The only reason I recognize Pentax is because of their ugly K-r cameras. Who in their right mind thought that bright yellow, red, orange, pinks, or white would grab consumers looking for an entry level camera, nothing says quality like brightly colored plastic.
I don't know who at Pentax came up with the idea, but Nikon is copying it with their new mirrorless camera system. And, offering choice is a good thing - you can still get all of their cameras in black if you prefer.
You seriously want to make that argument? Let's look at my deadbeat uncle, Sam.
He earns $23K/year
He spends $36K/year
He's $150k in debt, the schmuck.
You seriously want to argue that Sam's spending isn't the problem right here and now because is a just world he'd earn more? Because he plans to earn more? Because you'd like him to earn more? Really? Because right here, right now, he needs to live within his means, and if one glorious day he does earn more, then wonderful, then he can buy more stuff that you like.
Worse than that, would you loan this asshole money, if he were your brother-in-law? OK, maybe after. a 12-step program, but now?
Using numbers you've given, the solution can't be just to cut spending. If this was a real person in the real world, monthly take home pay would be something like $2000 pre-tax. Take out $200 for taxes. Set aside $600 for rent, $200 for gas, $200 for utilities, and $100 for phone, internet, etc. That leaves $700 left. However, minimum payment on that massive debt is likely ~$1500. That leaves him -800 in the hole, before he has purchased food for the month.
The bottom line is, he's never getting out of debt if his income is only $23,000 a year. Sure, he could get rid of his car, live on the streets, ditch the phone and internet, but many of those things are necessary for him to stay employed and/or find a new job if he loses his current one. He can't cut costs without jeopardizing the small income he does have.
This guy simply needs to make some more money, and that is exactly the situation the US is in. Cutting the bottom out of significant portions of the middle and lower classes by removing all support programs could very well end up destabilizing the economy more and backfiring as the consumers that drive the bulk of the economy become homeless and destitute. However, if we could double our income by taking a second job or getting a better one(taxing more), then we could pay our debt and afford basic necessities. Eating top ramen for a while would help too, but it isn't ever going to get the job done without bringing some more cash in.
During the Carter years, when the top tax rate was 90%, the top 1% of taxpayers paid about 20% of all income taxes.
Now, with those evil, reviled Bush tax cuts for the evil and reviled rich (who clearly belong in concentration camps after we sieze their ill-gotten gains), the top 1% of yaxpayer pay about 40% of all income taxes.
That phenomenon can just be attributed to the fact that the wealthy are much wealthier now. 90% of $1,000,000 would be $900,000, but 20% (for instance) of $10,000,000 would be $2,000,000. So, with tax rates dropping, they could pay a higher share, but only if income disparity has grown as well.
How evenly income should be distributed is a matter of opinion, of course, although there's a good argument to be made that stability is endangered by high levels of inequality. And there is no question that the gap between the rich and everyone else is getting larger all the time.
The truth is, we need to increase taxes AND cut back on spending. It causes more problems than it solves by taking away support from the poor, the sick, and the elderly. If the republicans would actually enact some decent proposals instead of just being obstructionists and spending all of their energy vilifying Obama, we might be ok, but it seems like both parties will continue picking at one another until it is too late. The situation could be likened to two captains of a ship arguing about whether to turn left or right so much that they end up continuing straight ahead and hitting the iceberg.
Someone wrote a short story about this, in which an infinite quantum computer is created that can simulate the entire universe perfectly, and it begins simulating itself and the researchers working on the simulation. Of course, that means that there are infinitely nested universes being simulated, because there will be a simulated simulation, and then a simulation inside of the simulated simulation, and so on.
That said, there is something sort of unsatisfying and perhaps unmanly about demanding no amount of reality from our models. This is what Einstein hated about quantum mechanics. He felt that the role of the physicist should always be to discover what is *actually* going on, and learn some kind of truth about the universe. Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd thought it was misguided to try to attribute macroscopic-style meaning to these models that operate on a level that we can never directly interact with. I appreciate the pragmatism of the Copenhagen interpretation, but I have to side with Einstein in the sense that a physicist should be interested in what the structure of reality *is*, not just what we perceive it to be.
