"we might as well get something out of it, like a crutch for our limping space program."
Sure, crutches can help a person get around when they are in the early stages of healing from an injury. But as any physical therapist will tell you, there comes a point when reliance on crutches prevents further recovery/development. Government-sponsored corporate welfare doled out to the large defense contractors has been a crutch in the aerospace industry for the last 30 years.
It's well past time to get rid of the crutch and spur some real growth. I'm more hopeful now than I've been in years, with the involvement of successful individuals like Elon Musk (Paypal founder), Robert Bigelow (Budget Suites), and Burt Routan (many successful aircraft designs).
IIRC, every time we buy blank CDs (DVDs too?), we pay a hidden fee that is collected by the government to offset artists losses to music piracy. Even if you never buy from the big labels, you are still affected by the laws they get congress to pass.
By the way, has anyone seen or heard of an artist actually getting a check from these fees? It seems to me that small-time artists should be just as entitled as those who signed with members of the RIAA.
If you get a chance, check out some of the cardiac MRI applications. I could not believe the stuff they could do like ejection fraction calculations, blood vessel, infarction mapping, movies of a beating heart showing how the blood flows through it and more. My MRI experience is with Philips, but I understand that GE and Siemens also have cardiac functions available.
FYI, major pacemaker/defibulator companies are also starting to come out with MRI safe devices and even testing some already implanted models so the people that really need an MRI can have one (I've done some of the tests)-this should help you sometimes especially in the ER. Not to mention that there isn't any radiation and most scans don't require a contrast agent (a significant number of people have severe reactions to Xray contrast agents).
It's great to see an MD on/. I'd trust a doctor more who keeps up on technology just because they seem more likely to know what new techniques and treatments are coming out that are heavy on the tech side.
I used to work at a medical device company testing their products for MRI safety. As such, I got to run an MRI for 9 months and see lots of unbelievable pictures. As a doctor, do you prefer viewing Xrays (digital or otherwise) or MRI?
Put enough regolith over your head and you'll be just as safe as you are on earth. The downside is, who wants to live indoors for the rest of their life? I'd love to go to space and live there, but a person needs enough room to roam so they don't get too cramped. But then again, I hear some underground mines can get to be pretty big. There was also talk at one time of setting off a nuke under the surface of the moon to form a large cave; if the Apollo astronauts would have set one off, the radiation level might have been tollerable by now...
There is not a US ban on funding for stem cell research.
There is a US ban on funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Like many other people, I have no problem with adult stem cell therapy. Cloning and embryonic stem cell research are a related, but separate issue. Most of those who are against cloning and embrionic stem cell research and therapy have no issues with using adult stem cells for therapy. The sticking point in the stem cell debate is what one side defines as a piece of tissue (fit for any use under the sun), the other side defines as a person. Those that think of embryos as people find the use of embryonic stem cells as discusting as a hypothetical situtation where mentally disabled people are used as sources of organs for the more able-minded.
Unfortunately, those who phrase the stem cell debate sometimes ignore the opportunities that already exist for research, such as adult stem cells. They want to force a situtation which allows them to perform research that others equate with murder. So we are stuck with an argument between one group trying to prevent what they see as murder and another group that either believes it is not a person or that the value of one person is more than that of another.
The above paragraphs are factually correct, regardless of one's opinion on stem cell research. No matter what your feelings are on the subject, twisting the facts by ommitting words can significantly change the meaning of a sentence and make it factually incorrect. Once a person does that, they no longer have the facts on their side.
Most people working with embryonic stem cells are aware of problems such as tumours developing when they are injected into a patients and anti-rejection therapies that must be followed. Why not spend that same effort using a less-controversial source of stem cells? Some argue that we have an obligation to try every path that is open to us, but when we don't have enough resources to exhaust the paths we have, why do we need to travel down the more contentious paths?
Disclaimer: I am a pro-life Catholic. That said, I am also a scientist and engineer who has no problem with viewing the biblical creation account as an extremely simplified way to explain the origins of life, the universe and everything to a group of scientifically primitive sheep-herders.
But what does Terri Shiavo have to do with being pro-science? It should be obvious what my feeling are about her final days, but that whole issue was an ethical one, not scientific. Lumping "quality of life" ethics that involves terminating unwanted pregnancies, terminally ill people, etc. together with being "pro-science" makes as much sense as declaring that the sun revolves around the earth!
I'm all for ethics in science, but lets be clear on what it means to be "pro-science". I issues with embrionic stem cell research, but I can understand why some people think my reservations "impede" science. However, end-of-life issues have nothing to do with being pro (or anti) science.
Have any links? Even if they just sell to contractors, it isn't all that difficult to become a contractor. Lots of people have done it just to build their own home.
I can understand wanting a short refuel time if on the road. But requiring a 5 minute recharge on an electric vehicle wouldn't be required very often. Assuming that most daily round trips are under 100 miles and most one way trips (e.g. traveling somewhere for the weekend) have recharge capablity at both ends, there are usually several hours of downtime between trips of significant length.
