You're right of course, though the tone strongly suggests that the policy is one of co-operation and using peaceful means to "defend/preserve/extend" the peace.
I think a more typical characterisation of current US foreign policy in style not dissimilar to their normal rhethoric would be:
- defend the peace by smoking out the terrorists and waging war on any country harbouring them
- preserve the peace by pursuing whatever is in the US best interest, with disregard to any "global test" or "international opinion"
- extend the peace by seeking to overthrow any oppressive or dangerous regimes, with military force if necessary.
While most people agree with the aim of defending, preserving and extending "peace", the disagreement is about the method of achieving them. In typical "politician speak" the characterisation of the Bush campaign emphasises the goals which everyone agrees on while attempting to hide the means of achieving them, which is where moderates might be put off by their sometimes belligerent style.
Anyway, i guess this is nothing new, as politicians do it all over the world (all wars appear to be started as "defensive" or "preemptive" wars these days). But I was still startled by reading that list as I would have thought the Kerry campaign might have written one just like it....
at least it claims that Bush's foreign policy is based on:
------ The strategy has three pillars:
- We will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes.
- We will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world's great powers.
- And we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe." -----
Hello??? Have I been living in the same universe as these guys??? All three pillars involve "peace"? What happened to preemptive war, the axis of evil, not caring what the rest of world think, etc. etc.
I guess the site must have been hijacked by some crazy flip-flopping communists democrat freaks;).
You can't vote if you're under 18 you can't vote if you're in prison in some states you can't vote if you were convicted of a felony ages ago US residents without US citizenship can't vote (yet are taxed and subject to legislation)
The vote *is* limited and always will be in some way or the other. None of this stops the system from being "democratic".
However, I still don't agree that the vote *should* be limited to "intelligent" people, and in fact I find many of the current restrictions come close to violating the fundamental assumption of equal rights.
>Ideally the poor should be able to build > themselves up over many generations, until they > are not poor... furthermore why punish those > that do succeed?
you just supported the argument of the parent. If you are born poor it is through hard work that you become "less poor". While over generations it is certainly possible to become "rich", it is a very different start to life than being born in a wealthy family.
I like the idea of a very high estate tax (even though I'm likely to inherit money at some point) because I would rather the government took money from me when I died (or money i didn't have to work for if I look at it from the receiving end) then it taking a larger chunk of my wages...
Money makes more money. That's the way the world works, so it accumulates in the hands of few. If you assume that money will usually create a real return of 2.5% (very very conservative), it will more than double in a space of less than 30 years (approximately one generation). A 50% estate tax would be necessary to stop large amounts of money just accumulating in a family over generations.
I personally would be happy with an estate tax rate of 90% (even though this would hurt me in the future, hopefully not too soon!), as it would stop the buildup of business "dynasties". Unlike a capital tax it would not stop a single person from becoming very very rich during their lifetime (e.g. bill gates) but it would stop countless future generations of the family from living a life in luxury without any contribution to society.
It would ensure that every rich person had to work for their wealth, in a way it's to captialism what democracy was to the monarchy, rather than inhereting wealth, everyone would have to earn it... The money could be put to good use in lowering taxes and/or providing 1st class eduction to give everyone the opportunity to make it to riches for themselves....
> The minority, in a sense, DOES need more power per person
intersting idea... So i should get a larger share of the vote if I am gay or black?
In a democracy everyone's vote must count the same, the interests of minorities need to be protected through a constitution and a legal system to back it up...
Besides, the idea that the electoral college protects the country-population is just rubbish. Instead it aids the interst of states that are borderline, which is a pretty arbitrary criterium...
All of the examples you give show dictators disarming a (presumably armed) populace after establishing totalitarian power. In other words, the wide availability of guns did not stop them from taking power at all.
The idea that in 1938 (when Hitler passed the law you refer to) the Jews could have mounted an armed struggle against the nazi party, or even against the Gestapo is absolutely ludicrous. The Jews in Germany were not militant nor widely armed in the first place.
> We saw the number of persons murdered by their respective states reach > nearly 200 million. Trusting your personal security to a nation state is INSANE.
And you really think that in the states where this happened, guns were not ready available to the populace? Most of these 200Mn deaths are due to attempted coups and revolutions and counter-revolutions and fights with "rebels" etc. etc.
IF the US government starts doing things you don't like, what are you going to do? You really think that handgun in your house is going to stop them?