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
That makes it sound a little bit more negative than it is. All models are approximations, which aren't wrong/right in a binary sense but instead sit on a continuum of progressively closer agreement with experiment.
I started playing D&D not too long ago after hearing about it for ages, and it is a lot of fun, but the complexity of the system can be daunting to say the least. The games I've played also burn an inordinate amount of time on checking rules and spell behavior and keeping track of all sorts of mindless minutia. This system looks to retain much of the good but do it in a simpler and more streamlined way, which should make for fun gameplay.
If I can convince some of my D&D buddies to chip in as well, might have to pick it up. The biggest problem with tabletop games (especially obscure or new ones) is that it can be hard to track down people to actually play with.
It's worth noting that Pentax is still around and kicking, and all those old lenses (super cheap now) still work perfectly with the latest digital bodies. I've got a couple of K1000's and several Pentax DSLR's and it is pretty neat to be able to swap old lenses onto the new cameras and (in some cases) vice versa.
Agreed, at least if the submitter is interested in SLRs. The point-and-shoots aren't anything special IMO, but the K5 is stinking fantastic. The entry-level DSLR's are also really good from what I know of them. I've been shooting Pentax since the K100D with no regrets.
Sorry, but... lens diameter doesn't matter. Aperture diameter (a relative measurement based on focal length) does. Look for f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8 and you'll be in good shape. Sensor size kind of matters, insofar as it lowers noise generally and allows higher ISO's to be used. Panasonic makes a point and shoot with a wide aperture and it is highly regarded by many photographers. Fewer optical elements isn't necessarily a plus, either. A lens that includes aspherical elements to compensate for spherical aberration will outperform one with no correction, for instance.
The most important thing is to have a camera with you when you need to take pictures. The second thing is to have complete manual control over your camera so you can get an intuitive feel for the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity, etc.
Finally, it isn't necessarily the case that a point and shoot (or even a DSLR) will do better than a smartphone. It all depends on what you're using it for. The iPhone 4 camera is scary good, and it can out-macro many stock DSLR kits, and shoots sharper, more dynamic images than many point-and-shoots. This is partly because the fixed lens ignores all the inevitable tradeoffs that come with a zoom lens, so it can be simpler and have a wider aperture. However, there are obviously cases where an DSLR is the only thing that will get the job done. In that situation, I prefer Pentax, because you get quite a bit for your money, and the build/ergonomics are nicer than Canikon IMO. The recent K5 really blew away the competition in terms of image quality, as well.
I wish there was a place that smart people could hang out, have intelligent discussions, share their knowledge, have resources around for researching/discovering/learning/experimenting, and generally participate in intellectually profitable activities. I know that some ancient libraries were centers where lecturers shared ideas and debates were had and new ideas were formed. In modern times, a university sometimes acts like the place that I've listed above, but it is only open to people that enroll and spend lots of money, and some don't even allow paying students much latitude for self-directed learning.
Maybe a library isn't the best place for this, but it isn't that far off. My library is full of computers, all the media resources you could think of (books, movies, music), and holds classes and hosts clubs with a variety of interests. Add in food and workspace for non-trivial projects and I would spend all my free time there. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a community center for people who invent and discover and share ideas? Wouldn't that be a public good just like having a community center that shares information?
This seems like a really fantastic idea to me, and although I imagine that it might fail for some of the reasons listed already, I'd love to see it succeed. A world that was populated with spaces like this would be one with a lot more invention, creativity, and curiosity.
Behold, readers, the triumph of marketing and showroom appeal, over, like, good engineering.
As I said, glossy screen of the cellphone world.
AMOLED has battery life benefits, outdoor viewing advantages, and often has a better viewing angle. All of these things are objectively better. Not that it matters. There's one main difference between a person who purchases based on preference and a person that purchases based on specs. One of them is aware of their own subjectivity.
