To make reactor-grade uranium, you need to take naturally-occuring uranium, which is mostly U-238 and just a tiny bit U-235 (let me know if I have the isotopes backwards) and refine it so that it has roughly 100 times the naturally-occuring amount of U-235. Of course, to do this, you end up with lots and lots of uranium left over where the the U-235 has been taken out of it (this is the 'depleted' uranium used in munitions) -- so, you still have the same total amount of uranium, just the ratios of the isotopes have shifted around.
We're not making it "more potent", and certainly not "more radioactive", we are just shifting the ratios of isotopes so that we can take advantage of some of the properties of U-235.
There is so much radioactive material in the core of our planet anyway, anything we add is going to be infinitesimal compared to what is already there. Much of the reason that the core of the earth is molten and hot is due to radioactive decay.
In general, American citizens anywhere are bound by both U.S. law and local law, although it is pretty unlikely that a foreign country would bother to arrest and extradite and American arrested in a foreign country for violating an American law.
Re:Bad side of globalization
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Globalization
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· Score: 1
It wasn't a "country called Palestine" before 1947 -- it was a mandate set up by the League of Nations and run by the British called Palestine. Before WWI, it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Palestinians lived there for a long time; so did the Jews. In 1947, 2 countries were set up by UN mandate -- Israel and Palestine. After Palestine's Arab buddies attacked Israel, Palestine was gone -- either annexed by Jordan or occupied by Israel. You don't see the Jordanians giving up any land to help rebuild a Palestine state, although the Israeli's do allow Palestinian self-government (although not a true Palestine state) in Gaza and the West Bank.
If the Arab world is all up in arms about a fellow Arab not having a country to call their own, why don't we see anyone helping the Kurds?
You can argue both sides as to who doesn't want peace. Of course there are hardline orthodox jews who want nothing to do with a creation of a Palestinian state. There are also Palestinians who want the Jews gone from the middle east as well. Until the leaders of both sides are strong enough to negotiate a resolution to the problem, these extremist groups -- the ultraconservative jews on one side and Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad on the other -- will continue to drive the issues that result in deaths on both sides of the argument in that region.
Re:Contrast: The Economist
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Globalization
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· Score: 1
Don't tell me you are trying to compare the DCMA with Civil Rights...
Whatever. I'm sure that the freedoms that the Red Chinese brought to North Korea are better than the freedoms the South Koreans have. I know that the South Vietnamese are much happier now that Ho Chi Mihn managed to unify Vietnam into a free Communist country. And I am sure that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot would have eventually made Cambodia (oops, I mean The People's Republic of Kampuchea) a freer and better place if we had just left him alone.
I guess if Communism = Freedom, then your arguments make sens.
If you boycott every company that goes into a thrid world country to set up shop, how are you ever going to get them out of the third world? Should the developed world just wait for them to figure it out on their own? Maybe we should just give them the money?
Somehow, I don't see Iran and Iraq becoming buddies to fight America. Or Kuwait and Iraq. Or Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Or Egypt and Iran. Or Turkey and Iraq.
"Muslims" are not a single political or religious entity any more than are "Christians" or "The West".
Re:What Bin Laden said
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Globalization
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· Score: 1
I agree. The biggest muslim country in the world is Indonesia. There are more muslims living in India than there are Arabs. So does he mean muslims everywhere, or just muslims in Arab lands? And what about Arabs who are not muslim? There are a lot of Christian Arabs in Lebanon and elsewhere, where do they end up? I can't imagine they would be comfortable living under a Taliban-like regime.
Re:I have two things to say about Ramadan bombings
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Globalization
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· Score: 1
This is the best post I've read yet. Sorry I don't have any mod points for you!
Quick question -- are you trying to say that if you don't "believe what Amnesty International tells you" or what Indymedia wants you to believe, then you are brainwashed and believe the "wrong" things? Since when does alternative = truth?
Higher pay alone isn't going to attract the best and the brightest scientists to become teachers. There are two other impediments that keep people away from becoming teachers at public schools:
1. Teacher's Union. I think most people working in technical/scientific jobs are used to working in some semblance of a mertiocracy -- if you work harder than the next guy, and are better at your job than the next guy, you'll get raises/promotions/bonuses etc. (and by "next guy", I mean it in the gender-neutral sense, of course...). In the union, you get paid for time served. You could be voted teacher of the year ten straight years in a row, but some idiot with 11 years on the job is going to make more than you by virtue of seniority. Now, granted, many in the tech field are motivated by things other than money -- as are most teachers, I like to think -- but working in a situation where there is no reward other than personal satisfaction is certainly not the place for everyone. Peoople -- whether in business, law, tech, etc. -- that end up at the top of their field are usually pretty competetive as well, and a Union environment is not the right place for these people.