The 5 minute charge seems to just be a requirement left over from mandatory trips to the gas station. Most people, I think, would be Ok with 4.5 hours-just plug it in when you get home and it is ready for use in the morning. I'd even be willing to go with a shorter range than the standard 300+ miles per tank (e.g. 100 miles for a commuting-only vehicle).
. We were created as a nation of the free, and that is what the framers had in mind; a philosophy of government that explicitly states that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
A couple of points:
Although your quote does come from the origins of our country, it actually comes from the declaration independence and refers to the rights of the governed to form their own government when their previous government no longer carries out its duties.
Your quote is also interesting, in light of the fact that the US constitution, written 11 years after the Declaration of Independence, was written by a group which included some of the original signers. However, they saw fit to include in the Constitution itself text that made slavery legal and counted slaves as worth 3/5ths of a person when determining numbers for forming the house of representatives.
Just about any person today would see the inherent contradiction in that part of the constitution. My original point was, if the founders saw fit to make that kind of a compromise balancing individual rights and government, what compromise would they strike in today's world?
Despite all of our precautions, and even if we give up all of our freedoms to live in a police state, someone can still get through if they are determined enough.
There is a way to prevent those types of attacks, and it scares the crap out of me. Look at history, and you will see that the Romans took care of this time and again. However, the Romans didn't care so much for civil rights of its own citizens sometimes, much less that of their enemies. When a realm caused to much trouble, such as Palestine, the Romans destroyed it so throughly that nobody could live there for years. They actually _plowed_ Jerusalem under after a rebelion was crushed and spread salt on the fields to prevent anything from growing. Then they took the survivors (who didn't take part of the fighting) and they forcibly removed and sent them to the far ends of the empire. Cities that did rebel were wiped out completely, even babies.
Some might say almost everyone in this day and would never do that. Unfortunately, if some terrorists or a renegade country starts a nuke exchange, all it takes is one person to press a button to do the same-eliminate a city, including babies, and ensure that nobody can live there for a long time.
The alternative? Well, that's why we're having this converstion. Some say be very vigilant, even if it means keeping tabs on everyone. Does it make me uncomfortable? Sometimes. Is there a chance for abuse of power and people getting mistreated, hurt or killed? Always. Should we do it? The answer is like going to war-only when necessary.
What do you suppose the writers of the constitution would put to ink if they were writing their first draft today? Two hundred years ago, they also had terrorism, but some were themselves considered by many to be the terrorists; it is not widely known that the revolutionaries often attacked loyalist neighbors or used fear tactics to get them to move to Canada. Some of the signers the constitution would probably even be considered war criminals by today's standards (including our first president due to actions performed during the French & Indian war in service to the crown).
But, despite the violent times our country was born in, they didn't have liabilities like extremely efficient transportation and communication systems or weapons of mass destruction. I don't know how the right to bear arms would have been drafted if the writers of the constitution wrote for today's world, nor how the search & siesure clause would be different. I do know that we often times have defacto freedoms greater than what the founders envisioned because advances in technology and infrastructure have given me the freedom to call my parent who live 200 miles away or go visit them and return home within a single day. Granted, this new freedom isn't quite the same as freedom of speach, but it is no less a freedom available to me.
Trying to shoehorn laws written more than 200 years ago to apply to everything is sortof like trying to make DOS 2.0 the underpinings of the Internet.
"Alright everybody! You all heard last month about how those bank thieves broke the encryption on the 'CRQ 3459 ID chips. Microsoft is releasing pached rfids next month and we made it on their beta list.
"Now I now what we all went through with the re-chipping last November after the SqueezeMe worm wiped out half of your 'CRQ 3458's. (By the way, I spoke to Bob's wife yesterday and she he's had a relapse from his botched replacement; keep praying for them.) Anyway, HQ said the new vendor has guaranteed there won't be any repeats this time.
"The new guys supposedly have a new retrieval method that doesn't leave as big of a scar as their competitor and they even have a die option for making the incision look like a mole..."
Or, "the governement will require proper paperwork and identificaton to be on your person or immediately accessible to present if stopped on a public road, enter government buildings, cross national boarders, check out library books..."
Come on, people. Sometimes getting new freedoms (freedom to travel) or abilities (ability to travel accross the country in hours) means coffing up some old rights or freedoms. "Nothing in life is free".
So you're saying the government has a mind of its own? What, are our congress critters and armies of beurocrats just neurons in a giant, mother brain?
All it takes is strong leadership for issues like this...but then again, who will really care enought to say no? If people already don't care enough to ensure they have the right to reject something _really_ invasive, like innoculations, why would they care about a bead stuck in their forearm? In fact, how many would say something like, "Great! Now I can't lose my driver's license!"
Now let's say a person performed a real honest to god miracle. Like concentrating hard enough and causing some logs to burst into flame. A reductionist says, "Wow, there is probably some direct connection between all forms of matter such that a human can manipulate matter outside of their own body. Maybe I'll write my physics Ph.D exploring this concept."
