floor. Or you can go into the building through a side entrance and you will be on the ground floor. Lastly, buildings in Europe are numbered differently from those in the USA. This building more or less follows the American standard where the "bottom" floor is the 1st floor. There is a ground floor below it but that's only because of the man-made hill.
To answer sporkme's question below, there is a 13th floor in Wilson hall, but yes some buildings omit floor 13.
The 15th floor is of Wilson hall is the observation deck. While giving a tour I pressed the 16 button in the elevator accidentally. This lead me the 16th floor which is one large "room" that was basically full of machinery. Think of it as a attic or facilities room.
My point being is that all this is probably a red herring. And in my opinion Wilson Hall has nothing to do with this note/code. This is just my opinion, you are free to speculate otherwise.
The image you posted is of Wilson's Los Alamos ID badge not a FermiLab badge. The two institutions are distinct and they would not (and do not) share the same badge numbering system.
As someone who works at FNAL as a grad. student I believe that the 16th floor of Wilson Hall is the "attic" I believe the observation deck is on floor 15. IMO, I doubt that the message is referring to anything up there.
Frank Shoemaker is a Princeton physicist who also does his research at FNAL. Neither his mail station number of phone number match any of the numbers given in the message. (I don't want to give his info out because people will contact him.)
Finally, I believe Robert Wilson's User ID number is 000001. Seriously. He was the founder of the laboratory and its first director.
Anyway, by your reasoning, isn't burning fossil fuels "carbon neutral" as well, over the long term, as that carbon content originally came from the atmosphere as well?
I realize you are asking a rhetorical question to make another point, but to address it anyway: the difference is that the carbon content of fossil fuels was "captured" from the atmosphere over millions of years. While humans have been burning said fuel in quantity for the last 200 years or so, more so today than in the past. So while it is correct to say that we are returning the carbon in coal/oil/gas back to the atmosphere, the problem is that we are dumping it back all at once.
18% is flat out wrong. I would suggest Political Arithmetik for your polling analysis. The writer aggregates the different approval polls into one measurement. According to his Presidential Approval Rating page[1] President Bush stands at 28.9% as of 1 July 2007.
In general, the blog and it's sister blog at Pollster.com are a great source for polls and statistical analysis.
[1] if the link doesn't work you can always go to the home page and click on the chart on the right-hand side.
You are not alone. There is a hypothesis floated[1] by archaeologists and other scientists that the Black Sea was the source of many flood myths that are present in Near East cultures. For instance Greek mythology also has a flood and an ark in it's creation stories. You can read more about it at Wikipedia: Black Sea Deluge Theory PS[1] Sorry about the pun, I couldn't resist.
Basically, if they find the Higgs boson, every particle physicist can go home and retire...
As one of your aforementioned particle physicist I can say that you are incorrect. First of all we aren't trying to "find" the Higgs boson but observe it. Finding implies that it wasn't there before.
Secondly, after you observe a particle then you go about measuring its properties. For instance the first top quark was observation back in 1995, but now we are involved in studying the top quark's properties. For instance precision measurements of the top quark mass can help constrain the mass of the Higgs boson, thus aiding our ability to observe it (it helps to know where to look).
In addition, there are numerous other particle physics questions that need answering, not just about the Higgs boson. Supersymmetry (SUSY) has been a perplexing question for over three decades. Are there extra-dimensions besides the ones that we are familiar with? Or maybe there is something new and totally unexpected.
I think many people hear the words "standard model" and think that it represents the end of all particle physics. In fact a better phrase it "scientific theory of the standard model of particle physics." It's just the prevailing Theory, not just a hypothesis but a scientific theory, governing particle physics. Upon further observation this Theory could be overturned and replaced by a competing hypothesis. Or perhaps it could be "right" in that it is the best model that explains the experiments that we conduct. One by running more experiments can we try to answer this question.
As a physicists at Fermilab (CDF grad student) I agree with you that the meme of the Higgs being "god" is utterly stupid, and counter-productive.
But I wonder if Lederman was directly responsible, or if perhaps the publisher of his book insisted he give it a more fanciful title. After all, a book titled "Implications due to the Possible Observation of the Electroweak Symmetry breaking Higgs boson" isn't exactly a title that flies off the shelves.
As once of these "scienticians," I am a physicists working on CDF at Fermilab, this is incorrect. It's just the opposite. If in fact the Higgs boson is observed (discovered implies it wasn't there before, we observe the Higgs boson) we shift our motivation from "discovery" to "measurements." This is how funding is always done.
Here is a historical example. The W and Z bosons, force carries of the (electro)weak force, were theorized in the the 60s and 70s, perhaps even earlier. In the 80s physicists convinced funding agencies to build an accelerator, the SPPS, to collide protons and anti-protons at CERN. Two particle detectors were built: UA1 and UA2. UA1 is credited with being the first to observe and publish the W and Z bosons. Immediately afterwards there was a push to fund and build another accelerator which was built in the 90s. LEP was built and four detectors were funded: OPAL, DELPHI, ALEPH, and L3. Numerous precice measurements of the W and Z were made and hints of more interesting physics such as the top quark and Higgs boson were found.
