I know there are several other theories that explain how irreducibly complex structures could evolve through agencies other than "intelligent design". The only one I can think of at the moment is the "scaffolding" theory. According to this theory, there are intermediate elements that are developed during the evolution of the complex organ, but they are lost when the entire organ is created and the intermediate parts become redundant.
In an analogy, the intermediate pieces are the equivalent of the scaffolding that holds up an arch while the arch is under construction. When the arch is completed, the scaffolding can be removed, making it appear to people who don't understand arch-construction (but do understand physics) that the arch must have been created by magic.
I don't know anything about flagelli, so I couldn't give you an example of how there could be intermediate stepping-stones to a completed flagellum.
Also, it doesn't make the resultant complexity any less cool. It probably is even more cool because it was created by evolutionary pressure rather than intelligent design.
Thank you for actually responding to the substance of my arguments. I do not know how long this back-and-forth can continue, since I don't know how long users can comment on a story before it gets archived. Hopefully at least a little longer...
Not everything is black and white, as you say, and the USA has certainly made some grievous errors (e.g. giving chemical weapons to Saddam), but their motives were generally right (in the case of Saddam, he was the lesser of two evils. He turned out to be a pretty substantial evil, but at the time he was lesser). "Having the right intentions" is not as strong a moral position as "doing the right thing", but since most complex problems don't have one perfectly correct solution, "doing the right thing" is not always an option and "having the right intentions while doing as much good as possible" is about the best that can be achieved.
How do I know that the world does not abhor the USA? Referring back to my first post: a) Immigration to the USA continues at a steady pace. b) Investment in the USA by foreign investors has not been withdrawn. c) Movies, music, fashions -- the general culture of the USA has continued to flourish throughout the rest of the world. Imagine the change of world opinion if the USA completely destroyed France, Syria, or North Korea with nuclear bombs. That is what I mean by the USA becoming anathema. Or on the domestic front, what would happen if the USA really did restrict the personal freedoms of its citizens: locking up the press and crushing dissenters the way China does. That type of thing would turn the USA into a rogue nation.
In a simplified model, "world opinion" is a vote by the peoples of each country, and each vote is weighted based on the economic strength of their country. In this way Syria's vote doesn't matter, but the votes of the English and Japanese are very important. I doubt you will like this method of voting (since it's not fair and balanced), but that's the general idea.
You believe that the world does abhor the USA. I consider the protestors to be a vocal minority. This is mainly because of the economic facts above. Also, when listenning to the protestors, they are not concerned with what is right, but rather, they have other motives. These motives are easily understood. That is why the protestors are a minority. 1) Polititians (Schroeder, Chirac, Howard Dean) who stand to gain from convincing their constituants that the USA is bad and they need to be voted into power to guide the USA in the right direction. This can easily be seen as a politian's ploy. 2) Liberals/Democrats in the USA who are sick with rage at the very thought of President G. W. Bush. This is even worse then the grudge Republicans held against Clinton. Unfortunately, many of their reasons are not rational ("he's too dumb", "he is using the war on terror to silence his opponents", "the war in iraq was just for oil/his dad/haliburton" etc.). There are many reasons to object to Bush but most of the most vocal objectors are irrational. When people choose irrational reasons, they undermine their position. 3) Governments of failed states (Syria, Palestine, Lybia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea) who are afraid that the USA will use its newly rediscovered strength and sense of purpose to continue to foster freedom in the Middle East (either through regime change or through the growth of a free Iraq). There is no love lost for these governments. Their bluster may sway people momentarily, but is not morally consistant with their own practices. 4) People who hate the USA, mainly because of it's "cultural hegemony". These people are necessarily in the minority because of c) above. These people want to see the USA fail primarily because it is part of human nature to want the leader to fail. This is not a reason that will convince many besides the envious. So, that's why the voices in the world that abhor the USA are generally ignored by the people they are talking to.
The reasons the USA gives aren't right because they come from the USA. They are simply right. The reason the USA is not abhorred by the rest of the world because it is doing the right thing.
The reason Syria cannot do the same things that the USA does is that it has consistantly shown that its motives are evil. Syria, is already considered a failed state by the rest of the world. If Syria invaded another country, or developed a new plague, the world would have reason, based on past actions, to fear it and attempt to contain it.
So...my argument is that the USA are the good guys because they do good and have good motives. Syria (for example) is a bad guy because it does bad. In this case, it is good guys versus bad guys and the USA, as the good guy, is in the right.
Whether Syria disagrees or not does not matter a whit. The important questions are: a) what does the rest of the world think of the USA (because the USA's economy and the world economy are dependent on each other), b) what do the citizens of the USA think of the USA (because the USA's economy and foreign affairs are dependent on the belief it's citizens have that their country is right).
If you want to discuss why the USA is not abhorred by other countries, I might be willing to talk about that. (I guess that would be mostly a discussion of whether the USA was right to invade Iraq.) I doubt you would learn anything from my position, though.
The statements about the rights and security of the US cannot be reversed and keep their validity. Syria is dangerous to other countries because it's Baathist dictators would, if possible, conquer and rule the people of those countries. Syria is dangerous to other countries because it supports and trains terrorists which endanger civilians in other countries. The United States is not a danger to the world, or to Syria, in the same way.
