I'm not saying researching the possibility that universal constants are not constant is bollocks, though I'd consider it too speculative for science. But once one starts taking an open environment 'dirty' testcase where the ratio 235/238 is different from the sample nextdoor as a clue for variable universal constants, then one is really in the middle of bollocks territory.
also to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years since the reactor switched off.
What bollocks. I think the actual question to ask is how it's possible to create the conditions for an very large (the size of the mine)and extremely low density (the concentration of natural ore) nuclear reactor.
In the days the preference for civilian reactors was to develop further along the design of the compact high density submarine reactors. The nuclear industry never got over that. There are prototypes of large reactors with much lower power density. It's a natural question to ask how low enrichment and low density one can go.
I think so too. I like to compare physics breakthroughs with earthquakes. A century ago we were in a very active area: decent chance for big earthquakes. Now things have calmed down. Plenty of small earthquakes.Large earthquakes have not become impossible but are very much rarer. Since the 'fundamental laws' have something special it does feel like the end of an era.
But meanwhile there are other scientific areas that are active and we gradually we'll be moving more and more into areas where we're making and inventing things more than discovering them.
I didn't say there was a signed treaty about NATO expansion. This new article from the Atlantic looks like a fair primer. http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
The thing is, your position is that since Russia is not legitimate they don't have legitimate concerns, therefore, whenever they push back it's for no good reason at all. My position is slightly different. Let's take the ultimate hellhole North Korea: my take is that their aggressive posturing is not only for internal use. It's also based on legitimate concerns about US/South Korean aggressive posturing. In the case of Russia, there's quite a difference between 'owning' the ex-soviet states and having legitimate concerns about NATO creeping up to them. The US has an official policy that if anyone tries something like that in South America, they've got war on their hands. So in part the conflict comes down to this: is the US going to recognize that Russia has legitimate security concerns or not? I tend towards recognizing those concerns. It doesn't mean one has to be nice about it though.
It's reasonable to point out the importance of the EU but the US is a major actor and is I think a larger worry for Russia. It was a core part of the agreement when the USSR was disbanded that NATO would not expand in its former client states. Which NATO promptly disregarded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... Nato is now working very hard to enroll the rest of the countries,hence the (bullshit)scare stories about russian expansionism. Russia isn't trying to expand , they're trying to save what's left.
Also the US was -against EU wishes- an active instigator in making the revolution what it was and in getting it accepted afterwards. Not an obvious thing when a democratically elected president is ousted.
Well, at least Stradivarius is as good as a top quality modern violin. Maybe they don't consider the Stradivarius as better. It could be something similar to a fancy dress: adding festivity and status. It can be the feeling that you're just playing with something very rare that used to be the top. And sometimes people just want the opportunity to find out if there is something special to a legendary instrument.
Sometimes period instruments and associated techniques add authenticity. I know that there used to be a technique with the bow in cello playing that was very different. I don't know if that's the case for violins.
In Joe Haldeman's SF novel 'Buying Time'(previously called 'The Long Habit of Living') there's a drug called zombie with the effect of rendering a person catatonic while speeding up their perception of time a thousandfold. So in effect while people are incapacitated for a few days, it feels like 20 years. And some can handle it and some can't. Good read.
I mention that because it fits Snowdens description of himself (if I remember correctly). Hence the reflex reaction to get rid anyone who shares some attributes with Snowden.
That much is a serious speculation. As for a discussion on the gap between libertarians and more 'core' conservatives, I would be opiniated and possibly boring.
- get rid of as many sysadmins as possible - screen sysadmins for libertarian tendencies and for caring too much about the constitution - make sure information is less widely accessible - increase monitoring of everyone who accesses information - prepare to make a few token concessions for public consumption.. but, but.. we sort of hoped you'd cut back on the surveillance schemes! You know, mend your ways? Do what? Hm no, we didn't think of that. Why would we have to do that then ?
Maybe he anticipated how they would try to play the game?
I don't think that's the explanation. He's been trying to play things pretty straight. He's said before that he's used internal channels and now he's only being more explicit. There's also a downside into dragging in other people. They didn't want to stick their necks out , certainly not if they predicted -rightly- a serious backlash. This is normal-person-behavior. It's 'not daring', and that's very different from 'not caring'. So why should he shine the spotlight on them unless there's a very good reason?
one of many indeed. I'm sure that quote from around 1920 has been repeated endlessly. Einstein's support for Israel is the default assumption. That's what everyone takes as a given. And it's heavily biased. The Jerome book has other quotes as well, and gives a better picture of how his positions and opinions evolved over time.
