Let's see, there are in a sense two competing technologies here. There is the technology for resource acquisition from the earth in raw form - mining, etc. This is a very gentle 'slope' meaning it can be begun by even the simplest cultures. Then there is the technology of efficient resource RECOVERY from pre-used sources (recycling). This seems to be a much steeper slope tech, as the cost/benefit doesn't (apparently) turn positive for a very long time in a culture's development.
Both of these techs will continue to develop, of course. It may be the we are headed for a time where resource recovery - at least for several critical items - will end up being more economically viable than acquisition. It already seems to be there for some items like copper.
I appreciate the concern of the article that lost helium is irrecoverable; nevertheless it appears that quite a bit is currently going unclaimed, so there's really not a SHORTAGE. There's merely a shortage of CHEAP helium.
It may be that in the future there is a third technology: with abundant/limitless energy resources, it may become true that resource CREATION from element manipulation is cheaper/easier than either acquisition or recovery, but I'd expect this only to be true for exceedingly precious materials.
Don;t forget: I can watch a movie when I've got nothing else to do: Check
Look, obsess all you want about DRM (why, did you pay for the movies and want to make copies?), low-def (TV resolution... maybe I'm a Neanderthal, but as much as I love watching movies in high-def, moderate resolutions - esp if I'm watching on a 15-17" monitor or laptop - are perfectly fine) Watch only on computer (simply wrong - dude, buy decent video card and a cable?) Limited Selection: true No non-streaming option: well, no, it's a 'streaming movie service' not a video download service. Your computer doesn't make orange juice, either. No Linux/Mac: your choice to run those OS's (shrug)....but the fact is that after the TV news is over and I have the choice of watching crappy TV or DVD's that I've already viewed, I can browse around Netflix and find a Jim Gaffigan video or perhaps Last of the Mohicans - well, it's better than nothing and it's FREE.
"I applaud people being proactive in preventing governmental abuse of power."
I do too. I just have some trouble sorting them out from the shrill 'activists' who ceaselessly complain about meaningless inconveniences and ridiculously hyperbolize in pursuit of "their cause", for example equating benign incarceration with "a holocaust", or the idea that the FBI are jackbooted fascists just WAITING for their opportunity to oppress someone, anyone, to work out their "inner Goebbels".
I like the associated linked story: "REAL ID In Its Death Throes, Says ACLU"
I know people are going to flame about this, but seriously, on my list of urgent daily concerns...this ranks somewhere below seeing the replies to my slashdot posts.
National ID mandated? (shrug) My civil rights are being infringed, somehow? (shrug)
I'll get upset when it gets in my way. Getting all frothy and bothered about something before it happens is the luxury of those with too much time on their hands.
I replied more expansively to an earlier similar comment, but to reply to yours seriously: it's possible, yes, that couches are created (by market forces) due to the need for Fat Men to have a place to sit while watching TV.
I'd assert it's more likely that a comfy couch in proximity to a nice TV is reasonably likely to fatten a randomly present man.
This allegory illustrates my point. The simple presence of two things together aren't ipso facto a causal relationship, even it seems plausible. Occam's razor applies, of course, but there could be many formulations of cause & effect that involve the 3 entities (TV, Fat Man, and Couch) which are either discrete, or even rely on the permutation of some other, assumed ambient condition to end with the observed effect. This range of formulations are also going to have a range of probabilities ranging from the likely to the absurd.
But to go back to the OP, it should be abundantly clear that simply because A and B coexist, A was not THEREFORE causing B, which seems to be the basis for their supposition that hard x-ray binaries are causing the positron densities. TFA doesn't even HINT at a mechanism, but in fact says essentially "we don't really know how it would do it but anyway we think this is the case"...I'd say that's logical weaksauce and the sort of thing that would/should get a grant proposal tossed into the dustbin without someone doing the intervening step of coming up with a reasonably plausible mechanism HOW they could be connected, at least theoretically.
I know you were going for +1 funny, but you actually prove my point.
Fat Men + Televisions = Couches (which I'd used as my example) is not the same as Televisions + Couches = Fat men --- which you assert and I would agree is arguably more likely.