Is the U.S. right in defending itself (both it's civilians and it's government) and in being a danger to Syria (that is, the Syrian government)? Yes. Is Syria right in defending itself (i.e. the army defending the Baathist dictators) and being dangerous to the U.S. (the civilians and the government if possible)? No.* The U.S. generally uses its power for the right reasons. Syria does not. Syria does the wrong thing to its people, and, through the agency of terrorists, to the peoples of other nations. Syria is almost never in the right when it uses the limitted strength it has.
Just because the U.S. has the strength to protect itself doesn't mean it's doing the wrong thing when it uses that strength.
Would Syria be wrong to use it's strength? Not necessarily, so you can say "Ditto for Syria". BUT...
The U.S. generally is right in its use of strength, and Syria is almost always wrong. That is why the U.S. can be trusted and Syria cannot. And why the U.S. could possibly be in the right to invade Syria if Syria created a super-plague.
*(One problem in discussing this is that the US as a country, as a government and as a people can generally be lumped together into one logical idea. The Syrian government is completely different than the Syrian people, who are oppressed by the government. Therefore, the Syrian country can sometimes mean the-country-as-ruled-by-the-government and at other times mean the-country-as-a-geographic-population.) (Oh, before you say that the US, by being a danger to the Syrian government, is a danger to the Syrian people. That is true. The US is still doing the right thing in being a danger to the Syrian government even if there is some danger to the people as a result of their proximity to the government. The details are important, however. The US would almost certainly be wrong to carpet-nuke Syria to remove the government because of the massive loss of civilian life. If the US was able to destroy the Syrian government while being forced to kill some small number of Syrian civilians, the US would still be in the right despite the civilian deaths. What is "some small number"? That depends on the details.)
The world could do something about it, but it doesn't. The people of the world could consider the U.S. anathema, like they do Syria and North Korea, like they did Iraq. The people of the world could stop immigrating to the U.S., could consider the U.S. to risky to invest in, could consider the U.S. culture a horrible disease and something to avoid rather than buy in to.
But they don't. The U.S. remains a strong country because both citizens and foreigners believe that, on the whole, the U.S. can be trusted to do the right thing and is not guilty of the evils you describe.
We can do these things because we believe we can be responsible and moral in using the research.
It's not that NOBODY else can do things like this, it's just that dangerous/untrustworthy countries can't. If England, Germany or India made discoveries like this, we might be a little nervous about it, but we wouldn't invade them. If Syria started saying that it was building super-germs, we might seriously discuss invading them. Syria is a threat both directly through aggression to our army and citizens in the middle east and indirectly through terrorists.
Just because the U.S. has the strength to protect itself doesn't mean it's doing the wrong thing when it uses that strength. You might consider it unfair that the Baathists in Iraq were bullied into losing their grip on the country, but you are in the minority. Also, you would be arguing a morally untenable position.
I got hit by lop.com once: the network admins recommended installing MSN Messenger Plus! on our work computers. Version 1 was fine, but when I upgraded to Version 2--well, I guess the developer ran out of $ and sold his soul to lop.com.
Anyways, I managed to clean up IE by: 1. Right-click on the the IE toolbars, it will list the toolbars that are showing, including the lop toolbar (named something like: "qfasdag" or "ghghlmt", or some other garbage). 2. Run spybot. (I don't know how effective that is, but you might as well do it once you know you have spyware). Run hijackthis (sp?) and get rid of the bad stuff (use your judgement and read the advice from other users). A lot of the bad stuff will be pointing to a certain website (I forget the website's url, but it will be obvious), write down that url. 3. Search the registry for the name of the toolbar you found in step 1. Delete those keys. 4. Search the registry for the url you found in step 2. For these keys, you might want to change them to a different url, rather than delete them entirely. 6. If I recall correctly, a lot of bookmarks get added to IE that go to the same url described in steps 2 and 5. Go through your bookmarks and delete any new bookmarks that you didn't add yourself (they will have names like: "Mortgages", "Gambling", "Computers", there will be tons of them, more than 40, so don't be surprised if you don't notice them all the first time you do this). 7. Switch to Mozilla. It may not be 100% safe, but I've had a much better user experience with it than with recent versions of IE.
I noticed this in today's New York Time's article (2nd page) about China's preparations for space flight:
The Chinese named their spacecraft Shenzhou or Divine Vessel. Weighing more than 8 tons and almost 30 feet long, it was slightly larger and heavier than the Soyuz. The main difference is the forward unit, which on the Shenzhou has solar panels and can remain in orbit after the piloted module descends back to Earth.
How many uses are there for these modules, these little electric generators in space? I assume that they are not just scientific/military satellites that are attached to the manned launch. (I may be incorrectly estimating the size of a military satellite). They sound like building blocks that are being left in orbit for future use. What would they be used for? They probably wouldn't be able to change their orbit/trajectory very much, because they probably have little or no fuel.
If that is true, then they are just orbitting electrical generators. I suppose that would be useful for two things (essentially the same). A) they could provide power for satellites, so the satellites themselves could be launched with more instruments. B) they could provide power for space stations, so (again) the volume of future launches could be devoted to habitation rather than power.
I don't know. Are there other possibilities?
Also, I'm going to wait on congratulating China until the taikonaut survives the trip. So far it is still just a worthy attempt.
I noticed this interesting observation in today's nytimes article on the upcoming launch:
The Chinese named their spacecraft Shenzhou or Divine Vessel. Weighing more than 8 tons and almost 30 feet long, it was slightly larger and heavier than the Soyuz. The main difference is the forward unit, which on the Shenzhou has solar panels and can remain in orbit after the piloted module descends back to Earth.