He was firmly opposed to the non-deterministic interpretation of QM, in the sense that he believed a really fundamental theory should be deterministic. He didn't doubt the predictive power of the theory. I think it's worthwile to make that distinction.
I doubt if Einstein would have called himself anti-zionist because the meaning of zionism was a bit wider in those days. It's just that his strain of zionism has very little relation to Israel as we know it because he was not a nationalist and certainly not in favor of an ethnocracy. But I think you could say he was a cultural zionist.
This works both ways. I've had some experience with intelligent people trying their best to convert me to homeopathy and to astrology - in vain - and in both cases there's a family of practices and a hierarchy. The top of the hierarchy has absolute disdain for those at the bottom. Newspapers are at the bottom. Any serious astrologist will regard the stuff in newspapers as bollocks. At the same time the serious astrologist will easily dismiss people who associate newspaper astrology with real astrology because clearly these are people who don't know what they're talking about.
The 'serious' guys have their own strict procedures that gives it all a more scientific feel. It feels so much better if you start with actual calculations from the ephemerides. I've known a physicist who strongly believed in astrology.
The serious homeopathy of course works with absurd dilutions prepared following strict procedures. The homeopaths attract many well educated medical practitioners who use complex anamnesis/diagnostics routines close to the procedures used in allopathy. There's a lot of mouth to mouth reputation building causing people to distinguish between the crackpots and the serious homeopaths. Again, and even more than with astrology, this is not just a playground for the intellectually challenged..
There's one thing to take away from all this, and that's that once you allow yourself to be submersed in pseudosciences, it'll turn out to be a lot more convincing than you expected. I wouldn't trust too many people to be up to it. A lot less than the 42% in the article (100% - 58% of the 18-24 year old in this case). More like less than 10%.
If at some point we have a situation that the five mainstream papers that wikileaks has worked with all destroy the data, and no other organisation wants to touch it, then you have a breakdown of the system and you can start thinking about releasing the material after vetting it yourself.
(beter late than never) Well I don't agree. The idea of unredacted bulk leaking is a lot more radical - a lot more fringe - then that of a specialized node for whistleblowers. That means it alienates a lot of people who would have been on board with the wikileaks program. So it's not just a matter of protecting yourself against false accusations.
Personally I also think it's based on misunderstandings of how mainstream media work. The important part about the data is the interpretation. People don't (or very rarely) go to the source, they read the interpretation of the source. And mainstream media have earned themselves a bad reputation about interpretation, not so much about hiding data. You can always do interpretation in parallel.
They've also dropped the ball concerning going hunting for the data, lack of interest in it, which I think has been a motivation for starting wikileaks. But once the data is there the added value of publishing the data in parallel is minimal, while the loss of support is huge. Apart from the actual damage that is being done.
You make it sound like journalistic intermediaries are untouchable.
Wikileaks can go to multiple journalists to avoid whatever problems with individual journalists/or papers, and they do. The main problem I see with journalists is the 'mainstream journalism' problems that Chomsky described. A kind of conformism that is timid , compliant, and narrowminded, but not really coerced. They'll publish, but will draw weak conclusions and miss the point.
I think Greenwald's ideas are actually pretty close to Chomsky on this and I wonder what he'd have to say about Assange wanting to publish on his own.
That is not the point. The journalist does his/her job and wikileaks does its job: the leaking business. This way each has a responsibility and an accountability and there isn't much to criticize about Wikileaks. Now I think Assange has valid criticism about mainstream journalism but when he starts to take on the journalist's job then he exposes himself and wikileaks to a whole range of criticism , from irresponsible journalism to unguided missile. That's bad policy.
You're right to point out that Assange wanted to skip the journalist in the middle. I think he did release some documents that way though I'd have to look it up. But the big issues were redacted.
Anyway, I think it was a bad idea. He should have focused on his specialty and stayed out of the journalism business.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not saying researching the possibility that universal constants are not constant is bollocks, though I'd consider it too speculative for science. But once one starts taking an open environment 'dirty' testcase where the ratio 235/238 is different from the sample nextdoor as a clue for variable universal constants, then one is really in the middle of bollocks territory.
