> This is a frightening prospect because it would allow you to make ebola "from scratch", or > just from the the string of letters that represent the genome
I don't think it's possible for all viruses. In this case i believe just adding the DNA to the cell was sufficient to create an infected cell. Other virii might need some of their own proteins to start the process. I'm not a virologist, but i don't think it's always as easy as this...
T-online is a publicly traded company that was spun off from Deutsche Telekom. ~80% of the shares are still owned by Deutsche Telekom. The article claims T-online has 4 Bn. Euros in cash reserves, which would be more than enough to buy AOL.
I'm not sure the European authorities would block the deal as T-online so far is almost completely restricted to activity in Germany while AOL has very few customers there, so a merger would not change the diversity in any market significantly... but it's still a big risk...
by yours truly... in a rush so don't complain if it's not 100% accurate (apologies for the dodgy english as well):
"American Dream"
T-online has lots of money and high ambitions, one option is the take-over of AOL
For years it was a duel that electrified the internet public. Deutsche Telekom with T-online vs. the conqueror from the US: AOL.
The opponents used all means to fight for markets in europe, including law-suits, dumping prices and advertising campaigns. A Particular twist was added when the (german) media company Bertelsman headed by Thomas Middelhoff, worked together with the Americans.
Today, all has changed. Since Spring 2000 Bertelsmann is not involved with AOL anymore and Middelhoff is a partner with Investcorp in London.
He searches for investment opportunities in the entire world and has particularly good contacts to the US, where he is on the board of the NYT. From the deals of the 90s he still knows many people at Time Warner, who euphorically bought AOL 4 years ago but is now unhappy with the online-business.
Time Warner already dropped AOL from the name and are apparently thinking of seeling large parts of the company. The most likely candidate is according to sources of the SZ the T-online AG who has been striving for international expansion for a while, but not achieved its aims in this area.
One idea is for the germans to hold 80% of AOL shares while 30% stay with Time Warner, a cooperation that would change the media-landscape. It would happen due to the deal-making of Middelhoff.
It is the old Bertelsmann Boss and now Investment banker who has aided the talks between T-online and Time-Warner. Information from T-online sources suggest that a meeting between TW boss Richard PArsons and T-online Boss Thomas Holtrop has already occured.
The suggested price-tag is ~1 Bn Dollars. That's a long way away from the former astronomical valuations of the company once promoted by Middelhoff friend Steve Case.
At it's maximum AOL bought Time Warner for 112 Bn Dollar. Recently AOL lost customers, currently there are about 25 Million.
It woudl be easy for Holtorp and Col to pay for the deal. T-online still has 4 Bn Euros. This capital needs a targe so that publicly traded T-online corp can achieve its ambitious growth targets.
Middelhoff was not available for comment. A t-online spokes-person didn't want to commen on the rumours: "Every quarter we're asked "What are you doing with your money?"
Fundamentally there are two major parts of strategy. One is inorganic growth, by purchases and by waiting on consolidation of the market,.
A deal with AOL would have the particular advantage that T-online would get a foot-hold in the american market. Co-operations with sister-firm T-mobile are important as the companies work together on "T-Zones" where T-online supplise contents, which could be important for the US investments of T-mobile.
The Project AOL is top secret. A final decision has not been made. There are risks, in particular in terms of regulators. In Germany AOL never made major inroads. It is likely that after a merger AOL germany would disappear.
On Tuesday T-online has declared a quarterly profit for the first time. T-online now has 12.9 Mn customers, 9% more than last year. 4/5 of these live in Germany, so it's time for a jump. Yes, t-online is on the look-out says Holtrop, and it would not be years until he has something to announce...
Why does it make a difference? The only thing that takes a significant amount of time is actually counting the votes. Aggregating the information is simply a case of adding a few numbers, whether you do this for a population of 1 million, 80 million or 300 million makes very little difference....
> I have worked and lived in several countries in Eueope, and everywhere, recycling and safe > storage of old batteries was top issue. Batteries are VERY toxic.
You've obviously not spent much time in the UK, but I agree with regards to most other european countries...
It's not only batteries, but also paper, plastic, glass, metal... in many areas of germany for example each household has 3 or 4 different bins that get collected on different days/weeks.