"Shit on a cracker" certainly implies something about product quality. My point is that Apple has produced things that haven't sold well, so clearly their marketing isn't as all-powerful as you suggest it is. They have good marketing, and they often have good products, which combine to produce good sales. You can't survive on marketing alone (not permanently anyway).
More power to him, if he can make it happen. That's a big if, though. It's easy to throw around words about how the government should be, but making that actually happen is a different story.
Be it as it may, what it comes down to is that Apple created a product their customer doesn't complain about. And in this time and age, this is already the superior product. Whether you liked it a lot or didn't, Apple made products that "work". They don't crash, they don't lock up, they don't keep their user puzzled how to use them.
I have a recent iMac that crashes quite a bit, and Apple's Aperture (photo editing program) is pretty grossly unstable. The most recent version of iMovie is less powerful than the previous one, and also less intuitive (IMO).
I still use primarily Apple computers, because the hardware is the best I've found and the software is good when it works. But I use Windows for some stuff, and Linux for others, and honestly each has upsides and downsides. If anything, I think the different platforms are becoming more similar than they are different, and it isn't so easy to categorize them as it used to be. If Apple has any significant advantages still, it is usability for newbies and consistency in UI, but I think stability and security are no longer what they used to be.
Except that if anything, Apple is a marketing machine. They could have sold shit on a cracker.
Then explain the lackluster performance of the Apple TV, or the Xserve line, or the initial weird aluminum macbook lineup. Apple produces mediocre products or products that don't really have as much of a market as they initially anticipated, just like anybody else does. They occasionally mess up and have a hard time pushing as many products as they expected. The difference is that they have a much higher signal to noise ratio than is average for the industry.
Sure, Apple does have a good marketing machine, but most people that I know have converted to Apple because they saw the product in action and said "hey, I want that". There's no denying that they build nice products. There's also no denying that they've built probably the most valuable brand that exists right now. Marketing can do a lot for you, but if it was the only factor, Microsoft wouldn't ever lose market share.
The Baroque Cycle? That whole trilogy kind of revolves around the creation of the Royal Society - I'd love to dig through some of the first articles and see exactly what Newton, Hooke and crew were publishing right out of the gate.
"The superior neutron economy of a fast neutron reactor makes it possible to build a reactor that, after its initial fuel charge of plutonium, requires only natural (or even depleted) uranium feedstock as input to its fuel cycle."
nuclear plant operators downplaying, obscuring, lying etc. I am genuinely shocked!1!!
Nuclear plant operators? Try the Japanese government. They estimated low, and now they are correcting the estimate. I know you can't be bothered to RTFA, but maybe you could, you know, RTFS?
It seems like we've been finding more and more that there are more influences on an organism's genome than just simple heredity and natural selection over a period of several generations. I remember a recent study that suggested that acquired traits might actually be possible to pass on to offspring... if this is the case, we're going to have to revise our models pretty seriously.
If anything, it will only make evolution a lot more impressive. I don't think we'll be seeing X-men level mutations ever, but these kinds of effects could really accelerate change in a species much more than we've ever expected (assuming that these changes happen in reproductive cells as well).
It's not that we don't know HOW to evaluate teachers, it's that you have to cut through miles of bullshit from teachers unions, state employee unions, and assorted political allies to actually DO IT and USE IT for anything.
Citation needed. A disturbingly large portion of educational research that I've come across seems to be nothing more than a collection of opinion articles in a self-referencing echo chamber. We need to use whatever tools we have, either from business or from hard science, to actually get some rigor into our understanding of education. When we've got lots of data, and good predictive models, then we can say we know how to evaluate people.
A good friend of mine recently started working in a district with merit pay, which she was initially excited about. However, the administration assembled a list of 28 criteria, including "Cultural Relevance" and similar gems, which a teacher must include in EVERY LESSON. Furthermore, the teacher is observed randomly (which isn't a problem in itself) without any chance to speak with the evaluator. So, the evaluator marked the teacher down for not accommodating special ed students, when in fact the teacher had discreetly provided individualized assignments for those students.