You really think that if Germans had had more guns, Hitler wouldn't have come to power? You think Hussain would have been removed earlier if there were even more weapons in Iraq? You think Afghanistand was lacking handguns more than anything else? How about Sudan?
I live in Britain. The gun ban was not a big deal. No-one had guns anyway. The law has clearly not backfired. I would say it had very little effect at all, guns are not a big part of British culture, and this has not changed...
Besides, the grand-grand-parent suggested that the american idea of people carrying arms to reduce crime was working, hence it's completely fair to compare crime rates between the countries.
Also, one of the articles he pointed to claimed as a great success that the murder rate in the US was now *only* 6 times (!!!) as high as britains, rather than 10 times as high like it used to be.
Even if the arguments of the NRA are applicable in the US (which i doubt) they do not work in a society where guns are as rare as they are in britain. In 7 years here, I have not seen a single gun, not even an imitation one, except for armed policmen at specific point (e.g. airports, the US embassy, visits of foreign dignitaries etc.).
Similarly in 20 years living in Germany I've seen one gun other than in the hands of police. While I spent 1 year in the US I saw countless guns...
If you're not used to that it makes you feel very uncomfortable, I guess if you're used to it it could make you feel safe...
> The worst nuclear disaster in history, Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people. > That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates. > Coal mining on the other hand kills around 30,000 people every year
That's a bit like saying that while 3,000 people got killed on 9/11, 30,000 people got killed by Handguns in the US, so we should make war on the NRA rather than terror...
Or on cigarette manufacturers, General Motors and Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Walmart or any other organisation that we can somehow attribute 3,000+ deaths to...
A big event captures the public imagination much more than lots of little ones, the potential death toll in 1 nuclear accident is much higher than that in a coal accident. While statistically more people die due to coal power, their story is not as powerful and thus noone cares...
> In the UK, there is a female-only car > insurance (Diamond), which will only accept > female clientele because their insurance > claims would in average be lower (hence > allowing female drivers to save money, while > indirectly increasing the insurance cost of > males, by removing drivers with "lower claims" > from male/female car insurance companies)...
This is not really true. Even at male/female insurance companies, women frequently get a better deal on car insurance. As do older people, people with no-claims bonus, people living in "good" areas, people driving cars with small engines, people driving family cars, people who park in a garage, etc. etc. etc.
Insurers aim to calculate the risk a client has based on all the available information, the premium is adjusted accordingly.
In some other areas men get better deals, for instance in private health insurance (unless it is regulated by the state) due to significantly less claims (a large portion of women's healthcare cost is "woman-only" issues such as gynaecologist visits or pregnancy).
I think the important thing is that you either have to enforce equal treatment regardless of gender in *all* areas (insurance, maternity/paternity leave, jobs, education, military service, retirement age, child support and custody etc. etc.) or you do it in none of them. When it's applied only in cases where women (or only men) benefit it causes resentment.
> BTW In countries where the Presidetn is not directly elected, such as Germany, the president > has almost no political powere at all, unlike the Presidenst of the USA or France.
The commissioners have almost no political power either. As far as I know they can be recalled by their national government at a moment's notice. They are in a similar position as government ministers (e.g. the US secretary of defence is appointed, but is controlled by the elected president): They're agents of the government rather than having direct power in their own right.
>As a side note, what will happen if Linux becomes > ultra popular? More programmers will be needed, all working for free? > Its not going to happen!
That argument does not make any sense in the case of computers. If lots of people want to buy motorbikes, yes you need more people to build motorbikes. But if more people want to use a given system, you don't need more programmers to write it. You might need more systems administrators, people staffing helplines etc. etc. but not more programmers.
Which is exactly the reason that i'm quite outraged that the price of windows or office hasn't come down, even though the cost of development per licence sold must have decreased significantly during the last decade.
Microsoft's income 2003 was $ 32 Bn. The vast majority coming from sales of Window and Office. Their total development cost expenditure was $5 Bn. Even if they sold twice as many copies of their software, it would not add to their development cost.
> Your story seems to just prove my point. The abductions took place.
And the perpetrators were quickly found, their pictures all over the media within a day.
It left noone in any doubt as to whether they can get away with it.
In the case of a serial attacker it will actually directly reduce crime by catching him/her after the first offence.
While I can't prove it, I *think* that certain detection is also a very strong deterrant for crime when coupled with a reasonably strong punishment, much more so than a small chance of detection with a draconian punishment (noone expects to be caught...).