When I arrived in america for the first time, I bought a (glass) bottle of water at the airport, and once i had drunk it returned it to the place that had sold it to me (cafe type thing) assuming they would recycle it in some way. The woman just gave me a very strange look and dropped the bottle in the bin right in front of me...
I have no idea of the actual environmental impact of recycling as compared to driving, air conditioning, heating insulation, toxic waste, lack of filters in power plants etc. etc. but there certainly seems to be a very different mindset about it in western europe.
ponxx
Re:Minor factual error: no "darkside" of the moon
on
The Case for the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I think you would still see a massive advantage on the dark side of the moon for conventional telescopes. It's much better than earth due to the lack of atmoshpere. Compared to "our" side of the moon you won't have the earth hanging in the sky annoyingly... I'm not sure whether and how much difference this would make, but i imagine it would reduce noise quite a lot, no?
> That being said, I'm a _HUGE_ space and astronomy nut, but I do not see how going there > will improve anything other than our nationalism.
The one thing I hope it wouldn't increase is "nationalism". I'm not sure a project on the scale of colonising the moon would be feasible for a single nation, with the possible exception of China where no-one is going to complain about the excessive spending...
If you had a secure channel to transmit a one-time pad you might as well just transmit the message through this channel. The only reason to use a one-time pad is that you have the opportunity to securely exchange a message at an earlier time (e.g. by handing over a CD) and can use this message to send a secret message later.
And yes, I suspect bandwidth is the reason they transmit a secret key, rather than the secret message itself over this channel.
Ponxx
PS ok, there are some justification for transmitting a one-time pad through the secure channel. If you could detect an attack you can refrain from sending the actual message. Also you could leave it "on" the whole time to build up a large one-time pad and then quickly send the actual messages through conventional channels. Still, if they want to server financial peopel they probably have stupid ideas about sending power point presentations or Excel Sheets, I don't think they'll ever build a secure channel that catches up with the size of MS files..:)
> The corporate executives have a duty to do what's in the shareholders' interest
So what if it's not in the shareholders interest to sell to the highest bidder? Shareholders often have agendas on their own.
SuSE is not floated on the stock market afaik and the investors listed on their website are mainly technology companies, who i imagine have their stakes for reasons other than merely money...
So anyway, shareholder interst is not always the same as getting the biggest valuation out of a company. Besides, I imagine a healthy amount of shares are held by the original founders of SuSE (though i have no information to substantiate this...)
Ponxx
PS many apologies for the erroneous use of "their" in my original post.. I *hate* it when people do that, and can't believe it happened to me...
> As a Christian Zealot and someone who takes the Bible literally and believes every word of it > with good cause I can attest that shooting anyone, especially the unsaved ie non Christians > is wholly against Christianity
May I assume you include the whole bible in this? Please explain the following in light of your comments above:
...................
Numbers: [Moses said unto them:]
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
...................
To be fair, it doesn't really fit the definition of terrorism (try the plagues god sent on the egyptians for that, killing the eldest son in every house? lovely!), this example is more a case of genocide...
Anyway, don't know why I bother, I'm bound to get an answer along the lines of "but the lord commanded it, so it's ok!" which brings me back to my initial point that most terrorists are fanatics who believe they're doing a good deed.:)
> I think it is possible for terrorists to > have very good goals... Most think they have
This is a *very* important point. Most people seem to think that terrorist are just *evil* and enjoy doing damage because they are evil. That their goals are to enslave mankind and laugh manically (probably seen to many James Bond films).
All fanatics *think* they are the good ones. They think they're doing a good dead, and often sacrifice themselves to achieve this. This goes for the christian fanatics who shoot abortion doctors and their families as much as for the muslim fanatics who blow up cafes in Israel.
This must not necessarily be true for terrorist leaders, who could have another agenda (power/money/...) and they usually just sacrifice other people rather than themselves. But the actual people on the ground invariably believe they are fighting for a good cause / their people / their religion /...
Anyway, they're all wrong. There is nothing worse for the palestinians than the suicide bombers. If they got those under control and instead held a peaceful protest, opinion in the world *and* Israel would quickly turn away from the hard-liners.
Simiarly the abortion doctor killers have discredited the whole anti-abortion movement, and eco-terrorists have tarnished the reputation of environmentalists.