It is interesting how when people put the flame wars aside and start constructing logical arguments, well-thought out religion and science have a lot in common. I say well-thought out because some denominations, such as Catholicism, use logical reasoning to construct their belief structure. At the core of this structure is a set of observations and the belief structure must be internally consistant. Almost 2000 years of some of the finest thinkers in the world has found the Catholic and Orthodox churches in a position such that, their belief structures are quite consistent within itself and with its core tenents, arguably more-so than some branches of main-stream science.
Of course both the realms of science and religion has people that are adherants to ideas with inherent flaws, although sometimes they are merely elaborate belief structures derived (sometimes loosely) from some untestable tenents. But I don't think the value of a whole catagory of thought such as science or religion should be judged based on the ravings of a few fringe individuals or adherents who misapply facts and reason.
One of the main reasons why I am still a Roman Catholic is that I haven't been able to find any cases where, at its heart, there are inherent conflicts within church doctrine. In this regard, the largest distinction between it and main-stream science is not the validity of its reasoning, but the core tenents themselves.
I understand your desire as a reductionist to want everything to be testable; unfortunately, nothing in the physical world really is testable. All the observations we make ultimately rely on ours senses, including those relayed to us by others.
Essentially the belief structure of an atheist who understands and follows science is that they believe the majority of the knowledge they accumulate from their senses, and it all has to fit together. Any new experiences (such as magnetism being introduced to a child) often result in a sense of wonder and curiosity about how it "works".
My argument is that most people of a "rational" religion have the same internalized values. The difference in some regard is to where the reduction stops. In some ways, it boils down to intent. If my son asks me why a program I write performs a given task, there are two ways to answer his question. One is by describing things such as programming, operating systems, computer hardware, electricity, etc. The other is to state my intent, i.e. I wanted the program to do what it does.
Which is the better answer? It depends on whether he cared about what I wanted or if he just wanted to understand the mechanics of it. Could I change the mechanics of it? Sure, and then it would have required him to change his understanding of how the program worked.
Fundamentally, I believe the main difference between religion and science is about whether the question is being asked in a mechanical sense or in an intent sense. Miracles to me are sortof like my son witnessing a change in a program after he already understands what the program does. He can theoretically figure out _how_ the program changed, given the right tools and knowlege, but that would not answer _why_ it changed (something like the changing physical constants that started this discussion).
I could confound my son by temporarily changing the program to produce a change in its output, then changing the program back to its original state; even if he had the right tools to understand how the program worked, he would not be able to explain the deviation in output unless I told him or he witnessed the action. Even so, he would still not know _why_ the program was ch
Of course, as a mathematician I do my fair share of intellectual wanking, but it's funny how the objects I play with have a whole of a hell lot more revelance to the universe than theories about pink unicorns ever will.
Math has as much to do with science as philosophy does with theology. In both math and philosophy, one can define certain concepts and derive truths from them. However, since you are defining the concepts, you can't test whether they are true...they ARE true because they are defined that way. If you say 8+9 is 17, it's only true because you define the underlying concepts such that they are always true. However, if someone else is counting in hexidecimal, they'd say you are wrong-but they are defining the concepts diferently.
The real world is more messy than that. That's what this article was about-just when a group of people think they have part of the universe figured out, someone else comes up with a different measurement. Mathematicians never have that problem-everything can ultimately made black and white by defining and deriving. As long as someone else uses the same definitions in the realm of math, they will get the same answer as everyone else.
See, I look at genuine miracles as chances to explore in greater depth how the universe works.
That's what I'm suggesting you do-find a miracle that has had someone with a scientific background rule out the obvious stuff that remains inexplicable by accepted scientific theories. It seems to me that most "scientists" do one of two things when encountering something they can't explain: 1) ignore it and try not to think about it, usually alluding to some undiscovered principle at work; or 2) ridicule ideas outside the mainstream of science to draw attention away from problems with applying conventional wisdom There is of course the "non-scientific" theory-a non-human intelligence or other supernatural effect may be involved.
Sometimes people in math or the hard sciences forget about human intelligence: What is intelligence? How did it come into being? How is it that I think and have feelings if all that I am is a pile of chemical reactions? Why is it so hard to apply Occam's razor to these questions?
Does it really make sense to claim there is no possiblity of an intelligence having a hand in human development when humans have had a hand in the development of other organisms (genetic engineering)? What about artifical intelligence (remember, artificial means "made by man")? If our intelligence is being applied to creating new lifeforms, how much sense does it make to rule out the possibility that intelligence may have had a hand in creating other life forms?
What about the physical universe? Many people have created their own universe: everything from comic books to science fiction, movies and now computer games, human intelligence has created domains where universal rules apply and result in complex behavior. Computer games are one of my favorite examples; bots are programmed to follow certain rules in interacting with a well-ordered environment with a bit of randomness sometimes thrown in. However, human players can influence the bots environent in large and small ways. Is there any way that you can really rule out that you are not just a bot in someone else's video game?
"Absurd!", one might say. I say, prove that you are not. If the universe does in fact have laws and everything that happens is a result of those laws, how is that different than a computer program? The computer program and the computer it runs on is designed by intelligence.