Referring to the OP, they say that these binary pairs are creating a high quantity of positrons. One might alternatively suggest either: - a high density of positrons in the neighborhood makes it more likely you get these binary systems or (more likely, in my view) - whatever local condition or phenomena is creating the higher positron frequency is ALSO conducive to more of these particular types of binary pairs. . .... both hypothesis then substantially & logically contradict TFA's assertion that these pairs are CREATING the positrons. And I believe (IANAA) that either is reasonably likely.
I don't think it takes an astrophysicist to understand that correlation does not prove causation?
Facts (as far as I can tell from TFA): There's an asymmetry in the positron cloud at the center of the galaxy. There is a SIMILAR asymmetry in the distribution of low-mass, x-ray binary stellar systems.
How do you go from that to some sort of causation?
By the same logic, fat men and televisions in close proximity are CREATING couches.
The current system, with all of its perceived unfairness, will NEVER be changed because it is impossible to imagine any objective change (if one could find one) satisfactory to enough of the whinging, worthless class of people that live on politics, both inside and outside the beltway.
EVEN IF A SYSTEM WAS DEVELOPED BY SOMEONE UTTERLY OBJECTIVELY (and who with any credibility at that level of political events is considered objective?), some troglodytes in the basement of the GOP or the DNC would crunch the numbers in all conceivable situations and find that there MIGHT be a 0.0001% advantage to the other side, causing said party to throw its entire weight and propoganda engine against such a plan.
It's the reason the Constitution is similarly safe. Most people at least dimly perceive that it's better to have something less than perfect, than to let slimy politicoes unlock the cabinet and "improve" (dry-hump) it until it disintegrates and loses all value.
Ah, but how do you identify something as self-evidently "stupid", when every effort is made to protect people from the consequences of their actions?
What's so sad is that this relatively simple and clear-cut incident is being so vehemently argued by some.
It seems a parallel to our society where nobody wants to take responsibility for any choices they make. If I CHOOSE to drop out of (free) public education, if I CHOOSE to have children before marriage, and if I CHOOSE to get married before I'm 21, I just hit the 3 key predictors (to 90%+) of a lifetime of poverty in the US. I will probably be poor, entirely through choices I made. Yet, there is an abundant safety net of government money and programs to make sure my life is tolerable.
Seems to me that we've taken empathy for our fellow citizens (and in this case, proto-citizens) entirely too far when we protect them from the relatively trivial negative results of stupid choices.
1) The 'carbon trading system' is itself non-progressive, in the sense that it promotes NOTHING in the sense of preventing the emission of carbon. All people are doing is justifying their carbon emissions by pointing at some other carbon sequestration going on somewhere else. Sure, there is a TINY incentive to perform carbon sequestration but since there is so much capacity elsewhere and the revenue generated by incremental change is infinitesimal, that's really no incentive at all.
2) "There's a heightened potential for deception" - ya think? A globe-spanning system of compelling people into spending their money, which is neither monitored, audited, nor regulated by any objective authority. One might think that there would be an incentive for the members which feed off that system...be they scientists getting grants to study it, former government officials who are paid ridiculous fees to talk about it (& they get world recognition and adulation, itself a useful currency), or the mandarin who pass these off as genuine transactions... might have an incentive to overvalue what they are selling? I'd be curious to see how many of the alleged owners of carbon credits (which should be anyone that owns forestland or farmland, right?) ACTUALLY have seen a dime of the guilt-money wrung from the first world on their behalf. It's White Guilt that you can absolve with CASH! W00t! Perfect for your (white) wealthy urbanite who feels that somehow they don't deserve the abundance around them. Now they can sleep with the peace of moral certitude, for only $X.
I stand on a beach. The tide has rolled out. I say "look at all this cool free land that nobody owns!" and my friends and I promptly build houses on it. When the tide inevitably rolls back in, I cry to the government that they must save us, and I make a tendentious movie purporting to prove that the tide has only now rolled in since humans built on the beach, that it MUST be humans' fault. Different time scales, but otherwise just as stupid.
I'm from Eden Prairie. "I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school." Short answer: They weren't.
An anonymous person stopped by the high school and dropped off a CD containing the images saved off numerous Facebook sites.
Links as well, I believe, but am not sure. Of course speculation is that it was some kid who wasn't invited; I rather speculate it was a parent who was sick of the hypocrisy of the rules never being enforced, and dropped it off to confront the administration and FORCE them to act.