If you want to further any cause, in 99% of cases it is best to do this in the framework of law and discourse provided. In the few cases where this is not possible. Non-violent civil disobedience is probably the only option that will gain popular support.
As you might know productivity increases on the whole by a couple of % every year. So for a given amount of work you can produce more goods every year. Or you can produce the same amount of goods as last year with less work.
The us-american conclusion is that we should all produce (and consume) more stuff.
The french conclusion is that we should all work a bit less...
I quite enjoy living comfortably of a relatively low amount of work (and i'm not even french:) ). OF course I could earn a lot more if i worked 50, 60 or more hours a week and did not take 6+ weeks of holidays every year. But I *don't want to*.
Being a capitalist, maybe it helps for you to think of it as me "buying" leisure time. It's a luxury item that is more important to me than a bigger car/house/... What's the point in buying lots of expensive stuff if you have no time to enjoy it???
so 1 seconds worth of laser power at 100 kW has momentum of:
p=100 000 J/3x10^8 m/s =~ 3.3 x10^-4 kg m/s
the momentum transfer will be barely noticable. These weapons destroy by dumping lots of energy into the target, causing heating/melting/explosions/... not by impact...
What is stopping the "other side" from coating their shells with a reflective surface? Especially if only one particular wavelength is used by the military, it should be straightforward to create a coating that'll effectively reflect close to 100% of the LASER.
Think about the goggles scientists wear in high-power laser labs. You can see fine through them, except the one wavelength their laser works at...
Ponxx
PS yes, I RTFA, but AFAIK there is no real problem creating materials reflecting IR. If you can aim the laser, the other side can reflect it (away or back at you)
> No state has a law prohibiting anyone from reciting the pledge voluntarily, > whenever they want to [..] You claim this is wrong because: "A 22 word prayer, crafted by the New York State Board of Regents, was read aloud daily in public school classrooms. Student participation was voluntary. On June 25, 1962, the Court ruled the Regents' prayer unconstitutional."
There is a difference between:
- a student voluntarily saying a prayer, e.g. before having lunch, as they enter the school, etc. etc.
and
- a prayer being read out in the classroom
the former is a private exercise of the freedom of religion while the latter is a clear endorsement by the school of the contents of that prayer.
Aside from constitutionality, my assesment of whether i or my religion should be allowed something is based on whether I would allow a group who's views i'm diametrically opposed to to do the same. E.g. if the majority opinion changes would i want my child to listen to a pledge saying "one nation under satan", even if it did not have to participate.
How much tax i'm willing to pay depends critically on what i get in return. In sweden, if i'm well-informed, you get:
- free healthcare - generous pensions - good schools / day care for kids - *free* universities - good law-enforcement - "social peace" - good roads - clean cities......
all that is worth a lot of money! Everyone whinges about the cost of health insurance in Europe, but private health insurance in the US is much more expensive! And for the most part, the employers foot part of the bill, just like on the other side of the pond...
Anyway, if the state delivers most of what i need to live, i'm quite happy for it to take a healthy chunk out of my income (even 70% if i have a good income).
On the other hand, if i have to have my own insurance for health, unemployment, pension, life, pay for college for the kids etc. etc. i might not be willing to pay more than about 20% tax in total... if you add up all the other stuff, you'll quickly approach the swedish figures again!
> how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments?
none, the same number that exist in lab environments... do you have any idea what sort of half-life these elements have?
It's fundamental research. Seeing what is possible and learning about the basic laws of the universe... There might be some application in the distant future, but i doubt it would be very directly related to this reasearch...
Surely even in the us you are innocent until proven guilty. Has anyone hit with a bogus law-suit ever tried *not* to hire a lawyer? Just go in the court room in front of the jury and say "we spend the money on trying to provide education and can't afford lots of lawyers, the charges are baseless, these devices are used everywhere in the country, don't be silly"
good idea, but you seem to confuse the grid with the energy suppliers. I think competition in the electricity production industry can (and does) work. The problem is that transmission of electricity is inherently a monopoly.
In the UK i believe transmission is dealt with by the "national grid" which then purchases electricity from a number of private companies.
If the grid is fully or partially nationalised it can also impose rules on electricity suppliers, such as there must be at least 10% excess capacity at normal times or we won't give you a contract... (or give bonuses to suppliers that can counter spikes in demand).