It won't help in the case of psychopaths and maybe not in the case of children (most high profile case in england was the abduction of a 2 year old by two kids that were only 10 years themselves), but anyone with any kind of mental capacity would at least think twice before committing a crime they're bound to be found out for.
I think the idea that there is a "top physicist" is pretty odd in the first place. It's way too big a field for there to be anyone to be considered the best of them all.
Maybe you can find a top scientist in nuclear fusion, or in superconductors, or cosmology or elementary particles, or any number of sub-divisions of physics. I think the time where any one person could define the whole of physics are long gone...
Oh come on... no country in this world has an ethical foreign policy. Certainly not the US.
In case you forgot, the US supported Saddam for decades when he was just as despotic as he was recently. The US stood by and and even cooperated while Saddam fought a terrible war against the Iran, because Iran was the bigger evil, so Iraq was a friend. Incidentally, the CIA also trained Bin Laden for his terrorist work, which was supposed to be against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He was just as much of a lunatic back then, but had a different enemy, so that was fine...
Now they've done the same again, backing for example the Kurds, who are by no means better than Saddam in their political outlook, and if they allow free elections they'll probably get an islamist government of the Iranian variety...
It's all a big mess, and it's getting no closer to being sorted out. The Iraq war was a most bizarre reaction to 9/11 as it was probably the only country down there that *didn't* have *anything* to do with it. Iraq was secular for a start and loathed by Bin Laden...
Anyway, there appears to be no coherent concept of any kind, so either it's such a subtle plan no-one can understand it or it's a very flawed foreign policy and an engagement with no exit strategy...
> How the hell can a crime be prevented by a camera? > Maybe at most solved a bit faster, but prevented?
England is full of Cameras. There have been a few high-profile abductions in recent years, and whenever it was in a public place they'd have CCTV footage of the abductor on the news within hours.
Of course it won't prevent a crime committed by a psycho insane person, but the knowledge that you will be caught with near 100% certainty will certainly put a lot of people off...
I think there are a few people of this stature in any field, just most of them are not as much in the public eye as Hawking.
I can think of any number of scientists in fields I'm vaguely familiar with that would be granted time to speak at a conference at short notice without much proof of what they are going to say.
However, *what* they say will still be up to intense scrutiny. There's nothing like proving an eminent scientist wrong or disproving an accepted theory to advance ones career in science...
Anyway, it's the same anywhere in society. If you have a good reputation, people will at least listen to you. They won't necessary agree, but they will be willing to listen...
According to CNN there are ~20 "battleground" states, with the other 30 assumed to be "safe" for one side or the other...
Anyway, for someone who is not used to the US system it just seems strange that 500 people in Florida voting Bush instead of Gore would have changed the outcome of the election, but a million people in California doing the same wouldn't...
Similarly it seems odd to me that some people were denied the right to vote because they had committed a crime some time in the distant past in some states, but not in others...
Anyway, the US political system is very complicated due to its history. No-one in their right mind would design it this way if they created a system now, but due to tradition it will presumably stay for a long time...
In states that have a big majority for either side, the opposite would be true.
In the current system. Does Bush care whether he gets 60% or 80% in Texas? It doesn't make any difference, he'll get all of Texas electoral votes with near certainty.
If the number of electors depended on this difference he might campaign equally everywhere, rather than just in "marginal states"...
> of the guns in the US, only.02% are used in crime > (That is assuming that a different is used for each crime)
~400,000 crimes/year are committed with a firearm in the us according to the bureau of justice. Approximately 5 million guns are sold each year.
Assuming a lifetime of the average gun of 50 years, that makes ~250,000,000 guns in the US. 250,000,000/400,000 would make ~0.16% of guns are used in a crime *every year*.
Over the lifetime of a gun (still assumed at 50 years), the probability of it being used in a crime is thus ~50x0.16%=8%.
Of course you rightly point out that it is very unlikely each gun would be used in a crime only once, but seeing that was the basis for your argument...
The numbers you *might* have been referring could be for *deaths* rather than crimes...
Guns *kill* just over 30,000 people/year in the US, so for each gun in existence, the chance of it being used to *kill* a person is ~0.012% *per year*. The chance of a gun being used to kill a person over the lifetime of the gun is accordingly 0.6%.