And for the Europeans who feel our 'policies on alcohol are bizarre': let's remember - to participate in student athletics in Minnesota, EVERY student must sign a pledge to entirely abstain from alcohol or tobacco as a student athlete, and (as I recall, it was 20 years ago I was in EPHS) even to avoid being PRESENT at such activities. Say what you want about the motivation behind the rule, the simple fact is that every one of them signed such a promise and are now blatantly proved to be breaking it. Busted.
My cynical view is that I would like to know WHEN this CD was dropped off. EP is a perennial powerhouse dominant in the local football league...coincidentally football season *just* ended 6 weeks ago. So no real penalties nor damage to the football team.
Y'know, even as annoyed as I was/am with SciAm, I'd say you're overstating my point.
To be clear: (and here I'm almost quoting from my last letter to their editors, I wish I could find it...) I'm not suggesting that they are part of some sort of sinister Leftist cabal. Not at all. I find academics tend to have a leftish bias, and in my view they are letting this inform too much of their writing.
For example, I particularly recall one editorial that attacked the concept of anti-ballistic-missile defense. they listed out the now-ubiquitous arguments of applicability (it's doubtful a nuclear attack on the US would come via missile when shipping a warhead here in a container is so much easier), economy (it costs so much to do so little), and geopolitics.
My beef with Sci Am is NOT that they as individuals hold these views. But as in so many fields, I've found that brilliant scientists (be they biochemists, physicists, or editors of scientific magazines) tend to presume that their brilliance logically applies to any OTHER field that they happen to be interested in. As I put it to Scientific American editors: If Henry Kissenger submitted an article to them on the reactions of protease inhibitors or the evolution of quasars, they'd be laughing out loud. Yet they don't HESITATE to wax poetic making authoritative pre/proscriptions regarding the nuances of international diplomacy - a field whose subtleties, I suspect, they have little actual experience with.
And this is where I term them a 'liberal advocacy magazine'. A science magazine is supposed to be about science - which CERTAINLY has its share of loaded political and social biases, but at least the intent is to try to get past them to the data and conclusions supported by testing and evidence. An advocacy magazine is equally legitimate, but dispassionate objectivity is no longer the goal. I believe this describes SciAm's position at this time.
They had exhibited a definite political point of view, no doubt due to the change of editorship. I noticed the new 'tone' of their articles for several months before writing them in 2003, telling them that as a longtime subscriber I was unhappy with the polemic, political stance that they'd decided to take. By 2005, I'd had enough - they no longer were simply describing science or explaining the cutting edge of science discourse; they had decided to become a liberal advocacy magazine and I decided my subscription was better spent on what I was looking for. I've found it in the excellent and much more timely Science News - no political crap, just an update on the newest SCIENCE.
Hey, they don't need my paltry subscription; I'm sure that despite the two letters I sent, they couldn't care less that I'm gone. But I did what I felt was right, and I'm happy about that.
American website, discussing an article written by an American about American television news, and specifically American television networks and the American television program Dateline NBC.
So, sorry I just jumped to the radical unwarranted assumption that we were discussing this in an American context.
Watch the now-common minute+ length "sponsored by...." COMMERCIALS and you'll see that they are simply tarted-up advertisements as well. Of course, with more sophisticated fish, you need more subtle bait....perhaps the mere advertising of this company's social "altruism" itself is succulent enough to suck in one more victim?
Here's a hint: any donation that isn't anonymous is about ego, not genuine altruism.
"Both of us have no problem (and quite enjoy) violent video games. What happens when we have a kid?"
Probably the same thing most people do who enjoy adult entertainments but then have kids (drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, etc.): if you're responsible, you're going to be awed by how impressionable and vulnerable this little mind is. You're going to realize with shock, and not a little trepidation, that you could essentially make this kid do anything, eventually, and moreover they'd accept it as NORMAL (at least until school age or more likely teenage).
Therefore you're going to insulate your children from your 'hobby'; if necessary, set aside your hobby in favor of their best interest (because it's not about you anymore, right?). Then, as you raise them to be intelligent, thoughtful, responsible actors in society, you'll probably loosen the reins little by little so that they are exposed to your preferred lifestyle, and they can learn about it even if not really participate.
Once they are near-adults, you can essentially then go back to whatever you used to be (if you still find it interesting) and they will be equipped with the moral, intellectual, and character traits that allow them to make an informed decision if they want to emulate you or not.
Pretty much anything else is horribly, horrifically selfish.
I heard in 2007 that there was a serious threat of SETI being shut down for lack of funding.
