That's a very convenient viewpoint, of course. So a statement about how a giant chunk of the US is "poor" and the reasons therefore, without attribution. A counterpost is made, HEAVILY attributed with references including the US Census data (seriously, how is that "spin"?), and the response is to dismiss because "that's just propaganda - the best lies are mostly true".
Seriously?
When you have a ready rationalization at hand so you don't have to dispute actual facts and attributions in favor of blanket generalizations, you might just want to check your internal biases again.
Yeah, crazy how that ends up making the US "....World Giving Index: US Ranked Most Charitable Country On Earth"
...In its second annual study of 153 countries, the Charity Aid Foundation concluded that the U.S. has demonstrated "strong" behavior across all three criteria measured -- volunteering, helping strangers and donating money. The U.S. has increased its charity by 3 percentage points this year, up to $212 billion.
"The point to leave with American leaders is the world really needs America; it needs its generosity, its resource and spirit, and though times are really hard, this is the time we need to keep giving as much as we possibly can," Richard Harrison, director of research at the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation told The NonProfit Times.
Ireland and Australia trailed behind the U.S. in giving, but the study noted that the most affluent countries aren't necessarily the most philanthropic. Only five of the countries featured in the World Bank's top 20 GDP made to the Charity Aid Foundation's top 20 list.
...perhaps I could correct this a little: "'U.S. citizens have passively accepted weak privacy rules that let companies collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers' lives..."
I keep hearing about the "US govt" this and "companies" that. The fact is that the whole 'privacy' thing is comparable to the cigarette issue for the last 50 years....NOBODY believed cigarettes were in any way good for you, and by the late 1960s pretty much everyone recognized that they were quite harmful (regardless of what the cigarette companies insisted).
In short, the consumers willfully participated and knew (when they bothered to think about it) that companies were collecting massive amounts of data with every transaction, using (without complaint) their social security number as an id#, etc.
When I've got a friend or three complaining about companies/government gathering private data, they're usually paying for their meal with a credit card.
Except that's wrong. Yes, our official aid is small, but I know for the calculations for the Indonesian tsunami that I watched in detail, +none+ of the reported aid-tallies included the scores of millions of $ spent by the US on providing an entire carrier group for months, plus dozens of other in-kind services; most of them likewise disregarded or underreported private and church-based aid which is often multiples of the "official" dollar amounts, and completely dwarfs such aid from all other countries combined. So no, actually, studies have routinely showed that the amount of aid coming from the US +and its citizens+ regularly exceeds that of anyone else...as it should, as we are wealthy and fortunate.
I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".
It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references: [1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374. [2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level. [3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011). [4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011). [5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey. [6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011). [7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of
Except - here's the interesting thing: Americans aren't poor by any reasonable standard.
Here's "poverty" in the US: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor For example, the average "poor" person actually has more living space (square footage) than the average NONpoor person in Sweden, UK, or France. More than 40% actually own their home. 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. 92 percent of poor households have a microwave. Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks. Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR. Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers. More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation. 43 percent have Internet access. One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV. One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
Read the report; the "poverty" line is just a label, and a politically useful one. There's a vast political machine that exists mainly because it's message is "you don't have enough stuff, we'll take it from those guys (who have way too much) and give it to you". The amusing/sad thing is that the people saying that are the same group of guys that have "too much". PRECISELY the same bunch.
The message is convincing to two groups of people: - those who are simply greedy and want "more" - those who feel guilty about what they have...which currently exceeds 50% of the electorate.
Let's put it another way: the US is the richest country the world has ever seen, and is yet unable to live within its means. This would suggest that the sorts of choices that leave a person "poor" are not limited to a social class, but are endemic to the system, top to bottom.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability. But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress. If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required - and not a bunch of chattering ninnies that have proven their inability to be trusted to keep secrets secret (so as to remain closely advised by the agencies without fear of destroying the value of intel and methods with self-serving 'unattributed' leaks), I don't believe we'd have this problem.
But now we have self-interested politicians, committed to maintaining a political divide and advantage at ANY cost (even to the republic), who thus cannot really be trusted with anything important and who block each other (despite both sides' recognizing the need) from reforming anything substantively. I guess we lose then.
It's a fairly black/white alternative; either: - people are free to do what they want, in which case the collective good is often overlooked (the tragedy of the commons)
or - someone (be they an individual, a council, a congress, whatever) is given the power to tell people what they must do.
Granted, my comparison is hyperbolic and rhetorical, mainly as a reaction to the fairly blanket condemnation of capitalism in the OP. In the same way that I would characterize "pure" capitalism as anarchic, the opposite would be totalitarianist.