Why would you want to leave a powered section of your spaceship in space every time you do a launch? Possibly so that after hundreds of launches you have hundreds of building blocks up there, floating around and ready for assembly?
That's a quantum shift in space strategy. Hopefully the U.S. will adopt a similar policy.
It's just fun. Like those shoes that light up with every step that children get to wear. I think it would be really cool, on a drizzly night, to see pedestrians hurrying by, quietly flickering....especially if I was indoors:-)
The only thing that would bother me about the raincoat is power consumption. I wouldn't want to change the batteries on my coat all the time. I bet they could power it the same way they power those no-battery-no-wind wristwatches that get recharged by tiny weight swinging whenever you move your arm.
Also, an on/off switch to handle mosoon conditions might be appropriate.
By the way, in regards to those light-up sneakers. I don't understand why they don't make those for adults. Lots of sneakers look ridiculously flashy already, it's not as if the lights are going to make them substantially less cool. (Maybe there are adult-sized light-up sneakers and I just haven't seen them. I don't buy sneakers very often, so I'm probably just out of the loop.)
What about a bet on who gets to space first? I guess I favor China, since they're just strapping a guy onto the tip of an ICBM. But, they also have a more difficult mission to fulfill. It would be weird if the next space race was between China, India, and American private enterprise. And, of course, NASA tooling around in the background, coming up with cool tech every once in a while.
Although I'm rooting for Armadillo Aerospace, I visited the Scaled Composites website a few days ago. They seem to be very close to a successful launch. They've been doing all sorts of drop/glide tests of their spaceship, and they've seen a lot of success with those tests. Their crazy shuttle-cock decent seems to work fine. (This is especially amusing after all of the slashdot posts about how a winged successor to the space shuttle is the worst idea ever.) Also, they outsourced their engine construction which, seeing the kind of trouble Armadillo is having with their engines, might turn out to be a winning strategy.
You know, I could see this as a torture device. If you wallpapered an entire cell with it, then every time the inmates' eyes moved, the walls would start crawling again.
After a few hours of that, I'd confess everything...
Every science-fact article in mainstream magazines sounds like science-fiction. The author takes a few interviews with an MIT grad student on a hot new tech, and brainstorms about all of the possibilities. If you like the "hard-science" part of science fiction, you can get your fix every day by reading the news and imagining a world with all the wonderful tech that _could_ exist. But won't because it's only been developed for 3 years, and is going to need 15 more years of work before it will be available at all, and most likely will not quite work as flawlessly as predicted.
I think it's not so much that we've lost the 50's optimism, but that we don't need science fiction writers to show us the future any more. Lots of more mainstream authors enjoy having the chance to speculate on the future today.
On the other hand, Ray Bradbury wrote about worlds that weren't too far different from our own. Just a few smatterings of new technology here and there--rockets, living on Mars (exactly like Cornville, Iowa, except it's on Mars), robot butlers. Then, compare that to William Gibson or Neal Stephenson. The amount of world-building that these guys have to do in comparison is huge. I think that an author who wrote about worlds as uninteresting as Bradbury's would be unpublished because editors would fear that there wasn't a market for such "un-science-y" science fiction. You need fantastic immersive worlds to sell sci-fi today. Not everyone can/wants to write about that.
It may be like porn. It used to be that grainy pictures of half-exposed breasts were enough to get the Victorian man excited. Now, there's a race on for more extreme, graphic and erotic pictures because people have gotten used to the daily deluge of T & A. With a lot of science fiction being offered in mainstream magazines, the hard-core sci-fi fans need crazier, more technologically packed stories on which to spend their money.
I haven't bought any radiohead recently, although I want to. I just can't bring myself to by RIAA stuff. At some point, I guess I'll try to pick the albums up at a used cd store.
However, I _do_ sometimes buy RIAA cds for my girlfriend because, well, it's in my best interest to make her happy. She got the interpol cd recently, and it's got a fair number of good songs on it. Other good albums that I can think of--
Band: Crooked Fingers; Album: Red Devil Dawn, seems similar to Bruce Springsteen Band: OK, Go; Album: I don't know the ablum name, reminds me of the Push Kings first album Band: Magnetic Fields; Album: 69 Loves Songs - great date gift/music I like a lot of the White Stripes recent singles that I've heard.
There are 2 bands that look pretty good on CDBaby.com - Three Day Threshhold, and Eels. I haven't bought their albums yet, but I like the music.
If you like Interpol, you might like Iggy Pop - Lust for Life. I haven't heard any other Iggy Pop albums, and apparently that album was written by David Bowie, so I don't know much about Iggy's other stuff. The first 4 songs on Lust for Life seem to me to be some of the greatest rock songs ever. The last few songs, I never listen to, so it's a great 1/2 album. Worth finding a used/cheap copy.
Blues - Howlin' Wolf - The Real Folk Blues Jazz - Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
I need to find out about these "Hot Hot Heat", "Elefant" and "Super Furry Animals" of which you speak.
The problem is, so many rock albums have only a few good songs on them. The more money I need to spend on an album, the more time I spend listening to it before buying it. If I listen to it too long, I generally end up not buying it at all because the music isn't good enough. A $5 price would be low enough that I would be willing to take a risk without the research.
There are 3 exceptions to the $5/CD rule: Classical - it takes to long to listen to a classical album, so I buy these after reading reviews. A well-reviewed album could cost $12, but I would still buy it. (I don't trust rock reviews) Local bands - CDs sold at concerts - In this case, I am not buying the music, I'm supporting the band. I'm willing to pay about $10 to support a band I like. Trusted national bands - Radiohead, good Jazz/Blues - I would be willing to spend $8 or so. Since I know that I like their music, I don't worry as much before purchase.