OF course all this involves some estimation, but to come to your number of 0.02% of guns being used in a crime ever, the US would need to be selling roughly 2 billion guns every year (I assume the BoJ figure of 400,000 crimes using guns/year to be correct). Or if you meant to say "used in a crime every year" the total number of guns currently existing in the US would have to be 2 billion, either of these are obviously wrong...
Why should it end up wearing the tether like a belt? As soon as the tether shows any kind of lag it will slow down the earth and impart orbital velocity on the CoM of the tether.
This is possible because the point where the tether is fixed on the earth is not the centre of the tethers orbit (that would be the centre of the earth).
If you hold a weight on a string with an outstretched arm and start rotating, the string will eventually be aiming radially away from you, if you accelerate your rotation (the same as decelerating the string) it will momentarily lag before "catching up" due to the additional momentum you're imparting on it.
If I'm not mistaken the angular momentum is taken from the earth via the point where the space elevator is tethered.
In other words the elevator will not be exactly vertical but lagging very slightly, so the it experience not only the acceleration downwards (centripetal force), but also a small component in the direction of rotation of the earth whenever it is "slowed down" either by a weight crawling upwards, by wind pressure, or whatever else.
Anyway, might have got this completely wrong... my days as a physicist are long over;).
> - Claim that "evolution has created some of the most amazing > machines and materials on earth."
You find me an engineer that can build a robot the size and weight of a spider that can navigate a forest autonomously. Of course you might have different ideas of what is "amazing" but it's pretty clear that evolution has created somethings humans have not yet been able to copy.
> - Claim that evolution is a fact.
It's a process, not a fact. This process is responsible for the biodiversity on earth, that is a fact.
> - Pour millions of dollars in tax money into required classes > that teach that evolution is a fact.
I think it would be very foolish to stop teaching biology at a time when Biochemistry becomes more and more important commercially.
> - Name a computerized method of selection and optimization with a name that implies or > suggests that it is similar to biological evolution.
These algorithms are using some evolutionary strategies, so i think it's quite an apt name...
Slashdot Mirror
You're right of course, though the tone strongly suggests that the policy is one of co-operation and using peaceful means to "defend/preserve/extend" the peace.
I think a more typical characterisation of current US foreign policy in style not dissimilar to their normal rhethoric would be:
- defend the peace by smoking out the terrorists and waging war on any country harbouring them
- preserve the peace by pursuing whatever is in the US best interest, with disregard to any "global test" or "international opinion"
- extend the peace by seeking to overthrow any oppressive or dangerous regimes, with military force if necessary.
While most people agree with the aim of defending, preserving and extending "peace", the disagreement is about the method of achieving them. In typical "politician speak" the characterisation of the Bush campaign emphasises the goals which everyone agrees on while attempting to hide the means of achieving them, which is where moderates might be put off by their sometimes belligerent style.
Anyway, i guess this is nothing new, as politicians do it all over the world (all wars appear to be started as "defensive" or "preemptive" wars these days). But I was still startled by reading that list as I would have thought the Kerry campaign might have written one just like it....
Off-message? so is the .com ...
;).
at least it claims that Bush's foreign policy is based on:
------
The strategy has three pillars:
- We will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes.
- We will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world's great powers.
- And we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe."
-----
Hello??? Have I been living in the same universe as these guys??? All three pillars involve "peace"? What happened to preemptive war, the axis of evil, not caring what the rest of world think, etc. etc.
I guess the site must have been hijacked by some crazy flip-flopping communists democrat freaks
You can't vote if you're under 18
you can't vote if you're in prison
in some states you can't vote if you were convicted of a felony ages ago
US residents without US citizenship can't vote (yet are taxed and subject to legislation)
The vote *is* limited and always will be in some way or the other. None of this stops the system from being "democratic".
However, I still don't agree that the vote *should* be limited to "intelligent" people, and in fact I find many of the current restrictions come close to violating the fundamental assumption of equal rights.
>Ideally the poor should be able to build
> themselves up over many generations, until they
> are not poor... furthermore why punish those
> that do succeed?
you just supported the argument of the parent. If you are born poor it is through hard work that you become "less poor". While over generations it is certainly possible to become "rich", it is a very different start to life than being born in a wealthy family.
I like the idea of a very high estate tax (even though I'm likely to inherit money at some point) because I would rather the government took money from me when I died (or money i didn't have to work for if I look at it from the receiving end) then it taking a larger chunk of my wages...
