> The Chinese gov't would also back you on that one, I suspect. The idea that religion is the most dangerous idea in the world has thus far been able to make several forms of atheism into the most dangerous idea in several of our larger nations.
So, do you think everthing in China would be just fine if the clique that runs the country wanted people to believe in some religion?
Do you think the people who are trying to convert the US government from a secular institution into a theocracy will make the world a better place if they get their way?
> That there is a being called the Devil that is the source of all human urges towards violence and selfishness.
Yes, the notion that we should blame evil on some supernatural being is a very dangerous idea.
As is the notion that we should turn to another supernatural being to save us.
The world would be a far safer place if people would learn to be responsible for their own behavior, and for the governance of their societies, and for cooperation between their society and others.
Bin Laden and Pat Robertson are the monsters that we should teach our children to fear.
Claim: Free markets make perfect sense! They are the most logical, sensible system.
Counterclaim: If you're on the top of the pile. Those being crushed on the bottom might reasonably feel otherwise.
Counter-counterclaim: [sarcasm] Yeah, because it isn't like everyone benefits from the freemarket system. Only the Waltons benefit from their stores. Not the millions of poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods.
Counter-counter-counterclaim: [paraphrased, for the benefit of those who missed the point] Some people can't even afford to shop at Wal-Mart.
Are you people unaware that people go hungry in the USA, which prides itself as being the richest, freest, fairest nation in the world?
Do you really think an unconstrained market would improve their lot?
Do you think they deserve to be crushed under the weight of the machine?
I wonder what would even qualify. Can it be a free market if the government (or some other organization) regulates coinage? Outlaws putting your thumb on the scale? Outlaws cartels?
OTOH, what if the government bugs out and companies do form cartels? Is it still a free market?
What's the definition of a free market? Where do we draw the lines on this kind of stuff?
> Does it make more sense to steal money from people who are earning it and give it to others?
a) I don't think he said or implied any such thing.
b) How much of the distribution of wealth in our society is the result of people "earning it", as opposed to some people getting opportunities that others don't? Has Bill Gates really worked any harder than the average sharecropper, or did his inherited wealth, lucky break, and stranglehold on the market give him a wee bit of a leg up?
> > Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.
> I don't get this. Maybe a Physics geek can clue me in. Why would we expect to see different temperatures? If the big bang exploded in a completely uniform way, I would expect the "shrapnel" to behave in a completely uniform way in every direction. What exactly would cause one direction to be hotter than another direction?
AIUI, the distribution of the CMB radiation is a reflection - literally - of the distribution of matter in the universe when things cooled down enough for the universe at large to be transparent to radiation.
If the universe had been perfectly isotropic at that time, then the radiation would in fact be isotropic as well. But then we'd have trouble explaining the clumpy distribution of matter. But matter is clumpy, and the CMB ratiation is anisotropic, so we feel safe in concluding that the initial universe was not.
Then the question becomes, why is it exactly this anisotropic. Apparently our best model of the big bang says that the CMB should be somewhat more anisotropic than it is, and inflation solves the problem neatly.
When I first heard about it I thought it reeked of epicycles (for fitting observations to an arbitrary theory), but from what I've read the inflation hypothesis explains a lot more stuff than just the CMB radiation anisotropy, so it's in good graces with most of the cosmology community.
> Of course some people say that there would be no innovation without patents... I contend that such an assertion is not true, and that the lack of artificial government granted monopolies (patents) would result in a constant "arms race" situation where companies would be forced to innovate constantly or die.
The US drug companies are always on television telling you how important their profits are to continued research, but outside observers say they spend 10x as much on advertising as they do on research.
> NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.
How, precisely, does the existence of methane around Titan validate the claim?
> It seems that our government is preparing to build reactors again, as the current batch are reaching end of life. I feel rather ashamed to be in the generation that saw what a f**king mess we made of things, and then decided to go do some more. God help the next generation.
Nuclear reactors are hardly the only power generation method that we've made a f**king mess of.
> Yes. In fact, depending on where you are today, it's colder or warmer, wetter or dryer, brighter or darker, calmer or stormier than normal. Some places are even foggy. It's all evidence of climate change.
Even a Slashdotter should be able to understand that "global warming" means "more thermal energy in the atmosphere".
Where the logic leads from there, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
> There was some evidence that acoustically-driven cavitation could produce temperatures high enough to result in fusion-generated neutrons.
FWIW, we've known for decades that collapsing bubbles can generate extremely high temperatures, though I think attempts to get fusion out of it are just a few years old.
> However, in terms of the driving physics, this is hot fusion: a very small volume of material may be heated to extremely high temperatures for a very short time, resulting in a tiny amount of fusion occuring.
Yes, IMO these researchers should emphasize that in order to distinguish themselves from the CNF crowd. I occasionally see claims of "See, CNF was right all along", based on reports of sonofusion results.