"But the universe is too big, too complex to run on a computer!" So was computational fluid dynamics a few decades ago. Now scientists have even been able to model coliding black holes and molecular interactions-stuff of science _fiction_ 30 years ago, but reality today. So why insist on rulling out a hypothesis that the same thing happens on a much larger scale?
A parting question: if God doesn't exist, why do our suroundings sometimes respond to intelligence when we can't even explain how intelligence exists in the first place?
Every time MS comes out with a new version of Windows, lots of companies lag behind dropping their older versions until MS drops support. If Apple supports the API, they can keep using their Windows apps without being forced to go chasing after Vista when 2000/XP gets dropped.
In my own experience, I have seen and heard things that are not explicable according to the accepted understanding of the world. Taking some of that experience and extrapolating to the world around me convinces me that God does exist.
How is this different then the athiest contention that everything is explicable by science? The scientific method is invariably used such that a limited observation is made and a hypothesis is formed explaining how something works. After enough limitted observations are made to "confirm" the hypothesis, the scientific comunity "believes" that the hypothesis is correct and applies it to everything else as a "law". But we all know new findings are made that invalidate old "laws" (e.g. reletivity vs newtonian).
Miracles happen, and quite often they are easily accessible to others, should they choose to challenge themselves by going to observe. Obviously, there have been many shown to be fake and others that are ambiguous. Even the Catholic church doesn't take them lightly-when pronouncing a miricle as sanctioned by the Vatican, there is a lengthly review by "independent" investigators who start off by assuming that it is a hoax.
I believe science is merely a way of explaining how God makes part of His creation function consistantly. I don't understand why He chose to do make our universe this way, but the study of the way things work (my definition of science) makes it easier to use the world around us and to prepare for future events. In the strictest sense, I am a proponent of intellegent design, but it because I find no fundamental inconsistancy with science and my religion.
Science just helps us understand how He makes things works, just like Genesis explained how the world was made to a world filled largely by farmers and nomads who didn't have the benefit of an education that included the compiled results of thousands of years of observation and analysis.
I challenge you to seek out "miracles" that have been vetted by others and are still occuring (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibles). At the least, they will be a detective story you can run down and try to solve. Then again, you may find something a little harder to explain away...
Whoaah! Let me get my asbestos underpants on...OK, ready to go now.
This is sortof like the gun control debate. If you look at it with a fair eye, both sides have some good points and people still don't agree on where to draw the line. When looking at privacy issues, there are obviously good and bad things with more or less privacy. Yes, I know J. Edgar did some stuff I wouldn't want done to me, and I think piracy is blown out of proportion (Get real! Look at the origin of the word and compare the harm done with the original meaning compared to the new meaning). But just remember that if someone had been able to look at Zacharias Mousoui's labtop, 9/11 arguably could have been prevented.
I don't consider myself a privacy nut or a big-brother wannabe. I do think most of congress is clueless and generally makes laws reacting out of some sort of personal fear or to please a subset of their constituents/contributors. This is largely why I point out that it should be a moot point--I don't think congress actually has been granted the constitutional power to compel others to have a data retention policy. In my state (Minnesota), some pretty dumb laws get passed from time to time, but there is a better chance of getting things straightened out before they become the de-facto status quo in a state legislature than at the federal level.
Thanks for the wikipedia link; it shows what is possible, even if it isn't right. If the court was truly unbiased, I don't see how it could have decided that the way it did. They essentially deleted the word "interstate" from the constitution and expanded "commerce" to mean "any type of activity one could potentially pay for"!
This sucks. I hope as the membership of the court changes, it can start throwing out the bad (i.e. poorly argued/judged) cases.
If I write an email to my wife asking her to invite the neighbors over for dinner, how does that qualify as interstate commerce?
One could make the argument that if I buy a loaf of bread from a local bakery, that affects interstate commerce because the bakery might buy some of its ingredients from other states. However, if that logic was followed, the federal government would potentially be able to charge a sales tax on the purchase of my bread. Since they arn't allowed to do that, I thing the same principle could be applied to personal correspondence, just like they can't listen in on phone calls without a warrent unless one of the parties is _actually_ out of the country.
After thinking more about it, couldn't this be construed as unreasonable seizure(sp)? Essentially, they would be demanding that we hold on to something for them, even if we don't want to. One could say that if the government alreaddy exercises that much control over it, haven't they already seized it? It just happens to be locatd on your premises-you can't do anything with it that might damage _their_ data.
The constitution spells out pretty clearly that powers not specifically given to the federal government are reserved for the states. I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything in the US constitution about the power to compel people to not delete something. Even aside from the 5th amendment (right to not incrimate yourself), I think the founding fathers would agree that people have the right to throw away or destroy their personal correspondence (letters) if there isn't an active criminal investigation.
I do think a retention policy would be good for tracking down pedofiles/corrupt CEOs and the like. I just don't think the federal government actually has the authority to prevent anyone from deleting email (or just being lazy and not backing it up).
Can anyone point to something in the constitution that give the US government this power?