2. The teaching credential. In California, at least, all teachers high school and below are required to have a valid California teaching credential to teach. Now, at first glance, this seems like a good idea -- lets make sure that our teachers have some teachings skills. However, if the quality of teachers is so bad, then obviously the credential isn't doing it's job -- so let's get rid of it. The teaching credential takes time and money to get -- I know of a few people in my MS program who wanted to be teachers, but didn't want to spend the extra year in school to get a credential, so they went off to teach at Community College -- they would have made fine high-school science teachers, if not for that credential requirement.
Maybe this is a simplistic and incorrect view -- maybe, even if teachers made good money, didn't have a union to contend with and didn't need a credential, maybe we would still have a teacher shortage. I just think that the current system obviously isn't ideal, so maybe some changes are in order.
Virtually all states require you to have gone to an accredited law school and get the JD degree before taking the bar exam. California is an exception -- you don't have to have a JD to take the bar -- but you have to pass a mini bar exam (the "baby bar") and have a ton of documented legal work experience before you can sit for the bar.
Medicine is the same way -- the ticket for entrance to the medical board exams is an MD degree from an accredited medical school.
In l997, 67 percent of Americans surveyed believed that increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere would, if unchecked, lead to global warming and increasing average temperatures. By last year, the figure had risen to 72 per cent. Even though they weren't aware of any specific or urgent impac on their own lives, and thus weren't particularly alarmed, nearly half thought that global warming should be treated as a "very serious" problem. In fact, only 13 percent of Americans said global warming wasn't a serious problem, a record low.
I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't care if 100% of the "people on the street" believe whatever about a complex scientific issue. Without a lot of study and some minimal level of comprehension of the relevant science involved, all they are doing is parroting TV or People magazine or whatever.
If the stats were based on surveys of atmospheric physicists and climatologists, then maybe the stats would be relevant.
As a US citizen or corporation, you are bound by the laws of the US AND the laws of any country in which you might be hanging out -- the US tends to let foreign countries take care fo things that happen there, but the US could, if they wanted to, also enforce US laws on a citizen.
A good example is the tax laws -- US citizens have to file income tax paperwork even if they lived the entire year outside of the US and earned no money in the US -- still have to pay the taxman as a citizen.
Roughly 2% of all incidences of breast cancer occur in men -- it's unusual, but not unheard of.
The problem with the cell phone studies to date is not that they are based on anecdotal evidence, but they are based on epidimeological evidence -- although good epidimeological studies can link cancers with a cause, they do not provide any information on causality, or cause-and-effect.
Also, brain cancers are fairly rare in any given population -- it is generally very difficult to show a statistically significant change in a rare event when the effect is expected to be mild.
Gamma Rays = high energy photons resulting from nuclear reactions (i.e. neutron decay)
X-Rays = high energy photons resulting from atomic reactions (i.e. shifts in valence electron energy levels)
Cosmic Rays = high energy photons out in space
In general, cosmic rays have a higher energy than gamma rays which have a higher energy than X-rays, but energy is not what determines what kind of "ray" it is...
The scientific knowledge is available to everyone now -- I'm sure this will be published in a bunch of journals and will be talked about at conferences.
If IBM has patented this new manufacturing process (and I'm sure that they have) however, nobody else will be able to use it without working out a licensing agreement with IBM, unless they wanted to get slapped with a lawsuit.
The scientific knowledge is available to everyone to use and expand upon, but IP law protects IBM's investment from being used by its competetitors -- the IP is a competetive advantage for IBM. What's wrong with that?
It is my understanding that when you post on a website you lose the right to put restrictions on the use of that speech. I also believe that the same holds true for emails.
I wouldn't classify myself as a pro-drug person -- personally, I don't (and never have) taken drugs, with the exception of alchohol, and that in moderation. If drugs were legal, that wouldn't change whether I took them or not. I just don't think that putting people in prison and trampling all over our 4th Amendment rights for a few grams of pot is really worth the time, effort, and $$$.