The Tevatron at Fermilab was built between SPPS and LEP. The two detectors at the Tevatron: CDF and D0 managed to observe the top quark. Now we are measuring the properties of the top quark while trying to see if we can observe the Higgs boson. The LHC which is being built at CERN will have two detectors: ATLAS and CMS. It will also try to observe the Higgs, but if it has already been observed, it will measure properties of said particle.
I have ignored all the other important physics that goes on at these particle detectors. There is b-quark physics, QCD physics, other exotic physics such and extra-dimension searches. The physics programs at these accelerators and detectors is a rich collection of different particle physics questions that need answering.
If there is anyone to blame for the one-topic (Higgs discovery) approach to particle physics is it ourselves. We physicists tend to exaggerate the importance of what we feel will give us the most funding at any one time. This it is this one and only one portion of the whole particle physics field that gets presented to the media and thus the world sees and hears about. The truth is that there are plenty of questions that need answering and just because the Higgs is observed, we don't just pack our bags and go home.
It's the same people. We physicists who work at Fermilab are the same people who work at LHC. The community of particle physicists collaborate internationally to build and run particle accelerators and particle detectors. There are friendly rivalries, but that's all.
Particle physics has because a field we resources need to be pooled in order to build an accelerator (and detectors) capable of reaching higher and higher energies. While in the past there may have been nationalistic concerns that "the Europeans" or the "Americans" were pulling ahead of one anther, today both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific collaborate in order to study particle physics. Fermilab is mostly run by the US. But the particle detectors that are operate there are run by international collaborations of Europeans, Americans, and Asians. The LHC is unique in that the Europeans run the laboratory (CERN), but all nations are working together on the effort; thus Fermilab builds some of the magnets for the LHC accelerator, which has gotten all this press.
There is plenty of competition in the field. At both these accelerators there are two large particle detectors; CDF and D0 at Fermilab; ATLAS and CMS at CERN. Each collaboration is independent of the other. Competition between the two helps keep both sides honest, and also drives us to out-do the other. But in the end the similarities are greater than the differences. And we are all trying to reach the common goal of increasing our understanding of particle physics.
As one who works on Fermilab I will elaborate. All these experiments require a large number of people. The particle accelerators and the detectors that we build are so large and complex that thousands of people need to be involved, working together. In addition, no one nation or funding agency has the money to build and maintain such experiments. Thus we must pool our resources together in order to conduct any meaningful science.
So yes, its the same group of people. Also, it is not the accelerators are competing for physicists or experiments. The accelerators are build by physicists who want to perform the experiments. The same physicists then group together to build particle detectors at the accelerator complex in order to actually "see" the physics results.
The competition you always hear about it mainly in the media. It is sponsored by the physicists ourselves, who tell our respective funding agencies patriotic platitudes in order to get said funding. This is not done deliberately, but is result of how the money is distributed; i.e. nationally. However, after we get the funds the competition turns friendly and we work together in order to study particle physics.
That isn't to say there isn't any competition in the field. But it's mostly friendly rivalry. For instance, at Fermilab we have to very large complex particle detectors, CDF and D0. Both are more similar than they are different. But that doesn't stop people from one from trying to outperform the people from the other. In fact this healthy competition, balanced with an understanding that we are all in the same boat, drives all physicists to do better. Likewise at the LHC, there will be two detectors (four but two are very small and they are specialized): ATLAS and CMS.
There isn't a one size fits all solution, but I would tell you to get a PhD in Physics, Math, Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering. Not because those subjects are relevant, but companies such as Goldman Sachs (finance) and McKinsey (consulting) hire PhD graduates because they are smart and can solve problems. McKinsey for instance holds "boot camps" at my university where PhD students near graduating go through rigorous interviews where their problem solving skills are evaluated. Many PhD students do not pass, but those who do are given very lucrative salaries. The major downside is that they are in high stress jobs.
Some anecdotes: 1) A colleague of mine went to McKinsey boot camp where the interviewer basically gave him a bunch of charts, tables, and graphs and asked, "These are financial data about company X. Tell me about A, B, and C." And then, "Okay, can you tell me about foo?" What are A, B, C and foo in this story? It doesn't matter, the idea is that they want people who can quickly analyze information, form conclusions, and then synthesize solutions to problems.
2) Another friend went to a Credit Suisse interview where they basically had a written exam; math, computer programming, finance. And then an oral exam where the interviewer asked brain teasers. Again, the idea is that financial companies are hiring smart people, not skilled people.
3) I went to a colloquium where a gentleman from wall street talked about options pricing and modeling said options in order to make money. He mentioned that today people with Physics, Math, and EE PhDs are in demand on wall street because they can do the complex math involved to model stock/options/commodities markets. (Interestingly, business oriented degrees such as finance and accounting are not considered for these type of jobs.) Theoretical physics winds up being preferred because Mathematicians are rarely interested in "getting their hands dirty" with real world applications.
So to answer your question, if you really want to get into this line of work, prove to companies that you are smart and a problem solver. Get a PhD in a mathematical rigorous field. But be aware that these types of profession are very high pressure. These people work long hours with short deadlines. Burn-out rates can be pretty high. Some people say you're trading a couple of years (the best years) of your life for a six-figure salary.