Incidentally, in the last 2 years I have only bought: a) local bands b) used CDs at the $8 price
MS heavily subsidizing major publishers
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A friend of mine works for a major, highly-respected publisher of computer texts. She mentioned a while back that Microsoft is giving them so much money to write and publish their.NET line of books that the publisher has no financial risk when adding.NET books to it's list of titles. These new titles are both general consumption.NET books and CS texts for universities. They can be produced at a higher quality and sold at a lower price than books on non-MS subjects. Just another part of the general strategy to choke off Linux and Java's air supply by having CS graduates coming out of schools trained in Windows/.NET instead of Linux/Java.
Patent abuse seems to be a poor strategy for profit in this case. There are already incandescent lightbulb alternatives on the market that don't use LEDs, and patents only last for 20 years (I think). So, if they try to throw their weight around with obvious patents, they'll just end up crushing the market for 20 years while the other alternatives thrive. By the time LED illumination gets free of their patents, the market will already be saturated with some other alternative.
Of course, patent abusers aren't too smart, they just do what is already proven to work.
Can't someone just patent patent-abuse as a business model and then sue anyone who tries to copy their strategy? That would be a pleasant little irony.
The Microsoft mouse sounds better than a track-ball-in-mouse combination because fingers don't have as much range of motion side-to-side as they do when curling over a mouse wheel. Rather than having to constantly reposition your finger to scroll left or right, the tilt would enable you to simply hold in the "go right" tilt until the page had scrolled to the right as far as needed.
Seems like the tilting mouse wheel might be the ideal combination of ergonomics and functionality.
The other possibility I can think of is having a second left-to-right mouse wheel where your thumb would go, since the thumb moves left-to-right very easily. That might be more confusing, though. Also, you would need different mice for left- and right- handers. The tilting-wheel model would look more elegant.
There are two general types of content that could be on the web: highly specialized content, and rather generic content. The highly specialized content (wsj analysis, medical papers, etc.) can be sold on the internet because users know there's no other place to get it for free. For the generic content, there are tons of websites that are willing to provide free content just so they have visitors. As long as someone is willing to undersell on content, it will remain free.
Free news sites are an understandable byproduct of this competition. Any news company could charge for access; after all, the information does take research and money to compile. But, since there are many news sites, and they're all competing for hits, they will continue to provide content for free as long as they can. Once you start charging, you'd better have a lot more to offer than just headlines and commentary.
If you like that, you might like Crooked Fingers - Red Devil Dawn. I can't say for sure: they're not the same, I just happened to hear them both around the same time and liked both bands. I sort of imagine that Crooked Fingers is fueled by whiskey, while The White Stripes is inspired by hard drugs.
More importantly, you claim that anything more advanced will be forgotten, but the later courses often serve to reinforce earlier material. For example a course on Fourrier theory reinforces both Linear Algebra and Calculus.
I'll attest to that. One of the main reason I am taking more math classes after college is so that I can continue to remember and use calculus and linear algebra. If I had a job that needed these skills, I might not need to take classes, but I don't have a job like that at the moment. I want to still have those skills in case I need them for another job in the future.
These might seem ridiculously old, specialized, or classical, but I remember liking them a lot and really getting a lot out of them.
Math-
Geometry: Euclid - The Elements. You probably don't need to learn geometry again, but your kids might, and the proofs are very well done and worth reading if you've never seen them. You don't have to read all of the books (there are 12 (or 13? I don't remember)). You could probably find a suggested course of study on the web site of the University of Chicago, Harvard, or St. John's College.
Probability: William Feller - An Introduction to Probability Theory and it's Applications (2 volumes). It's a bit expensive since it's nearly out of print, but very well done. You could probably find it used on abebooks. There aren't enough problems per chapter, but if you search the web you can find plenty of problems (Harvard teaches a class on this text and they have problems on line).
Number Theory: I remember that in college we read an essay on "Continuity and Irrational Numbers" by Richard Dedekind (found in Essays on the Theory of Numbers) that was very good. I have never taken a class on number theory or anything like that, but I found the essay very interesting and not too much work (a few days of reading, maybe a week tops).
I can recommend that you DON'T waste your time with Calculus by James Stewart. It won't kill you, but there must be better text books out there.
Science:
Physiscs:
Relativity The Special and General Theory - Einstein. Not too hard, actually, and you could almost certainly find a class, lecture, or study group that's working on it if you didn't want to tackle it by yourself. There are also all sorts of books that help explain it (Amazon lists tons) if you just want a study guide.
Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics - Max Plank. Lectures 1, 3, 5 & 6 work together to explain quantum theory and Plank's constant. They aren't all that hard, mathematically. There are a few equations per lecture, but not too many, and their generally pretty well explained in the text. You might need a friend who knows math to explain a few of them.
Genetics is probably not a field that you're interested in, but The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and The Red Queen by Matt Ridley are both very good. If you're not sure if you are interested, read The Selfish Gene first. Then, if you find you like that kind of stuff, you can move on to The Red Queen.
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Good point. If you can't be bothered giving everyone their own userid/password, you probably don't feel a need for the most unbreakable passwords possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I know there are several other theories that explain how irreducibly complex structures could evolve through agencies other than "intelligent design". The only one I can think of at the moment is the "scaffolding" theory. According to this theory, there are intermediate elements that are developed during the evolution of the complex organ, but they are lost when the entire organ is created and the intermediate parts become redundant.