What bollocks. I think the actual question to ask is how it's possible to create the conditions for an very large (the size of the mine)and extremely low density (the concentration of natural ore) nuclear reactor.
In the days the preference for civilian reactors was to develop further along the design of the compact high density submarine reactors. The nuclear industry never got over that. There are prototypes of large reactors with much lower power density. It's a natural question to ask how low enrichment and low density one can go.
I think so too. I like to compare physics breakthroughs with earthquakes. A century ago we were in a very active area: decent chance for big earthquakes. Now things have calmed down. Plenty of small earthquakes.Large earthquakes have not become impossible but are very much rarer. Since the 'fundamental laws' have something special it does feel like the end of an era.
But meanwhile there are other scientific areas that are active and we gradually we'll be moving more and more into areas where we're making and inventing things more than discovering them.
I didn't say there was a signed treaty about NATO expansion. This new article from the Atlantic looks like a fair primer.
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
The thing is, your position is that since Russia is not legitimate they don't have legitimate concerns, therefore, whenever they push back it's for no good reason at all. My position is slightly different. Let's take the ultimate hellhole North Korea: my take is that their aggressive posturing is not only for internal use. It's also based on legitimate concerns about US/South Korean aggressive posturing.
In the case of Russia, there's quite a difference between 'owning' the ex-soviet states and having legitimate concerns about NATO creeping up to them. The US has an official policy that if anyone tries something like that in South America, they've got war on their hands. So in part the conflict comes down to this: is the US going to recognize that Russia has legitimate security concerns or not? I tend towards recognizing those concerns. It doesn't mean one has to be nice about it though.
It's reasonable to point out the importance of the EU but the US is a major actor and is I think a larger worry for Russia. It was a core part of the agreement when the USSR was disbanded that NATO would not expand in its former client states. Which NATO promptly disregarded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Nato is now working very hard to enroll the rest of the countries,hence the (bullshit)scare stories about russian expansionism. Russia isn't trying to expand , they're trying to save what's left.
Also the US was -against EU wishes- an active instigator in making the revolution what it was and in getting it accepted afterwards. Not an obvious thing when a democratically elected president is ousted.
Well, at least Stradivarius is as good as a top quality modern violin. Maybe they don't consider the Stradivarius as better. It could be something similar to a fancy dress: adding festivity and status. It can be the feeling that you're just playing with something very rare that used to be the top. And sometimes people just want the opportunity to find out if there is something special to a legendary instrument.
Sometimes period instruments and associated techniques add authenticity. I know that there used to be a technique with the bow in cello playing that was very different. I don't know if that's the case for violins.
I think Glenn Greenwald sees benefit to the approach of piecemeal releasing the Snowden files . Sensitizing rather than desensitizing.
Magnesium club?
Beefheart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
In Joe Haldeman's SF novel 'Buying Time'(previously called 'The Long Habit of Living')
there's a drug called zombie with the effect of rendering a person catatonic while speeding up their perception of time a thousandfold.
So in effect while people are incapacitated for a few days, it feels like 20 years. And some can handle it and some can't.
Good read.
I mention that because it fits Snowdens description of himself (if I remember correctly). Hence the reflex reaction to get rid anyone who shares some attributes with Snowden.
That much is a serious speculation. As for a discussion on the gap between libertarians and more 'core' conservatives, I would be opiniated and possibly boring.
- get rid of as many sysadmins as possible .. but, but.. we sort of hoped you'd cut back on the surveillance schemes! You know, mend your ways?
- screen sysadmins for libertarian tendencies and for caring too much about the constitution
- make sure information is less widely accessible
- increase monitoring of everyone who accesses information
- prepare to make a few token concessions for public consumption
Do what? Hm no, we didn't think of that. Why would we have to do that then ?
I don't think that's the explanation. He's been trying to play things pretty straight. He's said before that he's used internal channels and now he's only being more explicit. There's also a downside into dragging in other people. They didn't want to stick their necks out , certainly not if they predicted -rightly- a serious backlash. This is normal-person-behavior. It's 'not daring', and that's very different from 'not caring'.
So why should he shine the spotlight on them unless there's a very good reason?