There are many ways individuals can for example collectively decide to act in a way that's good for "the commons"; unfortunately, people eventually always cheat - then one returns to the notion that either they are free agents or they are subjects of 'the agreement and its designated agents'.
Now that my post title earns me a +1 "slashdot loves it", perhaps people will consider this:
*Perhaps* when your country is $trillions$ in debt, one should strongly consider carefully justifying every single program - NSF included - for its expected value and relevance to the national interest.
Lest someone believe I'm being tendentious here, I fully agree that this same metric SHOULD be applied to the bullshit military programs (cancel the LCS - both versions are equally stupid - instantly, for example) as well.
Perhaps EVERY dollar the government spends (you know, since it was taken from some taxpayer at the barrel of a proverbial gun) should be vetted carefully, including congressional haircuts and other benefits. Here's an idea: for every year since congress last passed a budget (you know, their fundamental job) we simply refuse to pay their pensions?
Seems to me that any perverse sexual deviance simply needs to reach a certain level of popularity (say, allegedly 10%) and Hollywood will promote it merely as an alternative lifestyle.
Nonsense. The only reason historically that government (and by that I mean any government) didn't spy on everyone was a lack of resources, not some sort of ethical boundary. (Witness the Soviet surveillance state, with their relatively primitive tech.)
Now with massive computing power, ubiquitous observation (you know, to protect us from "terrorists") and our digital-online lives, now they can accomplish nearly-universal surveillance, and do. To expect otherwise is grossly naive.
"As an American" you have a a very particularist, ethnocentric view of the US government: every/any state with a preponderance of power has cheerfully indulged in such behaviors. You expect the US to be different why?
That doesn't excuse it, instead it justifies every effort to constrain and limit the power of government WHEREVER it tries to grow. I find it ironic that many of the people complaining about government prying into their affairs have simultaneously practically invited government up their ass.touting Obamacare.
How are gun rights advocates in any way supportive of 'corporations are people' - except insofar as "they disagree with mark_reh"?
I strongly support the second amendment, and I think the 'corporations are people' thing is utterly nonsensical.
I support the second amendment for the simple fact that as a law-abiding citizen who has never broken a law, there should be no prophylactic prohibition against me owning one, presupposing I "might" be dangerous. Simple as that. I don't conceal-carry for precisely the reason you state - the chances of me actually witnessing a crime, and being in a position or skilled enough to contribute usefully is functionally zero.
Dave Lane, who runs the Abbey Ridge Observatory (ARO) in Nova Scotia took the pictures. Dad (Paul Gray) set up the computer to align images. Dad set up the program to flicker the images between two panels. Dad gave daughter (in 2011) 52 images, she found a discrepancy on the 4th. Dad gave son some more images this year, he found discrepancy the same way. In both cases, Dad did the subsequent digging, comparing the data to known bursts, planetismals, etc. and declared what was found a nova.
It's wonderful that these kids have an attraction to astronomy, I wish I'd had a dad that was that interested, but what they did could honestly have been accomplished by a preliterate 4 yr old with a moderate attention span.
Watch two images flicker back and forth. Note differences.
Sorry, but they didn't "discover" supernovas any more than I 'discovered' gravity today by knocking a spoon off the counter.
...or are all these proposals for 'new' 'secure' cloud and email systems probably doing nothing more than waking up the NSA that they can't just doze through bulk downloads of foreign-traffic data any longer?
I mean seriously, the tyros in the NSA are probably *welcoming* the new challenge of some serious crypto to crack...and most of these new programs are going to be hacked and downloading again almost unhindered by lunchtime of launch day.
Eventually they'll get to the logical conclusion that armed guards everywhere are the answer and circle back to conceding that the 2nd amendment might actually be the solution.
The you need to start a PV company, and start selling PV panels.
If it's as obvious and simple as you claim, then you'll be a billionaire in no time.
I'm not being flippant - if every internet wanker claiming that they know "the secret" to energy self-sufficiency were to just be right 1% of the time, we'd have no problems today.
Not only are the team of engineers that could have done this work long since retired or dead, so too apparently is anyone that can put out a credible disinformation campaign.
I seem to recall some anecdote from at least 10 years ago in which an artificial life program, running/evolving on a desktop machine 'learned' to use the power hardware in the computer to signal externally using emf to an adjacent system (I think the neighboring system was a monitoring system that was empowered to 'dump' "food" into the primary when it hit certain breakpoints, and the AI was triggering that faster or something).
That could be apocryphal, though, as I've never seen anything more about it and can't find anything on the web about it (well, it could be buried under other web hits as anything relating to artificial life/intelligence gets buried in educational hits).
Slashdot Mirror
...Argentina immediately claimed that the satellite was, in fact, theirs.