The problem is that I think this school's administration has essentially built a tool to keep any teachers from getting raises, ever. The people who are evaluating these lessons aren't themselves able to demonstrate a lesson that would fulfill each and every one of the criteria. If nobody can produce a perfect lesson, even the so-called experts in charge of evaluation, that seems like evidence that the criteria are totally inappropriate.
Defining criteria is a great move, and I applaud Bill for having the insight to see that this is one of the fundamental pieces required to start improving education. We can't rely on the uninformed opinions of bureaucrats to decide how our teachers should be evaluated, and we probably can't rely on teachers themselves either. We need people (scientists, business HR people, ???) who can objectively dissect the process and find good indicators for a teacher's worth.
Mods, give parent some love. This is exactly right - the rich have always been around, but the combination of ruthless capitalism and postmodern moral ambiguity have given us a ruling class that doesn't even pay lipservice to equality or antiquated concepts like caring for the poor. We've given ourselves the worst of both worlds.
First off - the cleanliness of nuclear is completely relevant. If it is extremely safe for people working in close proximity to it every day, then that is a useful datapoint when we're discussing the danger it has for people in general. Also, the point that you seem to ignore regularly - I claim that we should give mental priority to the most likely dangers to our health. Radiation isn't ranked anywhere near the top. If we're being intellectually honest and systematic about this, we should assess the highest threats first. If you have a 20% chance of dying from heart disease and a.01% chance of dying from radiation-sourced cancer, does it really make sense to devote all of our energy to worrying about radiation?
Simplifications are useful. Nobody can predict exactly how and when radiation will cause damage. However, we can look at statistics, and describe the relationship between radiation and cancer. Arguments about the complexity basically boil down to "if our understanding isn't perfect, it's useless." Sorry, but we don't understand ANYTHING perfectly. We have to act based on incomplete information, but it turns out we've still been able to use simplified models and systematic analysis of imperfect data to build the most advanced civilization ever.
There is nothing wrong with the parent measuring radiation around his home. However, my contention, and the contention of others, is that an honest analysis reveals that he is investing his limited resources in protecting his family from a very unlikely threat. It isn't that radiation isn't potentially harmful. If you have unlimited time and money, sure, measure everything that could possibly harm your family. But, in the real world, we have limited time, and we can make a statistical argument that the submitter would do better to check his home for asbestos/test bacteria in the home/hire a nutritionist to help his family's diet/buy a better carseat/install extra smoke alarms or any number of other things that are more probable dangers than radiation-caused cancer. I'm just asking for consistency, here - if we're not going to panic about all sorts of more dangerous threats, why should we panic about a lesser one?
Finally, to reply partly to the other post, and merge the comments back together - having personal investment in a problem makes you a less reliable source than otherwise. I'm sorry to hear that you've lost quite a bit of material wealth along with peace of mind, but surely you could admit that your perspective is now biased. I cite Colorado as an example because I live there - I'm experiencing radiation levels higher than most people in the world right now. I've worked in labs in the past with nuclear material, and as I type there's a room full of nuclear substances not 50 feet away from me. Radiation can be dangerous, but so can electricity, gasoline, and sunlight. We deal with these factors in our lives by understanding how to treat them with respect and use them safely, and radiation is no different.
If anything, I'd expect you to be minimizing the danger to people in Japan, because the only reason real-estate is plummeting in those areas is because of perception. If people were better educated, they would realize there isn't any substantial danger and they wouldn't be leaving the area. If I ended up in Japan through some career change, I would be the first to try to invest in some bargain-priced real estate around Fukushima, because prices are going to come bouncing right back as soon as people figure out that there aren't glowing bunnies or 3-eyed fish to worry about in reality. Granted, nuclear is a touchy issue with the Japanese, so there are certainly cultural effects, but that doesn't mean they are based on a real-world danger.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason I recognize Pentax is because of their ugly K-r cameras. Who in their right mind thought that bright yellow, red, orange, pinks, or white would grab consumers looking for an entry level camera, nothing says quality like brightly colored plastic.