> So while it is not impossible that one day we'll all drive cars powered by sonofusion, I don't think anyone working in the field is suggesting that.
More likely you'll have a tank the size of your house to power your toaster.
> Now think about big mammals. Imagine the size of the heart that would be needed to pump blood against gravity into King Kong's brain. Imagine the muscles that would be needed to force enough air into the lungs. Gravity would collapse lungs over a certain size.
There are also issues of proportion. If you scale a creature up, mass goes up as the cube of the linear size, but the cross section of the leg bones goes up only as the square of the linear size. There's no way an ape could grow to that size and still be shaped like an ape.
> Yeah, because it isn't like everyone benefits from the freemarket system. Only the Waltons benefit from their stores. Not the millions of poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods.
> This "horizon problem" is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. "Inflation", for example.
What is "wild" about inflation? Our prior experience with examination of the universe on the largest and smallest scales should warn us to expect the unexpected.
> So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another.
If he would take the time to read up on the topic, he would find that inflation actually solves several problems.
> 4 Belfast homeopathy results 6 Viking's methane 7 Tetraneutrons 11 The Wow signal
Get back to us when you've got more than a single example of the purported anomaly.
> 8 The Pioneer anomaly
FWIW, someone suggested last year that we may be able to winnow the proposed explanations, because they all predict different directions of the anomaly.
> 9 Dark energy
> IT IS one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics.
Why is this embarassing?
Does that have any bearing on the science of the issue?
> 12 Not-so-constant constants
Yawn.
> 13 Cold fusion
Giggle.
Is New Scientist trying to move in on the supermarket tabloid market?
Slashdot Mirror
> blah, blah, government is evil, blah, blah
OK, now offer some evidence to support those political views that you are trying to pass off as fact.
If that leaves enough time, you could also explain why you haven't moved to one of the several Utopias where anarchy reigns right now.
> The Chinese gov't would also back you on that one, I suspect. The idea that religion is the most dangerous idea in the world has thus far been able to make several forms of atheism into the most dangerous idea in several of our larger nations.
So, do you think everthing in China would be just fine if the clique that runs the country wanted people to believe in some religion?
Do you think the people who are trying to convert the US government from a secular institution into a theocracy will make the world a better place if they get their way?
> That there is a being called the Devil that is the source of all human
urges towards violence and selfishness.
Yes, the notion that we should blame evil on some supernatural being is a very dangerous idea.
As is the notion that we should turn to another supernatural being to save us.
The world would be a far safer place if people would learn to be responsible for their own behavior, and for the governance of their societies, and for cooperation between their society and others.
Bin Laden and Pat Robertson are the monsters that we should teach our children to fear.
Four replies, none of which address the argument.
Claim: Free markets make perfect sense! They are the most logical, sensible system.
Counterclaim: If you're on the top of the pile. Those being crushed on the bottom might reasonably feel otherwise.
Counter-counterclaim: [sarcasm] Yeah, because it isn't like everyone benefits from the freemarket system. Only the Waltons benefit from their stores. Not the millions of poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods.
Counter-counter-counterclaim: [paraphrased, for the benefit of those who missed the point] Some people can't even afford to shop at Wal-Mart.
Are you people unaware that people go hungry in the USA, which prides itself as being the richest, freest, fairest nation in the world?
Do you really think an unconstrained market would improve their lot?
Do you think they deserve to be crushed under the weight of the machine?
> Inflation actually solves several problems, at the expense of predicting an infinite number of unobservable phenomina
Is that really any different from our understanding of chemistry and gravity?
> Too bad there aren't any of them.
I wonder what would even qualify. Can it be a free market if the government (or some other organization) regulates coinage? Outlaws putting your thumb on the scale? Outlaws cartels?
OTOH, what if the government bugs out and companies do form cartels? Is it still a free market?
What's the definition of a free market? Where do we draw the lines on this kind of stuff?
> Does it make more sense to steal money from people who are earning it and give it to others?
a) I don't think he said or implied any such thing.
b) How much of the distribution of wealth in our society is the result of people "earning it", as opposed to some people getting opportunities that others don't? Has Bill Gates really worked any harder than the average sharecropper, or did his inherited wealth, lucky break, and stranglehold on the market give him a wee bit of a leg up?
> > Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.
> I don't get this. Maybe a Physics geek can clue me in. Why would we expect to see different temperatures? If the big bang exploded in a completely uniform way, I would expect the "shrapnel" to behave in a completely uniform way in every direction. What exactly would cause one direction to be hotter than another direction?
AIUI, the distribution of the CMB radiation is a reflection - literally - of the distribution of matter in the universe when things cooled down enough for the universe at large to be transparent to radiation.
If the universe had been perfectly isotropic at that time, then the radiation would in fact be isotropic as well. But then we'd have trouble explaining the clumpy distribution of matter. But matter is clumpy, and the CMB ratiation is anisotropic, so we feel safe in concluding that the initial universe was not.