The European Union is a signatory of the GATT and WTO agreements on international trade, and does not have the right to simply do business with whomever they please. Denying a country trade because of its TAX laws is a non-tariff trade barrier that is not allowed under GATT.
Would you still click that button if you yourself had a 50% chance of being deleted? If you think the world would be better off with less people, then lead by example.
Slashdot Mirror
To make reactor-grade uranium, you need to take naturally-occuring uranium, which is mostly U-238 and just a tiny bit U-235 (let me know if I have the isotopes backwards) and refine it so that it has roughly 100 times the naturally-occuring amount of U-235. Of course, to do this, you end up with lots and lots of uranium left over where the the U-235 has been taken out of it (this is the 'depleted' uranium used in munitions) -- so, you still have the same total amount of uranium, just the ratios of the isotopes have shifted around.
We're not making it "more potent", and certainly not "more radioactive", we are just shifting the ratios of isotopes so that we can take advantage of some of the properties of U-235.
There is so much radioactive material in the core of our planet anyway, anything we add is going to be infinitesimal compared to what is already there. Much of the reason that the core of the earth is molten and hot is due to radioactive decay.
In general, American citizens anywhere are bound by both U.S. law and local law, although it is pretty unlikely that a foreign country would bother to arrest and extradite and American arrested in a foreign country for violating an American law.
It wasn't a "country called Palestine" before 1947 -- it was a mandate set up by the League of Nations and run by the British called Palestine. Before WWI, it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Palestinians lived there for a long time; so did the Jews. In 1947, 2 countries were set up by UN mandate -- Israel and Palestine. After Palestine's Arab buddies attacked Israel, Palestine was gone -- either annexed by Jordan or occupied by Israel. You don't see the Jordanians giving up any land to help rebuild a Palestine state, although the Israeli's do allow Palestinian self-government (although not a true Palestine state) in Gaza and the West Bank.
If the Arab world is all up in arms about a fellow Arab not having a country to call their own, why don't we see anyone helping the Kurds?
You can argue both sides as to who doesn't want peace. Of course there are hardline orthodox jews who want nothing to do with a creation of a Palestinian state. There are also Palestinians who want the Jews gone from the middle east as well. Until the leaders of both sides are strong enough to negotiate a resolution to the problem, these extremist groups -- the ultraconservative jews on one side and Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad on the other -- will continue to drive the issues that result in deaths on both sides of the argument in that region.
Don't tell me you are trying to compare the DCMA with Civil Rights...
Whatever. I'm sure that the freedoms that the Red Chinese brought to North Korea are better than the freedoms the South Koreans have. I know that the South Vietnamese are much happier now that Ho Chi Mihn managed to unify Vietnam into a free Communist country. And I am sure that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot would have eventually made Cambodia (oops, I mean The People's Republic of Kampuchea) a freer and better place if we had just left him alone.
I guess if Communism = Freedom, then your arguments make sens.
If you boycott every company that goes into a thrid world country to set up shop, how are you ever going to get them out of the third world? Should the developed world just wait for them to figure it out on their own? Maybe we should just give them the money?
Somehow, I don't see Iran and Iraq becoming buddies to fight America. Or Kuwait and Iraq. Or Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Or Egypt and Iran. Or Turkey and Iraq.
"Muslims" are not a single political or religious entity any more than are "Christians" or "The West".
I agree. The biggest muslim country in the world is Indonesia. There are more muslims living in India than there are Arabs. So does he mean muslims everywhere, or just muslims in Arab lands? And what about Arabs who are not muslim? There are a lot of Christian Arabs in Lebanon and elsewhere, where do they end up? I can't imagine they would be comfortable living under a Taliban-like regime.
This is the best post I've read yet. Sorry I don't have any mod points for you!
Quick question -- are you trying to say that if you don't "believe what Amnesty International tells you" or what Indymedia wants you to believe, then you are brainwashed and believe the "wrong" things? Since when does alternative = truth?