I don't know who at Pentax came up with the idea, but Nikon is copying it with their new mirrorless camera system. And, offering choice is a good thing - you can still get all of their cameras in black if you prefer.
You seriously want to make that argument? Let's look at my deadbeat uncle, Sam.
You seriously want to argue that Sam's spending isn't the problem right here and now because is a just world he'd earn more? Because he plans to earn more? Because you'd like him to earn more? Really? Because right here, right now, he needs to live within his means, and if one glorious day he does earn more, then wonderful, then he can buy more stuff that you like.
Worse than that, would you loan this asshole money, if he were your brother-in-law? OK, maybe after. a 12-step program, but now?
Using numbers you've given, the solution can't be just to cut spending. If this was a real person in the real world, monthly take home pay would be something like $2000 pre-tax. Take out $200 for taxes. Set aside $600 for rent, $200 for gas, $200 for utilities, and $100 for phone, internet, etc. That leaves $700 left. However, minimum payment on that massive debt is likely ~$1500. That leaves him -800 in the hole, before he has purchased food for the month.
The bottom line is, he's never getting out of debt if his income is only $23,000 a year. Sure, he could get rid of his car, live on the streets, ditch the phone and internet, but many of those things are necessary for him to stay employed and/or find a new job if he loses his current one. He can't cut costs without jeopardizing the small income he does have.
This guy simply needs to make some more money, and that is exactly the situation the US is in. Cutting the bottom out of significant portions of the middle and lower classes by removing all support programs could very well end up destabilizing the economy more and backfiring as the consumers that drive the bulk of the economy become homeless and destitute. However, if we could double our income by taking a second job or getting a better one(taxing more), then we could pay our debt and afford basic necessities. Eating top ramen for a while would help too, but it isn't ever going to get the job done without bringing some more cash in.
During the Carter years, when the top tax rate was 90%, the top 1% of taxpayers paid about 20% of all income taxes.
Now, with those evil, reviled Bush tax cuts for the evil and reviled rich (who clearly belong in concentration camps after we sieze their ill-gotten gains), the top 1% of yaxpayer pay about 40% of all income taxes.
That phenomenon can just be attributed to the fact that the wealthy are much wealthier now. 90% of $1,000,000 would be $900,000, but 20% (for instance) of $10,000,000 would be $2,000,000. So, with tax rates dropping, they could pay a higher share, but only if income disparity has grown as well.
How evenly income should be distributed is a matter of opinion, of course, although there's a good argument to be made that stability is endangered by high levels of inequality. And there is no question that the gap between the rich and everyone else is getting larger all the time.
The truth is, we need to increase taxes AND cut back on spending. It causes more problems than it solves by taking away support from the poor, the sick, and the elderly. If the republicans would actually enact some decent proposals instead of just being obstructionists and spending all of their energy vilifying Obama, we might be ok, but it seems like both parties will continue picking at one another until it is too late. The situation could be likened to two captains of a ship arguing about whether to turn left or right so much that they end up continuing straight ahead and hitting the iceberg.
Someone wrote a short story about this, in which an infinite quantum computer is created that can simulate the entire universe perfectly, and it begins simulating itself and the researchers working on the simulation. Of course, that means that there are infinitely nested universes being simulated, because there will be a simulated simulation, and then a simulation inside of the simulated simulation, and so on.
That said, there is something sort of unsatisfying and perhaps unmanly about demanding no amount of reality from our models. This is what Einstein hated about quantum mechanics. He felt that the role of the physicist should always be to discover what is *actually* going on, and learn some kind of truth about the universe. Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd thought it was misguided to try to attribute macroscopic-style meaning to these models that operate on a level that we can never directly interact with. I appreciate the pragmatism of the Copenhagen interpretation, but I have to side with Einstein in the sense that a physicist should be interested in what the structure of reality *is*, not just what we perceive it to be.
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
That makes it sound a little bit more negative than it is. All models are approximations, which aren't wrong/right in a binary sense but instead sit on a continuum of progressively closer agreement with experiment.