I am not sure what the actual status of the national grid is in the uk, i don't think it's entirely government owned, but i don't think it's a private company as such either.. anyone know?
Several currencies come not only in different sizes and colours, but also have indentations on them in braille so the blind can "read" the value of the notes... do you think including that sort of feature would cause outrage too?
By definition there is nothing outside of this universe. If there was, it would simply mean that the universe is bigger than we thought....
Just like the line in Gattaca: Q "What if someone exceeds there potential" A "You cannot exceed your potential, it just means that we assessed the potential incorrectly in the first place." (or something to that extent).
> Either way, Darwinian evolution is neither a proof of the existence of God or proof of the > nonexistence of God (and yes, the very same one revealed in the Bible) and as a Christian, I > wish atheists and agnostics would quit throwing it out there like it is.
The theory of evolution is useful in exposing the blind faith some religious extremist have to their specific interpretation of the their favourite religious book (usually the bible).
Of course showing that the earth is billions of years old and species have evolved does not disprove the existance of a god, but it does disprove the surprisingly widely held view that the earth was created in the last 10,000 years in the space of a few days.
> but if he is honest and intellectual with his beliefs
That's exactly the point. When a belief gets to the point where someone refuses to consider any point of view that is at odds with his/her interpretation of the bible, this might be his honest belief, but it certainly does not satisfy the criterium of being intellectual with this belief.
If I had to hire a biochemist and an applicant told me he is 100% certain there is no such thing as evolution because it contradicts the bible, i would not hire him (as a biochemist), because this severely limits his ability to understand the field. If he applied as a software developer, I would have no problem with this belief as it is irrelevant to the field.
Newton's famous works are in mechanics and mathematics, and so long as he did not hold a religious belief that "the natural state of all things is rest" or something of that sort, there would be no reason to let his religious beliefs get in the way...
Slashdot Mirror
> This is a frightening prospect because it would allow you to make ebola "from scratch", or
> just from the the string of letters that represent the genome
I don't think it's possible for all viruses. In this case i believe just adding the DNA to the cell was sufficient to create an infected cell. Other virii might need some of their own proteins to start the process. I'm not a virologist, but i don't think it's always as easy as this...
Ponxx
T-online is a publicly traded company that was spun off from Deutsche Telekom. ~80% of the shares are still owned by Deutsche Telekom. The article claims T-online has 4 Bn. Euros in cash reserves, which would be more than enough to buy AOL.
I'm not sure the European authorities would block the deal as T-online so far is almost completely restricted to activity in Germany while AOL has very few customers there, so a merger would not change the diversity in any market significantly... but it's still a big risk...
by yours truly... in a rush so don't complain if it's not 100% accurate (apologies for the dodgy english as well):
"American Dream"
T-online has lots of money and high ambitions, one option is the take-over of AOL
For years it was a duel that electrified the internet public. Deutsche Telekom with T-online vs. the conqueror from the US: AOL.
The opponents used all means to fight for markets in europe, including law-suits, dumping prices and advertising campaigns. A Particular twist was added when the (german) media company Bertelsman headed by Thomas Middelhoff, worked together with the Americans.
Today, all has changed. Since Spring 2000 Bertelsmann is not involved with AOL anymore and Middelhoff is a partner with Investcorp in London.
He searches for investment opportunities in the entire world and has particularly good contacts to the US, where he is on the board of the NYT. From the deals of the 90s he still knows many people at Time Warner, who euphorically bought AOL 4 years ago but is now unhappy with the online-business.
Time Warner already dropped AOL from the name and are apparently thinking of seeling large parts of the company. The most likely candidate is according to sources of the SZ the T-online AG who has been striving for international expansion for a while, but not achieved its aims in this area.
One idea is for the germans to hold 80% of AOL shares while 30% stay with Time Warner, a cooperation that would change the media-landscape. It would happen due to the deal-making of Middelhoff.
It is the old Bertelsmann Boss and now Investment banker who has aided the talks between T-online and Time-Warner. Information from T-online sources suggest that a meeting between TW boss Richard PArsons and T-online Boss Thomas Holtrop has already occured.
The suggested price-tag is ~1 Bn Dollars. That's a long way away from the former astronomical valuations of the company once promoted by Middelhoff friend Steve Case.