In an analogy, the intermediate pieces are the equivalent of the scaffolding that holds up an arch while the arch is under construction. When the arch is completed, the scaffolding can be removed, making it appear to people who don't understand arch-construction (but do understand physics) that the arch must have been created by magic.
I don't know anything about flagelli, so I couldn't give you an example of how there could be intermediate stepping-stones to a completed flagellum.
Also, it doesn't make the resultant complexity any less cool. It probably is even more cool because it was created by evolutionary pressure rather than intelligent design.
Thank you for actually responding to the substance of my arguments. I do not know how long this back-and-forth can continue, since I don't know how long users can comment on a story before it gets archived. Hopefully at least a little longer...
Not everything is black and white, as you say, and the USA has certainly made some grievous errors (e.g. giving chemical weapons to Saddam), but their motives were generally right (in the case of Saddam, he was the lesser of two evils. He turned out to be a pretty substantial evil, but at the time he was lesser). "Having the right intentions" is not as strong a moral position as "doing the right thing", but since most complex problems don't have one perfectly correct solution, "doing the right thing" is not always an option and "having the right intentions while doing as much good as possible" is about the best that can be achieved.
How do I know that the world does not abhor the USA? Referring back to my first post:
a) Immigration to the USA continues at a steady pace.
b) Investment in the USA by foreign investors has not been withdrawn.
c) Movies, music, fashions -- the general culture of the USA has continued to flourish throughout the rest of the world.
Imagine the change of world opinion if the USA completely destroyed France, Syria, or North Korea with nuclear bombs. That is what I mean by the USA becoming anathema. Or on the domestic front, what would happen if the USA really did restrict the personal freedoms of its citizens: locking up the press and crushing dissenters the way China does. That type of thing would turn the USA into a rogue nation.
In a simplified model, "world opinion" is a vote by the peoples of each country, and each vote is weighted based on the economic strength of their country. In this way Syria's vote doesn't matter, but the votes of the English and Japanese are very important. I doubt you will like this method of voting (since it's not fair and balanced), but that's the general idea.
You believe that the world does abhor the USA. I consider the protestors to be a vocal minority. This is mainly because of the economic facts above. Also, when listenning to the protestors, they are not concerned with what is right, but rather, they have other motives. These motives are easily understood. That is why the protestors are a minority.
1) Polititians (Schroeder, Chirac, Howard Dean) who stand to gain from convincing their constituants that the USA is bad and they need to be voted into power to guide the USA in the right direction. This can easily be seen as a politian's ploy.
2) Liberals/Democrats in the USA who are sick with rage at the very thought of President G. W. Bush. This is even worse then the grudge Republicans held against Clinton. Unfortunately, many of their reasons are not rational ("he's too dumb", "he is using the war on terror to silence his opponents", "the war in iraq was just for oil/his dad/haliburton" etc.). There are many reasons to object to Bush but most of the most vocal objectors are irrational. When people choose irrational reasons, they undermine their position.
3) Governments of failed states (Syria, Palestine, Lybia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea) who are afraid that the USA will use its newly rediscovered strength and sense of purpose to continue to foster freedom in the Middle East (either through regime change or through the growth of a free Iraq). There is no love lost for these governments. Their bluster may sway people momentarily, but is not morally consistant with their own practices.
4) People who hate the USA, mainly because of it's "cultural hegemony". These people are necessarily in the minority because of c) above. These people want to see the USA fail primarily because it is part of human nature to want the leader to fail. This is not a reason that will convince many besides the envious.
So, that's why the voices in the world that abhor the USA are generally ignored by the people they are talking to.
The reasons the USA gives aren't right because they come from the USA. They are simply right. The reason the USA is not abhorred by the rest of the world because it is doing the right thing.
The reason Syria cannot do the same things that the USA does is that it has consistantly shown that its motives are evil. Syria, is already considered a failed state by the rest of the world. If Syria invaded another country, or developed a new plague, the world would have reason, based on past actions, to fear it and attempt to contain it.
So...my argument is that the USA are the good guys because they do good and have good motives. Syria (for example) is a bad guy because it does bad. In this case, it is good guys versus bad guys and the USA, as the good guy, is in the right.
Whether Syria disagrees or not does not matter a whit. The important questions are: a) what does the rest of the world think of the USA (because the USA's economy and the world economy are dependent on each other), b) what do the citizens of the USA think of the USA (because the USA's economy and foreign affairs are dependent on the belief it's citizens have that their country is right).
If you want to discuss why the USA is not abhorred by other countries, I might be willing to talk about that. (I guess that would be mostly a discussion of whether the USA was right to invade Iraq.) I doubt you would learn anything from my position, though.
The statements about the rights and security of the US cannot be reversed and keep their validity. Syria is dangerous to other countries because it's Baathist dictators would, if possible, conquer and rule the people of those countries. Syria is dangerous to other countries because it supports and trains terrorists which endanger civilians in other countries. The United States is not a danger to the world, or to Syria, in the same way.
Is the U.S. right in defending itself (both it's civilians and it's government) and in being a danger to Syria (that is, the Syrian government)? Yes. Is Syria right in defending itself (i.e. the army defending the Baathist dictators) and being dangerous to the U.S. (the civilians and the government if possible)? No.* The U.S. generally uses its power for the right reasons. Syria does not. Syria does the wrong thing to its people, and, through the agency of terrorists, to the peoples of other nations. Syria is almost never in the right when it uses the limitted strength it has.