I am by no means denying how important Earth science is. But I do ask this: where would the Earth scienc community by if not for the engineering that was done earlier in the space race? Skylab was an offshoot of the Apollo programs (it was a Saturn upper stage with some extra hardware tacked on). Weather satellites use boosters, electronics, and comunication systems based on work done in other programs. All the curent large boosters (with the exception of Arien) are derived from rockets that were used for balistic missiles or support of manned spaceflight (sometimes both, as in the Jupiter/Redstone rockets).
All the above programs involved large engineering expenditures that were driven by a strongly motivated group with a clear vision: make x that does y. NASA is trying to find its way out of the state its in where it has too many priorities and not enough funds or freedom to do them all. I'm advocating pearing down the todo list to build the hardware first so that the proven hardware is available to other groups that are interested in using it. How many programs have been cancled or tremendously over budget due to new requirements that kept stacking up before the first version of hardware flew?
Your idea of having the world's biggest funder of science and most advanced scientifically country (the US) abandon an important branch of science like Earth science is at best glib, at worst foolish, short-sighted, and possibly malicious.
I assure you that I have no malicious intent. I tend to disagree about the short-sighted part; I am a firm believer in the "if you build it they will come" strategy. The American West was opened dramatically to development after transportation and communication infrastructure was put in place (multi-month trips by mules, ox carts and wagon trains gave way to multi-day trips by railroad; multi-day mail (when it finally arrived) via pony express and stage coach gave way to almost instantaneous telegraph). We've already done the Louis and Clark bit and even the mule trains in space. If we build the railroad and telegraph, the scientists can get orders of magnetude more data when they go along for the ride than if they each put together their own mule train.
Regarding passing science off to other countries, I have reservations about administrations that edit reports by government scientists to downplay or downright change the meaning. I think its possible that those elements of the administration that put local or business concerns above scientific integrety might not be as damaging if they didn't have any source material to warp in the first place. Thats why I said leave the science to other countries.
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Sure, crutches can help a person get around when they are in the early stages of healing from an injury. But as any physical therapist will tell you, there comes a point when reliance on crutches prevents further recovery/development. Government-sponsored corporate welfare doled out to the large defense contractors has been a crutch in the aerospace industry for the last 30 years.
It's well past time to get rid of the crutch and spur some real growth. I'm more hopeful now than I've been in years, with the involvement of successful individuals like Elon Musk (Paypal founder), Robert Bigelow (Budget Suites), and Burt Routan (many successful aircraft designs).
IIRC, every time we buy blank CDs (DVDs too?), we pay a hidden fee that is collected by the government to offset artists losses to music piracy. Even if you never buy from the big labels, you are still affected by the laws they get congress to pass.
By the way, has anyone seen or heard of an artist actually getting a check from these fees? It seems to me that small-time artists should be just as entitled as those who signed with members of the RIAA.
FYI, major pacemaker/defibulator companies are also starting to come out with MRI safe devices and even testing some already implanted models so the people that really need an MRI can have one (I've done some of the tests)-this should help you sometimes especially in the ER. Not to mention that there isn't any radiation and most scans don't require a contrast agent (a significant number of people have severe reactions to Xray contrast agents).
It's great to see an MD on /. I'd trust a doctor more who keeps up on technology just because they seem more likely to know what new techniques and treatments are coming out that are heavy on the tech side.
I used to work at a medical device company testing their products for MRI safety. As such, I got to run an MRI for 9 months and see lots of unbelievable pictures. As a doctor, do you prefer viewing Xrays (digital or otherwise) or MRI?
There is a US ban on funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Like many other people, I have no problem with adult stem cell therapy. Cloning and embryonic stem cell research are a related, but separate issue. Most of those who are against cloning and embrionic stem cell research and therapy have no issues with using adult stem cells for therapy. The sticking point in the stem cell debate is what one side defines as a piece of tissue (fit for any use under the sun), the other side defines as a person. Those that think of embryos as people find the use of embryonic stem cells as discusting as a hypothetical situtation where mentally disabled people are used as sources of organs for the more able-minded.
Unfortunately, those who phrase the stem cell debate sometimes ignore the opportunities that already exist for research, such as adult stem cells. They want to force a situtation which allows them to perform research that others equate with murder. So we are stuck with an argument between one group trying to prevent what they see as murder and another group that either believes it is not a person or that the value of one person is more than that of another.
The above paragraphs are factually correct, regardless of one's opinion on stem cell research. No matter what your feelings are on the subject, twisting the facts by ommitting words can significantly change the meaning of a sentence and make it factually incorrect. Once a person does that, they no longer have the facts on their side.
Most people working with embryonic stem cells are aware of problems such as tumours developing when they are injected into a patients and anti-rejection therapies that must be followed. Why not spend that same effort using a less-controversial source of stem cells? Some argue that we have an obligation to try every path that is open to us, but when we don't have enough resources to exhaust the paths we have, why do we need to travel down the more contentious paths?
But what does Terri Shiavo have to do with being pro-science? It should be obvious what my feeling are about her final days, but that whole issue was an ethical one, not scientific. Lumping "quality of life" ethics that involves terminating unwanted pregnancies, terminally ill people, etc. together with being "pro-science" makes as much sense as declaring that the sun revolves around the earth!