Then the question becomes, why is it exactly this anisotropic. Apparently our best model of the big bang says that the CMB should be somewhat more anisotropic than it is, and inflation solves the problem neatly.
When I first heard about it I thought it reeked of epicycles (for fitting observations to an arbitrary theory), but from what I've read the inflation hypothesis explains a lot more stuff than just the CMB radiation anisotropy, so it's in good graces with most of the cosmology community.
> Of course some people say that there would be no innovation without patents... I contend that such an assertion is not true, and that the lack of artificial government granted monopolies (patents) would result in a constant "arms race" situation where companies would be forced to innovate constantly or die.
The US drug companies are always on television telling you how important their profits are to continued research, but outside observers say they spend 10x as much on advertising as they do on research.
> NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.
How, precisely, does the existence of methane around Titan validate the claim?
> It seems that our government is preparing to build reactors again, as the current batch are reaching end of life. I feel rather ashamed to be in the generation that saw what a f**king mess we made of things, and then decided to go do some more. God help the next generation.
Nuclear reactors are hardly the only power generation method that we've made a f**king mess of.
> Yes. In fact, depending on where you are today, it's colder or warmer, wetter or dryer, brighter or darker, calmer or stormier than normal. Some places are even foggy. It's all evidence of climate change.
Even a Slashdotter should be able to understand that "global warming" means "more thermal energy in the atmosphere".
Where the logic leads from there, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
> There was some evidence that acoustically-driven cavitation could produce temperatures high enough to result in fusion-generated neutrons.
FWIW, we've known for decades that collapsing bubbles can generate extremely high temperatures, though I think attempts to get fusion out of it are just a few years old.
> However, in terms of the driving physics, this is hot fusion: a very small volume of material may be heated to extremely high temperatures for a very short time, resulting in a tiny amount of fusion occuring.
Yes, IMO these researchers should emphasize that in order to distinguish themselves from the CNF crowd. I occasionally see claims of "See, CNF was right all along", based on reports of sonofusion results.
> So while it is not impossible that one day we'll all drive cars powered by sonofusion, I don't think anyone working in the field is suggesting that.
More likely you'll have a tank the size of your house to power your toaster.
> Now think about big mammals. Imagine the size of the heart that would be needed to pump blood against gravity into King Kong's brain. Imagine the muscles that would be needed to force enough air into the lungs. Gravity would collapse lungs over a certain size.
There are also issues of proportion. If you scale a creature up, mass goes up as the cube of the linear size, but the cross section of the leg bones goes up only as the square of the linear size. There's no way an ape could grow to that size and still be shaped like an ape.
> Yeah, because it isn't like everyone benefits from the freemarket system. Only the Waltons benefit from their stores. Not the millions of poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods.
Funny about that... The current minimum [wage] places a family below the federal poverty level, unable (as Wal-Mart's chairman put it) to shop even at Wal-Mart.
> Free markets make perfect sense! They are the most logical, sensible system.
If you're on the top of the pile. Those being crushed on the bottom might reasonably feel otherwise.
> 2 The horizon problem
> This "horizon problem" is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. "Inflation", for example.
What is "wild" about inflation? Our prior experience with examination of the universe on the largest and smallest scales should warn us to expect the unexpected.
> So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another.
If he would take the time to read up on the topic, he would find that inflation actually solves several problems.
> 4 Belfast homeopathy results
6 Viking's methane
7 Tetraneutrons
11 The Wow signal
Get back to us when you've got more than a single example of the purported anomaly.
> 8 The Pioneer anomaly
FWIW, someone suggested last year that we may be able to winnow the proposed explanations, because they all predict different directions of the anomaly.
> 9 Dark energy
> IT IS one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics.
Why is this embarassing?
Does that have any bearing on the science of the issue?
> 12 Not-so-constant constants
Yawn.
> 13 Cold fusion
Giggle.
Is New Scientist trying to move in on the supermarket tabloid market?
> Smoke me a kipper...
Whatta guy!
One of the very best episodes, IMO.
> Only number 7?
It would have done better, if not for the high-profile competition from Intelligentdesignia.
> There seems to be a first fix.
By Tuesday we'll probably be getting e-mail trojans claiming to be a fix.
> I'm impressed at the timing on this one -- it hits during the slowest time of the year.
Yeah, I know of at least one security manager who had to interrupt whatever they do on New Year's eve to send us an e-mail warning about it.
I wonder how many more there were, all around the world?
> Windows remains because for the stuff I do with my computer and the expectations I place upon it
If people would aim their expectations at their software vendors rather than their computers, that problem would go away.
> At least these attacks do require user interaction
Oh, that's a relief.
Now my clock is 121 seconds off, instead of just 120.
Thank goodness I didn't bother setting the VCR clock after the last thunderstorm.
> Why would you put war on terror in quotes as if there isn't one?
He probably wonders why we're shooting people in Iraq while Osama Bin Laden vacations in Pakistan.