Just because the U.S. has the strength to protect itself doesn't mean it's doing the wrong thing when it uses that strength.
Would Syria be wrong to use it's strength? Not necessarily, so you can say "Ditto for Syria". BUT...
The U.S. generally is right in its use of strength, and Syria is almost always wrong. That is why the U.S. can be trusted and Syria cannot. And why the U.S. could possibly be in the right to invade Syria if Syria created a super-plague.
*(One problem in discussing this is that the US as a country, as a government and as a people can generally be lumped together into one logical idea. The Syrian government is completely different than the Syrian people, who are oppressed by the government. Therefore, the Syrian country can sometimes mean the-country-as-ruled-by-the-government and at other times mean the-country-as-a-geographic-population.)
(Oh, before you say that the US, by being a danger to the Syrian government, is a danger to the Syrian people. That is true. The US is still doing the right thing in being a danger to the Syrian government even if there is some danger to the people as a result of their proximity to the government. The details are important, however. The US would almost certainly be wrong to carpet-nuke Syria to remove the government because of the massive loss of civilian life. If the US was able to destroy the Syrian government while being forced to kill some small number of Syrian civilians, the US would still be in the right despite the civilian deaths. What is "some small number"? That depends on the details.)
The world could do something about it, but it doesn't. The people of the world could consider the U.S. anathema, like they do Syria and North Korea, like they did Iraq. The people of the world could stop immigrating to the U.S., could consider the U.S. to risky to invest in, could consider the U.S. culture a horrible disease and something to avoid rather than buy in to.
But they don't. The U.S. remains a strong country because both citizens and foreigners believe that, on the whole, the U.S. can be trusted to do the right thing and is not guilty of the evils you describe.
We can do these things because we believe we can be responsible and moral in using the research.
It's not that NOBODY else can do things like this, it's just that dangerous/untrustworthy countries can't. If England, Germany or India made discoveries like this, we might be a little nervous about it, but we wouldn't invade them. If Syria started saying that it was building super-germs, we might seriously discuss invading them. Syria is a threat both directly through aggression to our army and citizens in the middle east and indirectly through terrorists.
Just because the U.S. has the strength to protect itself doesn't mean it's doing the wrong thing when it uses that strength. You might consider it unfair that the Baathists in Iraq were bullied into losing their grip on the country, but you are in the minority. Also, you would be arguing a morally untenable position.
I got hit by lop.com once: the network admins recommended installing MSN Messenger Plus! on our work computers. Version 1 was fine, but when I upgraded to Version 2--well, I guess the developer ran out of $ and sold his soul to lop.com.
Anyways, I managed to clean up IE by:
1. Right-click on the the IE toolbars, it will list the toolbars that are showing, including the lop toolbar (named something like: "qfasdag" or "ghghlmt", or some other garbage).
2. Run spybot. (I don't know how effective that is, but you might as well do it once you know you have spyware). Run hijackthis (sp?) and get rid of the bad stuff (use your judgement and read the advice from other users). A lot of the bad stuff will be pointing to a certain website (I forget the website's url, but it will be obvious), write down that url.
3. Search the registry for the name of the toolbar you found in step 1. Delete those keys.
4. Search the registry for the url you found in step 2. For these keys, you might want to change them to a different url, rather than delete them entirely.
6. If I recall correctly, a lot of bookmarks get added to IE that go to the same url described in steps 2 and 5. Go through your bookmarks and delete any new bookmarks that you didn't add yourself (they will have names like: "Mortgages", "Gambling", "Computers", there will be tons of them, more than 40, so don't be surprised if you don't notice them all the first time you do this).
7. Switch to Mozilla. It may not be 100% safe, but I've had a much better user experience with it than with recent versions of IE.
I noticed this in today's New York Time's article (2nd page) about China's preparations for space flight:
The Chinese named their spacecraft Shenzhou or Divine Vessel. Weighing more than 8 tons and almost 30 feet long, it was slightly larger and heavier than the Soyuz. The main difference is the forward unit, which on the Shenzhou has solar panels and can remain in orbit after the piloted module descends back to Earth.
How many uses are there for these modules, these little electric generators in space? I assume that they are not just scientific/military satellites that are attached to the manned launch. (I may be incorrectly estimating the size of a military satellite). They sound like building blocks that are being left in orbit for future use. What would they be used for? They probably wouldn't be able to change their orbit/trajectory very much, because they probably have little or no fuel.
If that is true, then they are just orbitting electrical generators. I suppose that would be useful for two things (essentially the same). A) they could provide power for satellites, so the satellites themselves could be launched with more instruments. B) they could provide power for space stations, so (again) the volume of future launches could be devoted to habitation rather than power.
I don't know. Are there other possibilities?
Also, I'm going to wait on congratulating China until the taikonaut survives the trip. So far it is still just a worthy attempt.
I noticed this interesting observation in today's nytimes article on the upcoming launch:
The Chinese named their spacecraft Shenzhou or Divine Vessel. Weighing more than 8 tons and almost 30 feet long, it was slightly larger and heavier than the Soyuz. The main difference is the forward unit, which on the Shenzhou has solar panels and can remain in orbit after the piloted module descends back to Earth.
Why would you want to leave a powered section of your spaceship in space every time you do a launch? Possibly so that after hundreds of launches you have hundreds of building blocks up there, floating around and ready for assembly?