I started playing D&D not too long ago after hearing about it for ages, and it is a lot of fun, but the complexity of the system can be daunting to say the least. The games I've played also burn an inordinate amount of time on checking rules and spell behavior and keeping track of all sorts of mindless minutia. This system looks to retain much of the good but do it in a simpler and more streamlined way, which should make for fun gameplay.
If I can convince some of my D&D buddies to chip in as well, might have to pick it up. The biggest problem with tabletop games (especially obscure or new ones) is that it can be hard to track down people to actually play with.
Mod parent up! The Online Photographer is a pretty great resource for any aspiring photography enthusiast.
It's worth noting that Pentax is still around and kicking, and all those old lenses (super cheap now) still work perfectly with the latest digital bodies. I've got a couple of K1000's and several Pentax DSLR's and it is pretty neat to be able to swap old lenses onto the new cameras and (in some cases) vice versa.
Agreed, at least if the submitter is interested in SLRs. The point-and-shoots aren't anything special IMO, but the K5 is stinking fantastic. The entry-level DSLR's are also really good from what I know of them. I've been shooting Pentax since the K100D with no regrets.
Sorry, but... lens diameter doesn't matter. Aperture diameter (a relative measurement based on focal length) does. Look for f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8 and you'll be in good shape. Sensor size kind of matters, insofar as it lowers noise generally and allows higher ISO's to be used. Panasonic makes a point and shoot with a wide aperture and it is highly regarded by many photographers. Fewer optical elements isn't necessarily a plus, either. A lens that includes aspherical elements to compensate for spherical aberration will outperform one with no correction, for instance.
The most important thing is to have a camera with you when you need to take pictures. The second thing is to have complete manual control over your camera so you can get an intuitive feel for the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity, etc.
Finally, it isn't necessarily the case that a point and shoot (or even a DSLR) will do better than a smartphone. It all depends on what you're using it for. The iPhone 4 camera is scary good, and it can out-macro many stock DSLR kits, and shoots sharper, more dynamic images than many point-and-shoots. This is partly because the fixed lens ignores all the inevitable tradeoffs that come with a zoom lens, so it can be simpler and have a wider aperture. However, there are obviously cases where an DSLR is the only thing that will get the job done. In that situation, I prefer Pentax, because you get quite a bit for your money, and the build/ergonomics are nicer than Canikon IMO. The recent K5 really blew away the competition in terms of image quality, as well.
I wish there was a place that smart people could hang out, have intelligent discussions, share their knowledge, have resources around for researching/discovering/learning/experimenting, and generally participate in intellectually profitable activities. I know that some ancient libraries were centers where lecturers shared ideas and debates were had and new ideas were formed. In modern times, a university sometimes acts like the place that I've listed above, but it is only open to people that enroll and spend lots of money, and some don't even allow paying students much latitude for self-directed learning.
Maybe a library isn't the best place for this, but it isn't that far off. My library is full of computers, all the media resources you could think of (books, movies, music), and holds classes and hosts clubs with a variety of interests. Add in food and workspace for non-trivial projects and I would spend all my free time there. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a community center for people who invent and discover and share ideas? Wouldn't that be a public good just like having a community center that shares information?
This seems like a really fantastic idea to me, and although I imagine that it might fail for some of the reasons listed already, I'd love to see it succeed. A world that was populated with spaces like this would be one with a lot more invention, creativity, and curiosity.
Behold, readers, the triumph of marketing and showroom appeal, over, like, good engineering.
As I said, glossy screen of the cellphone world.
AMOLED has battery life benefits, outdoor viewing advantages, and often has a better viewing angle. All of these things are objectively better. Not that it matters. There's one main difference between a person who purchases based on preference and a person that purchases based on specs. One of them is aware of their own subjectivity.
You are why people in marketing have a job. But you probably feel good about it, so win-win?
Of course, you are impervious to influence, because feature lists aren't marketing.