At it's maximum AOL bought Time Warner for 112 Bn Dollar. Recently AOL lost customers, currently there are about 25 Million.
It woudl be easy for Holtorp and Col to pay for the deal. T-online still has 4 Bn Euros. This capital needs a targe so that publicly traded T-online corp can achieve its ambitious growth targets.
Middelhoff was not available for comment. A t-online spokes-person didn't want to commen on the rumours: "Every quarter we're asked "What are you doing with your money?"
Fundamentally there are two major parts of strategy. One is inorganic growth, by purchases and by waiting on consolidation of the market,.
A deal with AOL would have the particular advantage that T-online would get a foot-hold in the american market. Co-operations with sister-firm T-mobile are important as the companies work together on "T-Zones" where T-online supplise contents, which could be important for the US investments of T-mobile.
The Project AOL is top secret. A final decision has not been made. There are risks, in particular in terms of regulators. In Germany AOL never made major inroads. It is likely that after a merger AOL germany would disappear.
On Tuesday T-online has declared a quarterly profit for the first time. T-online now has 12.9 Mn customers, 9% more than last year. 4/5 of these live in Germany, so it's time for a jump. Yes, t-online is on the look-out says Holtrop, and it would not be years until he has something to announce...
Why does it make a difference? The only thing that takes a significant amount of time is actually counting the votes. Aggregating the information is simply a case of adding a few numbers, whether you do this for a population of 1 million, 80 million or 300 million makes very little difference....
> I have worked and lived in several countries in Eueope, and everywhere, recycling and safe
... in many areas of germany for example each household has 3 or 4 different bins that get collected on different days/weeks.
> storage of old batteries was top issue. Batteries are VERY toxic.
You've obviously not spent much time in the UK, but I agree with regards to most other european countries...
It's not only batteries, but also paper, plastic, glass, metal
When I arrived in america for the first time, I bought a (glass) bottle of water at the airport, and once i had drunk it returned it to the place that had sold it to me (cafe type thing) assuming they would recycle it in some way. The woman just gave me a very strange look and dropped the bottle in the bin right in front of me...
I have no idea of the actual environmental impact of recycling as compared to driving, air conditioning, heating insulation, toxic waste, lack of filters in power plants etc. etc. but there certainly seems to be a very different mindset about it in western europe.
ponxx
I think you would still see a massive advantage on the dark side of the moon for conventional telescopes. It's much better than earth due to the lack of atmoshpere. Compared to "our" side of the moon you won't have the earth hanging in the sky annoyingly... I'm not sure whether and how much difference this would make, but i imagine it would reduce noise quite a lot, no?
Ponxx
> That being said, I'm a _HUGE_ space and astronomy nut, but I do not see how going there
> will improve anything other than our nationalism.
The one thing I hope it wouldn't increase is "nationalism". I'm not sure a project on the scale of colonising the moon would be feasible for a single nation, with the possible exception of China where no-one is going to complain about the excessive spending...
Ponxx
If you had a secure channel to transmit a one-time pad you might as well just transmit the message through this channel. The only reason to use a one-time pad is that you have the opportunity to securely exchange a message at an earlier time (e.g. by handing over a CD) and can use this message to send a secret message later.
:)
And yes, I suspect bandwidth is the reason they transmit a secret key, rather than the secret message itself over this channel.
Ponxx
PS ok, there are some justification for transmitting a one-time pad through the secure channel. If you could detect an attack you can refrain from sending the actual message. Also you could leave it "on" the whole time to build up a large one-time pad and then quickly send the actual messages through conventional channels. Still, if they want to server financial peopel they probably have stupid ideas about sending power point presentations or Excel Sheets, I don't think they'll ever build a secure channel that catches up with the size of MS files..
> The corporate executives have a duty to do what's in the shareholders' interest
So what if it's not in the shareholders interest to sell to the highest bidder? Shareholders often have agendas on their own.
SuSE is not floated on the stock market afaik and the investors listed on their website are mainly technology companies, who i imagine have their stakes for reasons other than merely money...
So anyway, shareholder interst is not always the same as getting the biggest valuation out of a company. Besides, I imagine a healthy amount of shares are held by the original founders of SuSE (though i have no information to substantiate this...)
Ponxx
PS many apologies for the erroneous use of "their" in my original post.. I *hate* it when people do that, and can't believe it happened to me...