I'm all for ethics in science, but lets be clear on what it means to be "pro-science". I issues with embrionic stem cell research, but I can understand why some people think my reservations "impede" science. However, end-of-life issues have nothing to do with being pro (or anti) science.
Have any links? Even if they just sell to contractors, it isn't all that difficult to become a contractor. Lots of people have done it just to build their own home.
The 5 minute charge seems to just be a requirement left over from mandatory trips to the gas station. Most people, I think, would be Ok with 4.5 hours-just plug it in when you get home and it is ready for use in the morning. I'd even be willing to go with a shorter range than the standard 300+ miles per tank (e.g. 100 miles for a commuting-only vehicle).
A couple of points:
Although your quote does come from the origins of our country, it actually comes from the declaration independence and refers to the rights of the governed to form their own government when their previous government no longer carries out its duties.
Your quote is also interesting, in light of the fact that the US constitution, written 11 years after the Declaration of Independence, was written by a group which included some of the original signers. However, they saw fit to include in the Constitution itself text that made slavery legal and counted slaves as worth 3/5ths of a person when determining numbers for forming the house of representatives.
Just about any person today would see the inherent contradiction in that part of the constitution. My original point was, if the founders saw fit to make that kind of a compromise balancing individual rights and government, what compromise would they strike in today's world?
Despite all of our precautions, and even if we give up all of our freedoms to live in a police state, someone can still get through if they are determined enough.
There is a way to prevent those types of attacks, and it scares the crap out of me. Look at history, and you will see that the Romans took care of this time and again. However, the Romans didn't care so much for civil rights of its own citizens sometimes, much less that of their enemies. When a realm caused to much trouble, such as Palestine, the Romans destroyed it so throughly that nobody could live there for years. They actually _plowed_ Jerusalem under after a rebelion was crushed and spread salt on the fields to prevent anything from growing. Then they took the survivors (who didn't take part of the fighting) and they forcibly removed and sent them to the far ends of the empire. Cities that did rebel were wiped out completely, even babies.
Some might say almost everyone in this day and would never do that. Unfortunately, if some terrorists or a renegade country starts a nuke exchange, all it takes is one person to press a button to do the same-eliminate a city, including babies, and ensure that nobody can live there for a long time.
The alternative? Well, that's why we're having this converstion. Some say be very vigilant, even if it means keeping tabs on everyone. Does it make me uncomfortable? Sometimes. Is there a chance for abuse of power and people getting mistreated, hurt or killed? Always. Should we do it? The answer is like going to war-only when necessary.
When is it necessary? Ask the victor.
But, despite the violent times our country was born in, they didn't have liabilities like extremely efficient transportation and communication systems or weapons of mass destruction. I don't know how the right to bear arms would have been drafted if the writers of the constitution wrote for today's world, nor how the search & siesure clause would be different. I do know that we often times have defacto freedoms greater than what the founders envisioned because advances in technology and infrastructure have given me the freedom to call my parent who live 200 miles away or go visit them and return home within a single day. Granted, this new freedom isn't quite the same as freedom of speach, but it is no less a freedom available to me.
Trying to shoehorn laws written more than 200 years ago to apply to everything is sortof like trying to make DOS 2.0 the underpinings of the Internet.
"stopped on a public road"
Law enforcement always want to see ID and vehicle registration when they pull a vehicle over.
"enter government buildings"
Many court houses, executive, and congressional building instituted ID checks after 9/11.
"Now I now what we all went through with the re-chipping last November after the SqueezeMe worm wiped out half of your 'CRQ 3458's. (By the way, I spoke to Bob's wife yesterday and she he's had a relapse from his botched replacement; keep praying for them.) Anyway, HQ said the new vendor has guaranteed there won't be any repeats this time.
"The new guys supposedly have a new retrieval method that doesn't leave as big of a scar as their competitor and they even have a die option for making the incision look like a mole..."
Come on, people. Sometimes getting new freedoms (freedom to travel) or abilities (ability to travel accross the country in hours) means coffing up some old rights or freedoms. "Nothing in life is free".
All it takes is strong leadership for issues like this...but then again, who will really care enought to say no? If people already don't care enough to ensure they have the right to reject something _really_ invasive, like innoculations, why would they care about a bead stuck in their forearm? In fact, how many would say something like, "Great! Now I can't lose my driver's license!"
It is interesting how when people put the flame wars aside and start constructing logical arguments, well-thought out religion and science have a lot in common. I say well-thought out because some denominations, such as Catholicism, use logical reasoning to construct their belief structure. At the core of this structure is a set of observations and the belief structure must be internally consistant. Almost 2000 years of some of the finest thinkers in the world has found the Catholic and Orthodox churches in a position such that, their belief structures are quite consistent within itself and with its core tenents, arguably more-so than some branches of main-stream science.
Of course both the realms of science and religion has people that are adherants to ideas with inherent flaws, although sometimes they are merely elaborate belief structures derived (sometimes loosely) from some untestable tenents. But I don't think the value of a whole catagory of thought such as science or religion should be judged based on the ravings of a few fringe individuals or adherents who misapply facts and reason.