Money makes more money. That's the way the world works, so it accumulates in the hands of few. If you assume that money will usually create a real return of 2.5% (very very conservative), it will more than double in a space of less than 30 years (approximately one generation). A 50% estate tax would be necessary to stop large amounts of money just accumulating in a family over generations.
I personally would be happy with an estate tax rate of 90% (even though this would hurt me in the future, hopefully not too soon!), as it would stop the buildup of business "dynasties". Unlike a capital tax it would not stop a single person from becoming very very rich during their lifetime (e.g. bill gates) but it would stop countless future generations of the family from living a life in luxury without any contribution to society.
It would ensure that every rich person had to work for their wealth, in a way it's to captialism what democracy was to the monarchy, rather than inhereting wealth, everyone would have to earn it... The money could be put to good use in lowering taxes and/or providing 1st class eduction to give everyone the opportunity to make it to riches for themselves....
> The minority, in a sense, DOES need more power per person
intersting idea... So i should get a larger share of the vote if I am gay or black?
In a democracy everyone's vote must count the same, the interests of minorities need to be protected through a constitution and a legal system to back it up...
Besides, the idea that the electoral college protects the country-population is just rubbish. Instead it aids the interst of states that are borderline, which is a pretty arbitrary criterium...
All of the examples you give show dictators disarming a (presumably armed) populace after establishing totalitarian power. In other words, the wide availability of guns did not stop them from taking power at all.
The idea that in 1938 (when Hitler passed the law you refer to) the Jews could have mounted an armed struggle against the nazi party, or even against the Gestapo is absolutely ludicrous. The Jews in Germany were not militant nor widely armed in the first place.
> We saw the number of persons murdered by their respective states reach
> nearly 200 million. Trusting your personal security to a nation state is INSANE.
And you really think that in the states where this happened, guns were not ready available to the populace? Most of these 200Mn deaths are due to attempted coups and revolutions and counter-revolutions and fights with "rebels" etc. etc.
IF the US government starts doing things you don't like, what are you going to do? You really think that handgun in your house is going to stop them?
You really think that if Germans had had more guns, Hitler wouldn't have come to power? You think Hussain would have been removed earlier if there were even more weapons in Iraq? You think Afghanistand was lacking handguns more than anything else? How about Sudan?
I live in Britain. The gun ban was not a big deal. No-one had guns anyway. The law has clearly not backfired. I would say it had very little effect at all, guns are not a big part of British culture, and this has not changed...
Besides, the grand-grand-parent suggested that the american idea of people carrying arms to reduce crime was working, hence it's completely fair to compare crime rates between the countries.
Also, one of the articles he pointed to claimed as a great success that the murder rate in the US was now *only* 6 times (!!!) as high as britains, rather than 10 times as high like it used to be.
Even if the arguments of the NRA are applicable in the US (which i doubt) they do not work in a society where guns are as rare as they are in britain. In 7 years here, I have not seen a single gun, not even an imitation one, except for armed policmen at specific point (e.g. airports, the US embassy, visits of foreign dignitaries etc.).
Similarly in 20 years living in Germany I've seen one gun other than in the hands of police. While I spent 1 year in the US I saw countless guns...
If you're not used to that it makes you feel very uncomfortable, I guess if you're used to it it could make you feel safe...
> The worst nuclear disaster in history, Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people.
> That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates.
> Coal mining on the other hand kills around 30,000 people every year
That's a bit like saying that while 3,000 people got killed on 9/11, 30,000 people got killed by Handguns in the US, so we should make war on the NRA rather than terror...
Or on cigarette manufacturers, General Motors and Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Walmart or any other organisation that we can somehow attribute 3,000+ deaths to...
A big event captures the public imagination much more than lots of little ones, the potential death toll in 1 nuclear accident is much higher than that in a coal accident. While statistically more people die due to coal power, their story is not as powerful and thus noone cares...
> In the UK, there is a female-only car
> insurance (Diamond), which will only accept
> female clientele because their insurance
> claims would in average be lower (hence
> allowing female drivers to save money, while
> indirectly increasing the insurance cost of
> males, by removing drivers with "lower claims" > from male/female car insurance companies)...
This is not really true. Even at male/female insurance companies, women frequently get a better deal on car insurance. As do older people, people with no-claims bonus, people living in "good" areas, people driving cars with small engines, people driving family cars, people who park in a garage, etc. etc. etc.