That's a quantum shift in space strategy. Hopefully the U.S. will adopt a similar policy.
It's just fun. Like those shoes that light up with every step that children get to wear. I think it would be really cool, on a drizzly night, to see pedestrians hurrying by, quietly flickering. ...especially if I was indoors :-)
The only thing that would bother me about the raincoat is power consumption. I wouldn't want to change the batteries on my coat all the time. I bet they could power it the same way they power those no-battery-no-wind wristwatches that get recharged by tiny weight swinging whenever you move your arm.
Also, an on/off switch to handle mosoon conditions might be appropriate.
By the way, in regards to those light-up sneakers. I don't understand why they don't make those for adults. Lots of sneakers look ridiculously flashy already, it's not as if the lights are going to make them substantially less cool. (Maybe there are adult-sized light-up sneakers and I just haven't seen them. I don't buy sneakers very often, so I'm probably just out of the loop.)
What about a bet on who gets to space first? I guess I favor China, since they're just strapping a guy onto the tip of an ICBM. But, they also have a more difficult mission to fulfill. It would be weird if the next space race was between China, India, and American private enterprise. And, of course, NASA tooling around in the background, coming up with cool tech every once in a while.
Although I'm rooting for Armadillo Aerospace, I visited the Scaled Composites website a few days ago. They seem to be very close to a successful launch. They've been doing all sorts of drop/glide tests of their spaceship, and they've seen a lot of success with those tests. Their crazy shuttle-cock decent seems to work fine. (This is especially amusing after all of the slashdot posts about how a winged successor to the space shuttle is the worst idea ever.) Also, they outsourced their engine construction which, seeing the kind of trouble Armadillo is having with their engines, might turn out to be a winning strategy.
You know, I could see this as a torture device. If you wallpapered an entire cell with it, then every time the inmates' eyes moved, the walls would start crawling again.
After a few hours of that, I'd confess everything...
Very nice. Thanks for the links.
Every science-fact article in mainstream magazines sounds like science-fiction. The author takes a few interviews with an MIT grad student on a hot new tech, and brainstorms about all of the possibilities. If you like the "hard-science" part of science fiction, you can get your fix every day by reading the news and imagining a world with all the wonderful tech that _could_ exist. But won't because it's only been developed for 3 years, and is going to need 15 more years of work before it will be available at all, and most likely will not quite work as flawlessly as predicted.
I think it's not so much that we've lost the 50's optimism, but that we don't need science fiction writers to show us the future any more. Lots of more mainstream authors enjoy having the chance to speculate on the future today.
On the other hand, Ray Bradbury wrote about worlds that weren't too far different from our own. Just a few smatterings of new technology here and there--rockets, living on Mars (exactly like Cornville, Iowa, except it's on Mars), robot butlers. Then, compare that to William Gibson or Neal Stephenson. The amount of world-building that these guys have to do in comparison is huge. I think that an author who wrote about worlds as uninteresting as Bradbury's would be unpublished because editors would fear that there wasn't a market for such "un-science-y" science fiction. You need fantastic immersive worlds to sell sci-fi today. Not everyone can/wants to write about that.
It may be like porn. It used to be that grainy pictures of half-exposed breasts were enough to get the Victorian man excited. Now, there's a race on for more extreme, graphic and erotic pictures because people have gotten used to the daily deluge of T & A. With a lot of science fiction being offered in mainstream magazines, the hard-core sci-fi fans need crazier, more technologically packed stories on which to spend their money.
I haven't bought any radiohead recently, although I want to. I just can't bring myself to by RIAA stuff. At some point, I guess I'll try to pick the albums up at a used cd store.
However, I _do_ sometimes buy RIAA cds for my girlfriend because, well, it's in my best interest to make her happy. She got the interpol cd recently, and it's got a fair number of good songs on it. Other good albums that I can think of--
Band: Crooked Fingers; Album: Red Devil Dawn, seems similar to Bruce Springsteen
Band: OK, Go; Album: I don't know the ablum name, reminds me of the Push Kings first album
Band: Magnetic Fields; Album: 69 Loves Songs - great date gift/music
I like a lot of the White Stripes recent singles that I've heard.
There are 2 bands that look pretty good on CDBaby.com - Three Day Threshhold, and Eels. I haven't bought their albums yet, but I like the music.
If you like Interpol, you might like Iggy Pop - Lust for Life. I haven't heard any other Iggy Pop albums, and apparently that album was written by David Bowie, so I don't know much about Iggy's other stuff. The first 4 songs on Lust for Life seem to me to be some of the greatest rock songs ever. The last few songs, I never listen to, so it's a great 1/2 album. Worth finding a used/cheap copy.
Blues - Howlin' Wolf - The Real Folk Blues
Jazz - Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
I need to find out about these "Hot Hot Heat", "Elefant" and "Super Furry Animals" of which you speak.
The problem is, so many rock albums have only a few good songs on them. The more money I need to spend on an album, the more time I spend listening to it before buying it. If I listen to it too long, I generally end up not buying it at all because the music isn't good enough. A $5 price would be low enough that I would be willing to take a risk without the research.
There are 3 exceptions to the $5/CD rule:
Classical - it takes to long to listen to a classical album, so I buy these after reading reviews. A well-reviewed album could cost $12, but I would still buy it. (I don't trust rock reviews)
Local bands - CDs sold at concerts - In this case, I am not buying the music, I'm supporting the band. I'm willing to pay about $10 to support a band I like.