Higher pay alone isn't going to attract the best and the brightest scientists to become teachers. There are two other impediments that keep people away from becoming teachers at public schools:
1. Teacher's Union. I think most people working in technical/scientific jobs are used to working in some semblance of a mertiocracy -- if you work harder than the next guy, and are better at your job than the next guy, you'll get raises/promotions/bonuses etc. (and by "next guy", I mean it in the gender-neutral sense, of course...). In the union, you get paid for time served. You could be voted teacher of the year ten straight years in a row, but some idiot with 11 years on the job is going to make more than you by virtue of seniority. Now, granted, many in the tech field are motivated by things other than money -- as are most teachers, I like to think -- but working in a situation where there is no reward other than personal satisfaction is certainly not the place for everyone. Peoople -- whether in business, law, tech, etc. -- that end up at the top of their field are usually pretty competetive as well, and a Union environment is not the right place for these people.
2. The teaching credential. In California, at least, all teachers high school and below are required to have a valid California teaching credential to teach. Now, at first glance, this seems like a good idea -- lets make sure that our teachers have some teachings skills. However, if the quality of teachers is so bad, then obviously the credential isn't doing it's job -- so let's get rid of it. The teaching credential takes time and money to get -- I know of a few people in my MS program who wanted to be teachers, but didn't want to spend the extra year in school to get a credential, so they went off to teach at Community College -- they would have made fine high-school science teachers, if not for that credential requirement.
Maybe this is a simplistic and incorrect view -- maybe, even if teachers made good money, didn't have a union to contend with and didn't need a credential, maybe we would still have a teacher shortage. I just think that the current system obviously isn't ideal, so maybe some changes are in order.
Virtually all states require you to have gone to an accredited law school and get the JD degree before taking the bar exam. California is an exception -- you don't have to have a JD to take the bar -- but you have to pass a mini bar exam (the "baby bar") and have a ton of documented legal work experience before you can sit for the bar. Medicine is the same way -- the ticket for entrance to the medical board exams is an MD degree from an accredited medical school.
I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't care if 100% of the "people on the street" believe whatever about a complex scientific issue. Without a lot of study and some minimal level of comprehension of the relevant science involved, all they are doing is parroting TV or People magazine or whatever.
If the stats were based on surveys of atmospheric physicists and climatologists, then maybe the stats would be relevant.
Venus also receives 5 times the energy per unit area that Earth does -- that could have something to do with Venus being hot.
A good example is the tax laws -- US citizens have to file income tax paperwork even if they lived the entire year outside of the US and earned no money in the US -- still have to pay the taxman as a citizen.
The problem with the cell phone studies to date is not that they are based on anecdotal evidence, but they are based on epidimeological evidence -- although good epidimeological studies can link cancers with a cause, they do not provide any information on causality, or cause-and-effect.
Also, brain cancers are fairly rare in any given population -- it is generally very difficult to show a statistically significant change in a rare event when the effect is expected to be mild.
X-Rays = high energy photons resulting from atomic reactions (i.e. shifts in valence electron energy levels)
Cosmic Rays = high energy photons out in space
In general, cosmic rays have a higher energy than gamma rays which have a higher energy than X-rays, but energy is not what determines what kind of "ray" it is...
If IBM has patented this new manufacturing process (and I'm sure that they have) however, nobody else will be able to use it without working out a licensing agreement with IBM, unless they wanted to get slapped with a lawsuit.
The scientific knowledge is available to everyone to use and expand upon, but IP law protects IBM's investment from being used by its competetitors -- the IP is a competetive advantage for IBM. What's wrong with that?
It is my understanding that when you post on a website you lose the right to put restrictions on the use of that speech. I also believe that the same holds true for emails.
I wouldn't classify myself as a pro-drug person -- personally, I don't (and never have) taken drugs, with the exception of alchohol, and that in moderation. If drugs were legal, that wouldn't change whether I took them or not. I just don't think that putting people in prison and trampling all over our 4th Amendment rights for a few grams of pot is really worth the time, effort, and $$$.
You're right, voting with your wallet is hard. Sometimes really hard. Why should you expect it to be easy?
versus the leftist think tanks that merely parrot the opinions of their sponsors.
The European Union is a signatory of the GATT and WTO agreements on international trade, and does not have the right to simply do business with whomever they please. Denying a country trade because of its TAX laws is a non-tariff trade barrier that is not allowed under GATT.
Would you still click that button if you yourself had a 50% chance of being deleted? If you think the world would be better off with less people, then lead by example.
Alchohol = Alcohol. Can't believe I spelled it wrong every time in that last posting...