"Shit on a cracker" certainly implies something about product quality. My point is that Apple has produced things that haven't sold well, so clearly their marketing isn't as all-powerful as you suggest it is. They have good marketing, and they often have good products, which combine to produce good sales. You can't survive on marketing alone (not permanently anyway).
More power to him, if he can make it happen. That's a big if, though. It's easy to throw around words about how the government should be, but making that actually happen is a different story.
Be it as it may, what it comes down to is that Apple created a product their customer doesn't complain about. And in this time and age, this is already the superior product. Whether you liked it a lot or didn't, Apple made products that "work". They don't crash, they don't lock up, they don't keep their user puzzled how to use them.
I have a recent iMac that crashes quite a bit, and Apple's Aperture (photo editing program) is pretty grossly unstable. The most recent version of iMovie is less powerful than the previous one, and also less intuitive (IMO).
I still use primarily Apple computers, because the hardware is the best I've found and the software is good when it works. But I use Windows for some stuff, and Linux for others, and honestly each has upsides and downsides. If anything, I think the different platforms are becoming more similar than they are different, and it isn't so easy to categorize them as it used to be. If Apple has any significant advantages still, it is usability for newbies and consistency in UI, but I think stability and security are no longer what they used to be.
Except that if anything, Apple is a marketing machine. They could have sold shit on a cracker.
Then explain the lackluster performance of the Apple TV, or the Xserve line, or the initial weird aluminum macbook lineup. Apple produces mediocre products or products that don't really have as much of a market as they initially anticipated, just like anybody else does. They occasionally mess up and have a hard time pushing as many products as they expected. The difference is that they have a much higher signal to noise ratio than is average for the industry.
Sure, Apple does have a good marketing machine, but most people that I know have converted to Apple because they saw the product in action and said "hey, I want that". There's no denying that they build nice products. There's also no denying that they've built probably the most valuable brand that exists right now. Marketing can do a lot for you, but if it was the only factor, Microsoft wouldn't ever lose market share.
The Baroque Cycle? That whole trilogy kind of revolves around the creation of the Royal Society - I'd love to dig through some of the first articles and see exactly what Newton, Hooke and crew were publishing right out of the gate.
From the wiki:
"The superior neutron economy of a fast neutron reactor makes it possible to build a reactor that, after its initial fuel charge of plutonium, requires only natural (or even depleted) uranium feedstock as input to its fuel cycle."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Actually, it looks like the cesium is the most significant part of the remaining radiation around Chernobyl:
"As of 2005, caesium-137 is the principal source of radiation in the zone of alienation around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
nuclear plant operators downplaying, obscuring, lying etc. I am genuinely shocked!1!!
Nuclear plant operators? Try the Japanese government. They estimated low, and now they are correcting the estimate. I know you can't be bothered to RTFA, but maybe you could, you know, RTFS?
It seems like we've been finding more and more that there are more influences on an organism's genome than just simple heredity and natural selection over a period of several generations. I remember a recent study that suggested that acquired traits might actually be possible to pass on to offspring... if this is the case, we're going to have to revise our models pretty seriously.
If anything, it will only make evolution a lot more impressive. I don't think we'll be seeing X-men level mutations ever, but these kinds of effects could really accelerate change in a species much more than we've ever expected (assuming that these changes happen in reproductive cells as well).
It's not that we don't know HOW to evaluate teachers, it's that you have to cut through miles of bullshit from teachers unions, state employee unions, and assorted political allies to actually DO IT and USE IT for anything.
Citation needed. A disturbingly large portion of educational research that I've come across seems to be nothing more than a collection of opinion articles in a self-referencing echo chamber. We need to use whatever tools we have, either from business or from hard science, to actually get some rigor into our understanding of education. When we've got lots of data, and good predictive models, then we can say we know how to evaluate people.
A good friend of mine recently started working in a district with merit pay, which she was initially excited about. However, the administration assembled a list of 28 criteria, including "Cultural Relevance" and similar gems, which a teacher must include in EVERY LESSON. Furthermore, the teacher is observed randomly (which isn't a problem in itself) without any chance to speak with the evaluator. So, the evaluator marked the teacher down for not accommodating special ed students, when in fact the teacher had discreetly provided individualized assignments for those students.