Insurers aim to calculate the risk a client has based on all the available information, the premium is adjusted accordingly.
In some other areas men get better deals, for instance in private health insurance (unless it is regulated by the state) due to significantly less claims (a large portion of women's healthcare cost is "woman-only" issues such as gynaecologist visits or pregnancy).
I think the important thing is that you either have to enforce equal treatment regardless of gender in *all* areas (insurance, maternity/paternity leave, jobs, education, military service, retirement age, child support and custody etc. etc.) or you do it in none of them. When it's applied only in cases where women (or only men) benefit it causes resentment.
> BTW In countries where the Presidetn is not directly elected, such as Germany, the president
> has almost no political powere at all, unlike the Presidenst of the USA or France.
The commissioners have almost no political power either. As far as I know they can be recalled by their national government at a moment's notice. They are in a similar position as government ministers (e.g. the US secretary of defence is appointed, but is controlled by the elected president): They're agents of the government rather than having direct power in their own right.
>As a side note, what will happen if Linux becomes
> ultra popular? More programmers will be needed, all working for free?
> Its not going to happen!
That argument does not make any sense in the case of computers. If lots of people want to buy motorbikes, yes you need more people to build motorbikes. But if more people want to use a given system, you don't need more programmers to write it. You might need more systems administrators, people staffing helplines etc. etc. but not more programmers.
Which is exactly the reason that i'm quite outraged that the price of windows or office hasn't come down, even though the cost of development per licence sold must have decreased significantly during the last decade.
Microsoft's income 2003 was $ 32 Bn. The vast majority coming from sales of Window and Office. Their total development cost expenditure was $5 Bn. Even if they sold twice as many copies of their software, it would not add to their development cost.
> and cutting funds to veteran's programs in the middle
> of a war is definitely not the way to win sympathy (#2).
Funding for veteran's programs was *increased*, not cut.
> Your story seems to just prove my point. The abductions took place.
And the perpetrators were quickly found, their pictures all over the media within a day.
It left noone in any doubt as to whether they can get away with it.
In the case of a serial attacker it will actually directly reduce crime by catching him/her after the first offence.
While I can't prove it, I *think* that certain detection is also a very strong deterrant for crime when coupled with a reasonably strong punishment, much more so than a small chance of detection with a draconian punishment (noone expects to be caught...).
It won't help in the case of psychopaths and maybe not in the case of children (most high profile case in england was the abduction of a 2 year old by two kids that were only 10 years themselves), but anyone with any kind of mental capacity would at least think twice before committing a crime they're bound to be found out for.
I think the idea that there is a "top physicist" is pretty odd in the first place. It's way too big a field for there to be anyone to be considered the best of them all.
Maybe you can find a top scientist in nuclear fusion, or in superconductors, or cosmology or elementary particles, or any number of sub-divisions of physics. I think the time where any one person could define the whole of physics are long gone...
Oh come on ... no country in this world has an ethical foreign policy. Certainly not the US.
In case you forgot, the US supported Saddam for decades when he was just as despotic as he was recently. The US stood by and and even cooperated while Saddam fought a terrible war against the Iran, because Iran was the bigger evil, so Iraq was a friend. Incidentally, the CIA also trained Bin Laden for his terrorist work, which was supposed to be against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He was just as much of a lunatic back then, but had a different enemy, so that was fine...
Now they've done the same again, backing for example the Kurds, who are by no means better than Saddam in their political outlook, and if they allow free elections they'll probably get an islamist government of the Iranian variety...
It's all a big mess, and it's getting no closer to being sorted out. The Iraq war was a most bizarre reaction to 9/11 as it was probably the only country down there that *didn't* have *anything* to do with it. Iraq was secular for a start and loathed by Bin Laden...
Anyway, there appears to be no coherent concept of any kind, so either it's such a subtle plan no-one can understand it or it's a very flawed foreign policy and an engagement with no exit strategy...
> How the hell can a crime be prevented by a camera?
> Maybe at most solved a bit faster, but prevented?
England is full of Cameras. There have been a few high-profile abductions in recent years, and whenever it was in a public place they'd have CCTV footage of the abductor on the news within hours.
Of course it won't prevent a crime committed by a psycho insane person, but the knowledge that you will be caught with near 100% certainty will certainly put a lot of people off...
I think there are a few people of this stature in any field, just most of them are not as much in the public eye as Hawking.