Trusted national bands - Radiohead, good Jazz/Blues - I would be willing to spend $8 or so. Since I know that I like their music, I don't worry as much before purchase.
Incidentally, in the last 2 years I have only bought:
a) local bands
b) used CDs at the $8 price
A friend of mine works for a major, highly-respected publisher of computer texts. She mentioned a while back that Microsoft is giving them so much money to write and publish their .NET line of books that the publisher has no financial risk when adding .NET books to it's list of titles. These new titles are both general consumption .NET books and CS texts for universities. They can be produced at a higher quality and sold at a lower price than books on non-MS subjects. Just another part of the general strategy to choke off Linux and Java's air supply by having CS graduates coming out of schools trained in Windows/.NET instead of Linux/Java.
Patent abuse seems to be a poor strategy for profit in this case. There are already incandescent lightbulb alternatives on the market that don't use LEDs, and patents only last for 20 years (I think). So, if they try to throw their weight around with obvious patents, they'll just end up crushing the market for 20 years while the other alternatives thrive. By the time LED illumination gets free of their patents, the market will already be saturated with some other alternative.
Of course, patent abusers aren't too smart, they just do what is already proven to work.
Can't someone just patent patent-abuse as a business model and then sue anyone who tries to copy their strategy? That would be a pleasant little irony.
The Microsoft mouse sounds better than a track-ball-in-mouse combination because fingers don't have as much range of motion side-to-side as they do when curling over a mouse wheel. Rather than having to constantly reposition your finger to scroll left or right, the tilt would enable you to simply hold in the "go right" tilt until the page had scrolled to the right as far as needed.
Seems like the tilting mouse wheel might be the ideal combination of ergonomics and functionality.
The other possibility I can think of is having a second left-to-right mouse wheel where your thumb would go, since the thumb moves left-to-right very easily. That might be more confusing, though. Also, you would need different mice for left- and right- handers. The tilting-wheel model would look more elegant.
There are two general types of content that could be on the web: highly specialized content, and rather generic content. The highly specialized content (wsj analysis, medical papers, etc.) can be sold on the internet because users know there's no other place to get it for free. For the generic content, there are tons of websites that are willing to provide free content just so they have visitors. As long as someone is willing to undersell on content, it will remain free.
Free news sites are an understandable byproduct of this competition. Any news company could charge for access; after all, the information does take research and money to compile. But, since there are many news sites, and they're all competing for hits, they will continue to provide content for free as long as they can. Once you start charging, you'd better have a lot more to offer than just headlines and commentary.
If you like that, you might like Crooked Fingers - Red Devil Dawn. I can't say for sure: they're not the same, I just happened to hear them both around the same time and liked both bands. I sort of imagine that Crooked Fingers is fueled by whiskey, while The White Stripes is inspired by hard drugs.
Who are "they"? It looks like you forgot to put in the name of the band. Or did you just mean: "Look to cdbaby for new bands"
I'm only interested because you mentioned cdbaby. I won't buy anything new that's RIAA.
More importantly, you claim that anything more advanced will be forgotten, but the later courses often serve to reinforce earlier material. For example a course on Fourrier theory reinforces both Linear Algebra and Calculus.
I'll attest to that. One of the main reason I am taking more math classes after college is so that I can continue to remember and use calculus and linear algebra. If I had a job that needed these skills, I might not need to take classes, but I don't have a job like that at the moment. I want to still have those skills in case I need them for another job in the future.
These might seem ridiculously old, specialized, or classical, but I remember liking them a lot and really getting a lot out of them.
Math-
Geometry: Euclid - The Elements. You probably don't need to learn geometry again, but your kids might, and the proofs are very well done and worth reading if you've never seen them. You don't have to read all of the books (there are 12 (or 13? I don't remember)). You could probably find a suggested course of study on the web site of the University of Chicago, Harvard, or St. John's College.
Probability: William Feller - An Introduction to Probability Theory and it's Applications (2 volumes). It's a bit expensive since it's nearly out of print, but very well done. You could probably find it used on abebooks. There aren't enough problems per chapter, but if you search the web you can find plenty of problems (Harvard teaches a class on this text and they have problems on line).
Number Theory: I remember that in college we read an essay on "Continuity and Irrational Numbers" by Richard Dedekind (found in Essays on the Theory of Numbers) that was very good. I have never taken a class on number theory or anything like that, but I found the essay very interesting and not too much work (a few days of reading, maybe a week tops).
I can recommend that you DON'T waste your time with Calculus by James Stewart. It won't kill you, but there must be better text books out there.
Science:
Physiscs:
Relativity The Special and General Theory - Einstein. Not too hard, actually, and you could almost certainly find a class, lecture, or study group that's working on it if you didn't want to tackle it by yourself. There are also all sorts of books that help explain it (Amazon lists tons) if you just want a study guide.
Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics - Max Plank. Lectures 1, 3, 5 & 6 work together to explain quantum theory and Plank's constant. They aren't all that hard, mathematically. There are a few equations per lecture, but not too many, and their generally pretty well explained in the text. You might need a friend who knows math to explain a few of them.
Genetics is probably not a field that you're interested in, but The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and The Red Queen by Matt Ridley are both very good. If you're not sure if you are interested, read The Selfish Gene first. Then, if you find you like that kind of stuff, you can move on to The Red Queen.
Good point. If you can't be bothered giving everyone their own userid/password, you probably don't feel a need for the most unbreakable passwords possible.