The problem is that I think this school's administration has essentially built a tool to keep any teachers from getting raises, ever. The people who are evaluating these lessons aren't themselves able to demonstrate a lesson that would fulfill each and every one of the criteria. If nobody can produce a perfect lesson, even the so-called experts in charge of evaluation, that seems like evidence that the criteria are totally inappropriate.
Defining criteria is a great move, and I applaud Bill for having the insight to see that this is one of the fundamental pieces required to start improving education. We can't rely on the uninformed opinions of bureaucrats to decide how our teachers should be evaluated, and we probably can't rely on teachers themselves either. We need people (scientists, business HR people, ???) who can objectively dissect the process and find good indicators for a teacher's worth.
Mods, give parent some love. This is exactly right - the rich have always been around, but the combination of ruthless capitalism and postmodern moral ambiguity have given us a ruling class that doesn't even pay lipservice to equality or antiquated concepts like caring for the poor. We've given ourselves the worst of both worlds.
First off - the cleanliness of nuclear is completely relevant. If it is extremely safe for people working in close proximity to it every day, then that is a useful datapoint when we're discussing the danger it has for people in general. Also, the point that you seem to ignore regularly - I claim that we should give mental priority to the most likely dangers to our health. Radiation isn't ranked anywhere near the top. If we're being intellectually honest and systematic about this, we should assess the highest threats first. If you have a 20% chance of dying from heart disease and a .01% chance of dying from radiation-sourced cancer, does it really make sense to devote all of our energy to worrying about radiation?
Simplifications are useful. Nobody can predict exactly how and when radiation will cause damage. However, we can look at statistics, and describe the relationship between radiation and cancer. Arguments about the complexity basically boil down to "if our understanding isn't perfect, it's useless." Sorry, but we don't understand ANYTHING perfectly. We have to act based on incomplete information, but it turns out we've still been able to use simplified models and systematic analysis of imperfect data to build the most advanced civilization ever.
There is nothing wrong with the parent measuring radiation around his home. However, my contention, and the contention of others, is that an honest analysis reveals that he is investing his limited resources in protecting his family from a very unlikely threat. It isn't that radiation isn't potentially harmful. If you have unlimited time and money, sure, measure everything that could possibly harm your family. But, in the real world, we have limited time, and we can make a statistical argument that the submitter would do better to check his home for asbestos/test bacteria in the home/hire a nutritionist to help his family's diet/buy a better carseat/install extra smoke alarms or any number of other things that are more probable dangers than radiation-caused cancer. I'm just asking for consistency, here - if we're not going to panic about all sorts of more dangerous threats, why should we panic about a lesser one?
Finally, to reply partly to the other post, and merge the comments back together - having personal investment in a problem makes you a less reliable source than otherwise. I'm sorry to hear that you've lost quite a bit of material wealth along with peace of mind, but surely you could admit that your perspective is now biased. I cite Colorado as an example because I live there - I'm experiencing radiation levels higher than most people in the world right now. I've worked in labs in the past with nuclear material, and as I type there's a room full of nuclear substances not 50 feet away from me. Radiation can be dangerous, but so can electricity, gasoline, and sunlight. We deal with these factors in our lives by understanding how to treat them with respect and use them safely, and radiation is no different.
If anything, I'd expect you to be minimizing the danger to people in Japan, because the only reason real-estate is plummeting in those areas is because of perception. If people were better educated, they would realize there isn't any substantial danger and they wouldn't be leaving the area. If I ended up in Japan through some career change, I would be the first to try to invest in some bargain-priced real estate around Fukushima, because prices are going to come bouncing right back as soon as people figure out that there aren't glowing bunnies or 3-eyed fish to worry about in reality. Granted, nuclear is a touchy issue with the Japanese, so there are certainly cultural effects, but that doesn't mean they are based on a real-world danger.