I can think of any number of scientists in fields I'm vaguely familiar with that would be granted time to speak at a conference at short notice without much proof of what they are going to say.
However, *what* they say will still be up to intense scrutiny. There's nothing like proving an eminent scientist wrong or disproving an accepted theory to advance ones career in science...
Anyway, it's the same anywhere in society. If you have a good reputation, people will at least listen to you. They won't necessary agree, but they will be willing to listen...
But the result is the same, more than 50% of the country are essentially ignored by the main candidates, because it's "not worth it".
If every vote counted directly towards the presidential election, this would not happen, and each person would be worth as much as the next...
According to CNN there are ~20 "battleground" states, with the other 30 assumed to be "safe" for one side or the other...
...
Anyway, for someone who is not used to the US system it just seems strange that 500 people in Florida voting Bush instead of Gore would have changed the outcome of the election, but a million people in California doing the same wouldn't
Similarly it seems odd to me that some people were denied the right to vote because they had committed a crime some time in the distant past in some states, but not in others...
Anyway, the US political system is very complicated due to its history. No-one in their right mind would design it this way if they created a system now, but due to tradition it will presumably stay for a long time...
The argument is only sound for marginal states.
In states that have a big majority for either side, the opposite would be true.
In the current system. Does Bush care whether he gets 60% or 80% in Texas? It doesn't make any difference, he'll get all of Texas electoral votes with near certainty.
If the number of electors depended on this difference he might campaign equally everywhere, rather than just in "marginal states"...
> of the guns in the US, only .02% are used in crime
...
> (That is assuming that a different is used for each crime)
~400,000 crimes/year are committed with a firearm in the us according to the bureau of justice. Approximately 5 million guns are sold each year.
Assuming a lifetime of the average gun of 50 years, that makes ~250,000,000 guns in the US. 250,000,000/400,000 would make ~0.16% of guns are used in a crime *every year*.
Over the lifetime of a gun (still assumed at 50 years), the probability of it being used in a crime is thus ~50x0.16%=8%.
Of course you rightly point out that it is very unlikely each gun would be used in a crime only once, but seeing that was the basis for your argument
The numbers you *might* have been referring could be for *deaths* rather than crimes...
Guns *kill* just over 30,000 people/year in the US, so for each gun in existence, the chance of it being used to *kill* a person is ~0.012% *per year*. The chance of a gun being used to kill a person over the lifetime of the gun is accordingly 0.6%.
OF course all this involves some estimation, but to come to your number of 0.02% of guns being used in a crime ever, the US would need to be selling roughly 2 billion guns every year (I assume the BoJ figure of 400,000 crimes using guns/year to be correct). Or if you meant to say "used in a crime every year" the total number of guns currently existing in the US would have to be 2 billion, either of these are obviously wrong...
Why should it end up wearing the tether like a belt? As soon as the tether shows any kind of lag it will slow down the earth and impart orbital velocity on the CoM of the tether.
This is possible because the point where the tether is fixed on the earth is not the centre of the tethers orbit (that would be the centre of the earth).
If you hold a weight on a string with an outstretched arm and start rotating, the string will eventually be aiming radially away from you, if you accelerate your rotation (the same as decelerating the string) it will momentarily lag before "catching up" due to the additional momentum you're imparting on it.
If I'm not mistaken the angular momentum is taken from the earth via the point where the space elevator is tethered.
;).
In other words the elevator will not be exactly vertical but lagging very slightly, so the it experience not only the acceleration downwards (centripetal force), but also a small component in the direction of rotation of the earth whenever it is "slowed down" either by a weight crawling upwards, by wind pressure, or whatever else.
Anyway, might have got this completely wrong... my days as a physicist are long over
> - Claim that "evolution has created some of the most amazing
> machines and materials on earth."
You find me an engineer that can build a robot the size and weight of a spider that can navigate a forest autonomously. Of course you might have different ideas of what is "amazing" but it's pretty clear that evolution has created somethings humans have not yet been able to copy.
> - Claim that evolution is a fact.
It's a process, not a fact. This process is responsible for the biodiversity on earth, that is a fact.
> - Pour millions of dollars in tax money into required classes
> that teach that evolution is a fact.
I think it would be very foolish to stop teaching biology at a time when Biochemistry becomes more and more important commercially.
> - Name a computerized method of selection and optimization with a name that implies or
> suggests that it is similar to biological evolution.
These algorithms are using some evolutionary strategies, so i think it's quite an apt name...