That is interesting. Not that I'm a potential buyer but I still would like to hear how you ended up with a spare bridge on your hands :)
one of many indeed. I'm sure that quote from around 1920 has been repeated endlessly. Einstein's support for Israel is the default assumption. That's what everyone takes as a given. And it's heavily biased. The Jerome book has other quotes as well, and gives a better picture of how his positions and opinions evolved over time.
Maybe you should read Jerome's book then.
http://www.amazon.com/Einstein...
He was firmly opposed to the non-deterministic interpretation of QM, in the sense that he believed a really fundamental theory should be deterministic. He didn't doubt the predictive power of the theory. I think it's worthwile to make that distinction.
I doubt if Einstein would have called himself anti-zionist because the meaning of zionism was a bit wider in those days. It's just that his strain of zionism has very little relation to Israel as we know it because he was not a nationalist and certainly not in favor of an ethnocracy.
But I think you could say he was a cultural zionist.
This works both ways. I've had some experience with intelligent people trying their best to convert me to homeopathy and to astrology - in vain - and in both cases there's a family of practices and a hierarchy. The top of the hierarchy has absolute disdain for those at the bottom. Newspapers are at the bottom. Any serious astrologist will regard the stuff in newspapers as bollocks. At the same time the serious astrologist will easily dismiss people who associate newspaper astrology with real astrology because clearly these are people who don't know what they're talking about.
The 'serious' guys have their own strict procedures that gives it all a more scientific feel. It feels so much better if you start with actual calculations from the ephemerides. I've known a physicist who strongly believed in astrology.
The serious homeopathy of course works with absurd dilutions prepared following strict procedures.
The homeopaths attract many well educated medical practitioners who use complex anamnesis/diagnostics routines close to the procedures used in allopathy. There's a lot of mouth to mouth reputation building causing people to distinguish between the crackpots and the serious homeopaths. Again, and even more than with astrology, this is not just a playground for the intellectually challenged..
There's one thing to take away from all this, and that's that once you allow yourself to be submersed in pseudosciences, it'll turn out to be a lot more convincing than you expected. I wouldn't trust too many people to be up to it. A lot less than the 42% in the article (100% - 58% of the 18-24 year old in this case). More like less than 10%.
I've done it a few times. I'm really tough :)
Semantics. It hasn't broken down enough to justify going all out.
If at some point we have a situation that the five mainstream papers that wikileaks has worked with all destroy the data, and no other organisation wants to touch it, then you have a breakdown of the system and you can start thinking about releasing the material after vetting it yourself.
(beter late than never) Well I don't agree. The idea of unredacted bulk leaking is a lot more radical - a lot more fringe - then that of a specialized node for whistleblowers. That means it alienates a lot of people who would have been on board with the wikileaks program. So it's not just a matter of protecting yourself against false accusations.
Personally I also think it's based on misunderstandings of how mainstream media work. The important part about the data is the interpretation. People don't (or very rarely) go to the source, they read the interpretation of the source. And mainstream media have earned themselves a bad reputation about interpretation, not so much about hiding data. You can always do interpretation in parallel.
They've also dropped the ball concerning going hunting for the data, lack of interest in it, which I think has been a motivation for starting wikileaks. But once the data is there the added value of publishing the data in parallel is minimal, while the loss of support is huge. Apart from the actual damage that is being done.
Wikileaks can go to multiple journalists to avoid whatever problems with individual journalists/or papers, and they do. The main problem I see with journalists is the 'mainstream journalism' problems that Chomsky described. A kind of conformism that is timid , compliant, and narrowminded, but not really coerced. They'll publish, but will draw weak conclusions and miss the point.
I think Greenwald's ideas are actually pretty close to Chomsky on this and I wonder what he'd have to say about Assange wanting to publish on his own.
That is not the point. The journalist does his/her job and wikileaks does its job: the leaking business. This way each has a responsibility and an accountability and there isn't much to criticize about Wikileaks. Now I think Assange has valid criticism about mainstream journalism but when he starts to take on the journalist's job then he exposes himself and wikileaks to a whole range of criticism , from irresponsible journalism to unguided missile. That's bad policy.
You're right to point out that Assange wanted to skip the journalist in the middle. I think he did release some documents that way though I'd have to look it up. But the big issues were redacted.
Anyway, I think it was a bad idea. He should have focused on his specialty and stayed out of the journalism business.