That's a very convenient viewpoint, of course.
So a statement about how a giant chunk of the US is "poor" and the reasons therefore, without attribution.
A counterpost is made, HEAVILY attributed with references including the US Census data (seriously, how is that "spin"?), and the response is to dismiss because "that's just propaganda - the best lies are mostly true".
Seriously?
When you have a ready rationalization at hand so you don't have to dispute actual facts and attributions in favor of blanket generalizations, you might just want to check your internal biases again.
Yeah, crazy how that ends up making the US "....World Giving Index: US Ranked Most Charitable Country On Earth"
You mean those people who - because they are largely churchgoers - represent the largest outpouring of donated money and goods in the country?
Yeah, horrible bunch, them.
...perhaps I could correct this a little: ..."
"'U.S. citizens have passively accepted weak privacy rules that let companies collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers' lives
I keep hearing about the "US govt" this and "companies" that.
The fact is that the whole 'privacy' thing is comparable to the cigarette issue for the last 50 years....NOBODY believed cigarettes were in any way good for you, and by the late 1960s pretty much everyone recognized that they were quite harmful (regardless of what the cigarette companies insisted).
In short, the consumers willfully participated and knew (when they bothered to think about it) that companies were collecting massive amounts of data with every transaction, using (without complaint) their social security number as an id#, etc.
When I've got a friend or three complaining about companies/government gathering private data, they're usually paying for their meal with a credit card.
Except that's wrong.
Yes, our official aid is small, but I know for the calculations for the Indonesian tsunami that I watched in detail, +none+ of the reported aid-tallies included the scores of millions of $ spent by the US on providing an entire carrier group for months, plus dozens of other in-kind services; most of them likewise disregarded or underreported private and church-based aid which is often multiples of the "official" dollar amounts, and completely dwarfs such aid from all other countries combined.
So no, actually, studies have routinely showed that the amount of aid coming from the US +and its citizens+ regularly exceeds that of anyone else...as it should, as we are wealthy and fortunate.
It's amazing how people that want higher taxes pretty much universally want them for other people first, isn't it?
I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".
It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references:
[1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374.
[2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.
[3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011).
[4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011).
[5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
[6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011).
[7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of
Except - here's the interesting thing: Americans aren't poor by any reasonable standard.
Here's "poverty" in the US: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor
For example, the average "poor" person actually has more living space (square footage) than the average NONpoor person in Sweden, UK, or France. More than 40% actually own their home.
80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
43 percent have Internet access.
One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
Read the report; the "poverty" line is just a label, and a politically useful one. There's a vast political machine that exists mainly because it's message is "you don't have enough stuff, we'll take it from those guys (who have way too much) and give it to you". The amusing/sad thing is that the people saying that are the same group of guys that have "too much". PRECISELY the same bunch.
The message is convincing to two groups of people: ...which currently exceeds 50% of the electorate.
- those who are simply greedy and want "more"
- those who feel guilty about what they have
Let's put it another way: the US is the richest country the world has ever seen, and is yet unable to live within its means. This would suggest that the sorts of choices that leave a person "poor" are not limited to a social class, but are endemic to the system, top to bottom.
...if only because it gives me a perfect excuse to send my kid to school ENTIRELY encased in bubble wrap, plus a snorkeling mask and snorkel.
I'm pretty sure when they were younger, my sons would have gleefully done it.
And you're just being a demagogue.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress. If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required - and not a bunch of chattering ninnies that have proven their inability to be trusted to keep secrets secret (so as to remain closely advised by the agencies without fear of destroying the value of intel and methods with self-serving 'unattributed' leaks), I don't believe we'd have this problem.
But now we have self-interested politicians, committed to maintaining a political divide and advantage at ANY cost (even to the republic), who thus cannot really be trusted with anything important and who block each other (despite both sides' recognizing the need) from reforming anything substantively. I guess we lose then.
It's a fairly black/white alternative; either:
- people are free to do what they want, in which case the collective good is often overlooked (the tragedy of the commons)
or
- someone (be they an individual, a council, a congress, whatever) is given the power to tell people what they must do.
Granted, my comparison is hyperbolic and rhetorical, mainly as a reaction to the fairly blanket condemnation of capitalism in the OP. In the same way that I would characterize "pure" capitalism as anarchic, the opposite would be totalitarianist.
There are many ways individuals can for example collectively decide to act in a way that's good for "the commons"; unfortunately, people eventually always cheat - then one returns to the notion that either they are free agents or they are subjects of 'the agreement and its designated agents'.
Now that my post title earns me a +1 "slashdot loves it", perhaps people will consider this:
*Perhaps* when your country is $trillions$ in debt, one should strongly consider carefully justifying every single program - NSF included - for its expected value and relevance to the national interest.