One of the main reasons why I am still a Roman Catholic is that I haven't been able to find any cases where, at its heart, there are inherent conflicts within church doctrine. In this regard, the largest distinction between it and main-stream science is not the validity of its reasoning, but the core tenents themselves.
I understand your desire as a reductionist to want everything to be testable; unfortunately, nothing in the physical world really is testable. All the observations we make ultimately rely on ours senses, including those relayed to us by others.
Essentially the belief structure of an atheist who understands and follows science is that they believe the majority of the knowledge they accumulate from their senses, and it all has to fit together. Any new experiences (such as magnetism being introduced to a child) often result in a sense of wonder and curiosity about how it "works".
My argument is that most people of a "rational" religion have the same internalized values. The difference in some regard is to where the reduction stops. In some ways, it boils down to intent. If my son asks me why a program I write performs a given task, there are two ways to answer his question. One is by describing things such as programming, operating systems, computer hardware, electricity, etc. The other is to state my intent, i.e. I wanted the program to do what it does.
Which is the better answer? It depends on whether he cared about what I wanted or if he just wanted to understand the mechanics of it. Could I change the mechanics of it? Sure, and then it would have required him to change his understanding of how the program worked.
Fundamentally, I believe the main difference between religion and science is about whether the question is being asked in a mechanical sense or in an intent sense. Miracles to me are sortof like my son witnessing a change in a program after he already understands what the program does. He can theoretically figure out _how_ the program changed, given the right tools and knowlege, but that would not answer _why_ it changed (something like the changing physical constants that started this discussion).
I could confound my son by temporarily changing the program to produce a change in its output, then changing the program back to its original state; even if he had the right tools to understand how the program worked, he would not be able to explain the deviation in output unless I told him or he witnessed the action. Even so, he would still not know _why_ the program was ch
Math has as much to do with science as philosophy does with theology. In both math and philosophy, one can define certain concepts and derive truths from them. However, since you are defining the concepts, you can't test whether they are true...they ARE true because they are defined that way. If you say 8+9 is 17, it's only true because you define the underlying concepts such that they are always true. However, if someone else is counting in hexidecimal, they'd say you are wrong-but they are defining the concepts diferently.
The real world is more messy than that. That's what this article was about-just when a group of people think they have part of the universe figured out, someone else comes up with a different measurement. Mathematicians never have that problem-everything can ultimately made black and white by defining and deriving. As long as someone else uses the same definitions in the realm of math, they will get the same answer as everyone else.
See, I look at genuine miracles as chances to explore in greater depth how the universe works.
That's what I'm suggesting you do-find a miracle that has had someone with a scientific background rule out the obvious stuff that remains inexplicable by accepted scientific theories. It seems to me that most "scientists" do one of two things when encountering something they can't explain: 1) ignore it and try not to think about it, usually alluding to some undiscovered principle at work; or 2) ridicule ideas outside the mainstream of science to draw attention away from problems with applying conventional wisdom There is of course the "non-scientific" theory-a non-human intelligence or other supernatural effect may be involved.
Sometimes people in math or the hard sciences forget about human intelligence: What is intelligence? How did it come into being? How is it that I think and have feelings if all that I am is a pile of chemical reactions? Why is it so hard to apply Occam's razor to these questions?
Does it really make sense to claim there is no possiblity of an intelligence having a hand in human development when humans have had a hand in the development of other organisms (genetic engineering)? What about artifical intelligence (remember, artificial means "made by man")? If our intelligence is being applied to creating new lifeforms, how much sense does it make to rule out the possibility that intelligence may have had a hand in creating other life forms?
What about the physical universe? Many people have created their own universe: everything from comic books to science fiction, movies and now computer games, human intelligence has created domains where universal rules apply and result in complex behavior. Computer games are one of my favorite examples; bots are programmed to follow certain rules in interacting with a well-ordered environment with a bit of randomness sometimes thrown in. However, human players can influence the bots environent in large and small ways. Is there any way that you can really rule out that you are not just a bot in someone else's video game?
"Absurd!", one might say. I say, prove that you are not. If the universe does in fact have laws and everything that happens is a result of those laws, how is that different than a computer program? The computer program and the computer it runs on is designed by intelligence.
"But the universe is too big, too complex to run on a computer!" So was computational fluid dynamics a few decades ago. Now scientists have even been able to model coliding black holes and molecular interactions-stuff of science _fiction_ 30 years ago, but reality today. So why insist on rulling out a hypothesis that the same thing happens on a much larger scale?
A parting question: if God doesn't exist, why do our suroundings sometimes respond to intelligence when we can't even explain how intelligence exists in the first place?
Every time MS comes out with a new version of Windows, lots of companies lag behind dropping their older versions until MS drops support. If Apple supports the API, they can keep using their Windows apps without being forced to go chasing after Vista when 2000/XP gets dropped.
Cool story. Is it true?