Maybe whoever is in charge their simply like their business?
It's not all about money, some people do underpaid work because they enjoy it, and owning/running a business is no different...
If I had built up a company like SuSE I would be very reluctant to sell it.
> As a Christian Zealot and someone who takes the Bible literally and believes every word of it
...................
:)
> with good cause I can attest that shooting anyone, especially the unsaved ie non Christians > is wholly against Christianity
May I assume you include the whole bible in this? Please explain the following in light of your comments above:
Numbers:
[Moses said unto them:]
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
...................
To be fair, it doesn't really fit the definition of terrorism (try the plagues god sent on the egyptians for that, killing the eldest son in every house? lovely!), this example is more a case of genocide...
Anyway, don't know why I bother, I'm bound to get an answer along the lines of "but the lord commanded it, so it's ok!" which brings me back to my initial point that most terrorists are fanatics who believe they're doing a good deed.
Ponxx
> I think it is possible for terrorists to
...
> have very good goals... Most think they have
This is a *very* important point. Most people seem to think that terrorist are just *evil* and enjoy doing damage because they are evil. That their goals are to enslave mankind and laugh manically (probably seen to many James Bond films).
All fanatics *think* they are the good ones. They think they're doing a good dead, and often sacrifice themselves to achieve this. This goes for the christian fanatics who shoot abortion doctors and their families as much as for the muslim fanatics who blow up cafes in Israel.
This must not necessarily be true for terrorist leaders, who could have another agenda (power/money/...) and they usually just sacrifice other people rather than themselves. But the actual people on the ground invariably believe they are fighting for a good cause / their people / their religion /
Anyway, they're all wrong. There is nothing worse for the palestinians than the suicide bombers. If they got those under control and instead held a peaceful protest, opinion in the world *and* Israel would quickly turn away from the hard-liners.
Simiarly the abortion doctor killers have discredited the whole anti-abortion movement, and eco-terrorists have tarnished the reputation of environmentalists.
If you want to further any cause, in 99% of cases it is best to do this in the framework of law and discourse provided. In the few cases where this is not possible. Non-violent civil disobedience is probably the only option that will gain popular support.
Sorry for the long rant
Ponxx
As you might know productivity increases on the whole by a couple of % every year. So for a given amount of work you can produce more goods every year. Or you can produce the same amount of goods as last year with less work.
:) ). OF course I could earn a lot more if i worked 50, 60 or more hours a week and did not take 6+ weeks of holidays every year. But I *don't want to*.
The us-american conclusion is that we should all produce (and consume) more stuff.
The french conclusion is that we should all work a bit less...
I quite enjoy living comfortably of a relatively low amount of work (and i'm not even french
Being a capitalist, maybe it helps for you to think of it as me "buying" leisure time. It's a luxury item that is more important to me than a bigger car/house/... What's the point in buying lots of expensive stuff if you have no time to enjoy it???
Ponxx
100KW
p=E/C
so 1 seconds worth of laser power at 100 kW has momentum of:
p=100 000 J/3x10^8 m/s =~ 3.3 x10^-4 kg m/s
the momentum transfer will be barely noticable. These weapons destroy by dumping lots of energy into the target, causing heating/melting/explosions/... not by impact...
What is stopping the "other side" from coating their shells with a reflective surface? Especially if only one particular wavelength is used by the military, it should be straightforward to create a coating that'll effectively reflect close to 100% of the LASER.
Think about the goggles scientists wear in high-power laser labs. You can see fine through them, except the one wavelength their laser works at...
Ponxx
PS yes, I RTFA, but AFAIK there is no real problem creating materials reflecting IR. If you can aim the laser, the other side can reflect it (away or back at you)
> No state has a law prohibiting anyone from reciting the pledge voluntarily,
> whenever they want to
[..]
You claim this is wrong because:
"A 22 word prayer, crafted by the New York State Board of Regents, was read aloud daily in public school classrooms. Student participation was voluntary. On June 25, 1962, the Court ruled the Regents' prayer unconstitutional."
There is a difference between:
- a student voluntarily saying a prayer, e.g. before having lunch, as they enter the school, etc. etc.
and
- a prayer being read out in the classroom
the former is a private exercise of the freedom of religion while the latter is a clear endorsement by the school of the contents of that prayer.