Lest someone believe I'm being tendentious here, I fully agree that this same metric SHOULD be applied to the bullshit military programs (cancel the LCS - both versions are equally stupid - instantly, for example) as well.
Perhaps EVERY dollar the government spends (you know, since it was taken from some taxpayer at the barrel of a proverbial gun) should be vetted carefully, including congressional haircuts and other benefits. Here's an idea: for every year since congress last passed a budget (you know, their fundamental job) we simply refuse to pay their pensions?
Does market capitalism solve everything? No. It has some glaring weaknesses.
I'll still take it over totalitarianism - no matter how benign or benevolent it says it will be.
Seems to me that any perverse sexual deviance simply needs to reach a certain level of popularity (say, allegedly 10%) and Hollywood will promote it merely as an alternative lifestyle.
Nonsense. The only reason historically that government (and by that I mean any government) didn't spy on everyone was a lack of resources, not some sort of ethical boundary. (Witness the Soviet surveillance state, with their relatively primitive tech.)
Now with massive computing power, ubiquitous observation (you know, to protect us from "terrorists") and our digital-online lives, now they can accomplish nearly-universal surveillance, and do. To expect otherwise is grossly naive.
"As an American" you have a a very particularist, ethnocentric view of the US government: every/any state with a preponderance of power has cheerfully indulged in such behaviors. You expect the US to be different why?
That doesn't excuse it, instead it justifies every effort to constrain and limit the power of government WHEREVER it tries to grow. I find it ironic that many of the people complaining about government prying into their affairs have simultaneously practically invited government up their ass.touting Obamacare.
What?
Your comment drifts from cogent to batshit.
How are gun rights advocates in any way supportive of 'corporations are people' - except insofar as "they disagree with mark_reh"?
I strongly support the second amendment, and I think the 'corporations are people' thing is utterly nonsensical.
I support the second amendment for the simple fact that as a law-abiding citizen who has never broken a law, there should be no prophylactic prohibition against me owning one, presupposing I "might" be dangerous. Simple as that. I don't conceal-carry for precisely the reason you state - the chances of me actually witnessing a crime, and being in a position or skilled enough to contribute usefully is functionally zero.
Dave Lane, who runs the Abbey Ridge Observatory (ARO) in Nova Scotia took the pictures.
Dad (Paul Gray) set up the computer to align images.
Dad set up the program to flicker the images between two panels.
Dad gave daughter (in 2011) 52 images, she found a discrepancy on the 4th.
Dad gave son some more images this year, he found discrepancy the same way.
In both cases, Dad did the subsequent digging, comparing the data to known bursts, planetismals, etc. and declared what was found a nova.
It's wonderful that these kids have an attraction to astronomy, I wish I'd had a dad that was that interested, but what they did could honestly have been accomplished by a preliterate 4 yr old with a moderate attention span.
Watch two images flicker back and forth. Note differences.
Sorry, but they didn't "discover" supernovas any more than I 'discovered' gravity today by knocking a spoon off the counter.
...or are all these proposals for 'new' 'secure' cloud and email systems probably doing nothing more than waking up the NSA that they can't just doze through bulk downloads of foreign-traffic data any longer?
I mean seriously, the tyros in the NSA are probably *welcoming* the new challenge of some serious crypto to crack...and most of these new programs are going to be hacked and downloading again almost unhindered by lunchtime of launch day.
Eventually they'll get to the logical conclusion that armed guards everywhere are the answer and circle back to conceding that the 2nd amendment might actually be the solution.
The you need to start a PV company, and start selling PV panels.
If it's as obvious and simple as you claim, then you'll be a billionaire in no time.
I'm not being flippant - if every internet wanker claiming that they know "the secret" to energy self-sufficiency were to just be right 1% of the time, we'd have no problems today.
Not only are the team of engineers that could have done this work long since retired or dead, so too apparently is anyone that can put out a credible disinformation campaign.
How did he have a gun in the airport?
Guns are banned there, the sign CLEARLY says so.
I mean, that's why pretty much nobody else was armed, right?
I seem to recall some anecdote from at least 10 years ago in which an artificial life program, running/evolving on a desktop machine 'learned' to use the power hardware in the computer to signal externally using emf to an adjacent system (I think the neighboring system was a monitoring system that was empowered to 'dump' "food" into the primary when it hit certain breakpoints, and the AI was triggering that faster or something).
That could be apocryphal, though, as I've never seen anything more about it and can't find anything on the web about it (well, it could be buried under other web hits as anything relating to artificial life/intelligence gets buried in educational hits).
calvary != cavalry.
One is the hill where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.
One is soldiers riding horses into combat.