How is this different then the athiest contention that everything is explicable by science? The scientific method is invariably used such that a limited observation is made and a hypothesis is formed explaining how something works. After enough limitted observations are made to "confirm" the hypothesis, the scientific comunity "believes" that the hypothesis is correct and applies it to everything else as a "law". But we all know new findings are made that invalidate old "laws" (e.g. reletivity vs newtonian).
Miracles happen, and quite often they are easily accessible to others, should they choose to challenge themselves by going to observe. Obviously, there have been many shown to be fake and others that are ambiguous. Even the Catholic church doesn't take them lightly-when pronouncing a miricle as sanctioned by the Vatican, there is a lengthly review by "independent" investigators who start off by assuming that it is a hoax.
I believe science is merely a way of explaining how God makes part of His creation function consistantly. I don't understand why He chose to do make our universe this way, but the study of the way things work (my definition of science) makes it easier to use the world around us and to prepare for future events. In the strictest sense, I am a proponent of intellegent design, but it because I find no fundamental inconsistancy with science and my religion.
Science just helps us understand how He makes things works, just like Genesis explained how the world was made to a world filled largely by farmers and nomads who didn't have the benefit of an education that included the compiled results of thousands of years of observation and analysis.
I challenge you to seek out "miracles" that have been vetted by others and are still occuring (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibles). At the least, they will be a detective story you can run down and try to solve. Then again, you may find something a little harder to explain away...
This is sortof like the gun control debate. If you look at it with a fair eye, both sides have some good points and people still don't agree on where to draw the line. When looking at privacy issues, there are obviously good and bad things with more or less privacy. Yes, I know J. Edgar did some stuff I wouldn't want done to me, and I think piracy is blown out of proportion (Get real! Look at the origin of the word and compare the harm done with the original meaning compared to the new meaning). But just remember that if someone had been able to look at Zacharias Mousoui's labtop, 9/11 arguably could have been prevented.
I don't consider myself a privacy nut or a big-brother wannabe. I do think most of congress is clueless and generally makes laws reacting out of some sort of personal fear or to please a subset of their constituents/contributors. This is largely why I point out that it should be a moot point--I don't think congress actually has been granted the constitutional power to compel others to have a data retention policy. In my state (Minnesota), some pretty dumb laws get passed from time to time, but there is a better chance of getting things straightened out before they become the de-facto status quo in a state legislature than at the federal level.
Thanks for the wikipedia link; it shows what is possible, even if it isn't right. If the court was truly unbiased, I don't see how it could have decided that the way it did. They essentially deleted the word "interstate" from the constitution and expanded "commerce" to mean "any type of activity one could potentially pay for"!
This sucks. I hope as the membership of the court changes, it can start throwing out the bad (i.e. poorly argued/judged) cases.
One could make the argument that if I buy a loaf of bread from a local bakery, that affects interstate commerce because the bakery might buy some of its ingredients from other states. However, if that logic was followed, the federal government would potentially be able to charge a sales tax on the purchase of my bread. Since they arn't allowed to do that, I thing the same principle could be applied to personal correspondence, just like they can't listen in on phone calls without a warrent unless one of the parties is _actually_ out of the country.
After thinking more about it, couldn't this be construed as unreasonable seizure(sp)? Essentially, they would be demanding that we hold on to something for them, even if we don't want to. One could say that if the government alreaddy exercises that much control over it, haven't they already seized it? It just happens to be locatd on your premises-you can't do anything with it that might damage _their_ data.
I do think a retention policy would be good for tracking down pedofiles/corrupt CEOs and the like. I just don't think the federal government actually has the authority to prevent anyone from deleting email (or just being lazy and not backing it up).
Can anyone point to something in the constitution that give the US government this power?
All the above programs involved large engineering expenditures that were driven by a strongly motivated group with a clear vision: make x that does y. NASA is trying to find its way out of the state its in where it has too many priorities and not enough funds or freedom to do them all. I'm advocating pearing down the todo list to build the hardware first so that the proven hardware is available to other groups that are interested in using it. How many programs have been cancled or tremendously over budget due to new requirements that kept stacking up before the first version of hardware flew?
Your idea of having the world's biggest funder of science and most advanced scientifically country (the US) abandon an important branch of science like Earth science is at best glib, at worst foolish, short-sighted, and possibly malicious.
I assure you that I have no malicious intent. I tend to disagree about the short-sighted part; I am a firm believer in the "if you build it they will come" strategy. The American West was opened dramatically to development after transportation and communication infrastructure was put in place (multi-month trips by mules, ox carts and wagon trains gave way to multi-day trips by railroad; multi-day mail (when it finally arrived) via pony express and stage coach gave way to almost instantaneous telegraph). We've already done the Louis and Clark bit and even the mule trains in space. If we build the railroad and telegraph, the scientists can get orders of magnetude more data when they go along for the ride than if they each put together their own mule train.
Regarding passing science off to other countries, I have reservations about administrations that edit reports by government scientists to downplay or downright change the meaning. I think its possible that those elements of the administration that put local or business concerns above scientific integrety might not be as damaging if they didn't have any source material to warp in the first place. Thats why I said leave the science to other countries.