Aside from constitutionality, my assesment of whether i or my religion should be allowed something is based on whether I would allow a group who's views i'm diametrically opposed to to do the same. E.g. if the majority opinion changes would i want my child to listen to a pledge saying "one nation under satan", even if it did not have to participate.
How much tax i'm willing to pay depends critically on what i get in return. In sweden, if i'm well-informed, you get:
......
- free healthcare
- generous pensions
- good schools / day care for kids
- *free* universities
- good law-enforcement
- "social peace"
- good roads
- clean cities
all that is worth a lot of money! Everyone whinges about the cost of health insurance in Europe, but private health insurance in the US is much more expensive! And for the most part, the employers foot part of the bill, just like on the other side of the pond...
Anyway, if the state delivers most of what i need to live, i'm quite happy for it to take a healthy chunk out of my income (even 70% if i have a good income).
On the other hand, if i have to have my own insurance for health, unemployment, pension, life, pay for college for the kids etc. etc. i might not be willing to pay more than about 20% tax in total... if you add up all the other stuff, you'll quickly approach the swedish figures again!
> how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments?
none, the same number that exist in lab environments... do you have any idea what sort of half-life these elements have?
It's fundamental research. Seeing what is possible and learning about the basic laws of the universe... There might be some application in the distant future, but i doubt it would be very directly related to this reasearch...
are you saying that's not the case? So if i'm rich and you're poor, I sue you, loose, and you're bankrupt? Surely not...
Surely even in the us you are innocent until proven guilty. Has anyone hit with a bogus law-suit ever tried *not* to hire a lawyer? Just go in the court room in front of the jury and say "we spend the money on trying to provide education and can't afford lots of lawyers, the charges are baseless, these devices are used everywhere in the country, don't be silly"
> So, give nationalizing the power grid a try
good idea, but you seem to confuse the grid with the energy suppliers. I think competition in the electricity production industry can (and does) work. The problem is that transmission of electricity is inherently a monopoly.
In the UK i believe transmission is dealt with by the "national grid" which then purchases electricity from a number of private companies.
If the grid is fully or partially nationalised it can also impose rules on electricity suppliers, such as there must be at least 10% excess capacity at normal times or we won't give you a contract... (or give bonuses to suppliers that can counter spikes in demand).
I am not sure what the actual status of the national grid is in the uk, i don't think it's entirely government owned, but i don't think it's a private company as such either.. anyone know?
Several currencies come not only in different sizes and colours, but also have indentations on them in braille so the blind can "read" the value of the notes... do you think including that sort of feature would cause outrage too?
Hardly, i have no numbers, but the EU had a huge programme to educate people about the EURO, i wouldn't be surprised if it had cost more...
By definition there is nothing outside of this universe. If there was, it would simply mean that the universe is bigger than we thought ....
Just like the line in Gattaca:
Q "What if someone exceeds there potential"
A "You cannot exceed your potential, it just means that we assessed the potential incorrectly in the first place." (or something to that extent).
can't resist replying to this...
:)
> Either way, Darwinian evolution is neither a proof of the existence of God or proof of the
> nonexistence of God (and yes, the very same one revealed in the Bible) and as a Christian, I
> wish atheists and agnostics would quit throwing it out there like it is.
The theory of evolution is useful in exposing the blind faith some religious extremist have to their specific interpretation of the their favourite religious book (usually the bible).
Of course showing that the earth is billions of years old and species have evolved does not disprove the existance of a god, but it does disprove the surprisingly widely held view that the earth was created in the last 10,000 years in the space of a few days.
> but if he is honest and intellectual with his beliefs
That's exactly the point. When a belief gets to the point where someone refuses to consider any point of view that is at odds with his/her interpretation of the bible, this might be his honest belief, but it certainly does not satisfy the criterium of being intellectual with this belief.
If I had to hire a biochemist and an applicant told me he is 100% certain there is no such thing as evolution because it contradicts the bible, i would not hire him (as a biochemist), because this severely limits his ability to understand the field. If he applied as a software developer, I would have no problem with this belief as it is irrelevant to the field.
Newton's famous works are in mechanics and mathematics, and so long as he did not hold a religious belief that "the natural state of all things is rest" or something of that sort, there would be no reason to let his religious beliefs get in the way...
sorry for the unncessary and long post