If this is how they're spending it, they should be. I'm a staunch technophile, and I believe SETI is worth doing but a junket is a junket and wasted TAX DOLLARS is bullshit.
A ten hour flight in a government/private Gulfstream over the arctic to view a meteorite shower?
For Pete's sake, people, remember who is the customer in the "TV transaction".
It's NOT the viewers. It's the ADVERTISERS.
The advertisers pay the stations to wave their products in front of X number of eyeballs. The television shows (and yes, that includes news shows) are simply the bait to keep X at the highest possible number. The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT. Since the presence of bait+advertising is zero-sum (ie more bait means less minutes of advertising to viewers), then the ONLY tactical goal of the studio is to make a show that will keep a person watching even when the bait is taken away (commercial breaks).
Keep that in mind at all times, and you'll find that watching TV, while occasionally entertaining, quickly becomes repulsive.
I actually find it sociologically interesting and amusing that you are so well programmed into the nannystate that you assume without hesitation that I would disagree with your premise.
What if I said instead that I would prefer a society where muggers would run a reasonable risk of getting killed by holding up average citizens? I expect that such a society would have substantially less petty crime.
...nature's way of telling you that you're a dumbass.
It's financial Darwinism. And, as mentioned many times, the best cons take advantage of someone who "THINKS" that they are scamming someone else, to get something for nothing.
If you are SO gullible, that you think the widow of a Nigerian minister will out of the blue contact you to help claim $millions in aid money, then you, sir or madam, are a dumbass. I don't care if you're a blue-haired granny who makes wonderful cookies for your grandchildren and always is willing to help someone down on their luck.
Dumbass doesn't mean "bad", it just means stupid. And you can't legislate against stupidity. You can apparently ELECT it, but you can't legislate against it.
The moral of this of course, is that if granny gets taken to the cleaners, then perhaps her family shouldn't have let granny so loose on the financial leash, should they? And the upshot of that? Pay attention to the people you care about. Be interested in them and their lives, in what they're doing. If they're going off the rails and you care about them, get involved.
...is that pretty much every dream researcher has his or her own f'cked-up dream experiences, and it's much less stressful to assume that everyone ELSE has the same f'cked up dreams than to go get therapy for oneself.
Having just been on vacation and getting ample sleep, I found myself remembering a large number of dreams over the past week. None were terrifying, none were in any way 'threat simulations', and most were quite pleasurable, if a bit weird.
Perhaps this particular researcher just needs to relax a little?
"I changed my mind about wanting to live in the US in 2007. It seems worth seriously considering a move to another country or even another continent. I'm thinking about vacationing in London. Canada and the UK don't seem like bad ideas right now. There's more wrong with this country than its president."
Meh; talk is cheap. Let me know when you actually move.
I used to think like you do, about how much is farking wrong with this place and how other countries seem to 'get it' better than we do on so many issues. But then working for an international megacorp, I *do* have the fortunate opportunity for extended stays in other countries from Sweden and Germany to the Far East.
Now, with a little more maturity, I'll continue to insist that very, very many things in the US are messed up, but I'd still rather live nowhere else. I own a 3400 sq ft, 5 bedroom home (roughly 340 sqm for you Continentals) for which I paid (in 1993) $105k, on the edge of a major metro area. Everything I could possibly want - from clear, drinkably clean fishing lakes, to ample farmer's markets with locally-grown produce (4-5 months of the year anyway), major sports, drama, and commercial venues are all within 1 hours' drive (sadly, no mountains tho). Within 4 hours drive I can be in a wilderness where I have camped without seeing another person or even a contrail of an aircraft for more than a week.
And yes, our government's screwed up. But there aren't any places in the world that I can think of where a government is MORE restrained from accomplishing anything than here, and the longer I live, the more I see that is a great thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see, there are in a sense two competing technologies here.
There is the technology for resource acquisition from the earth in raw form - mining, etc. This is a very gentle 'slope' meaning it can be begun by even the simplest cultures.
Then there is the technology of efficient resource RECOVERY from pre-used sources (recycling). This seems to be a much steeper slope tech, as the cost/benefit doesn't (apparently) turn positive for a very long time in a culture's development.
Both of these techs will continue to develop, of course. It may be the we are headed for a time where resource recovery - at least for several critical items - will end up being more economically viable than acquisition. It already seems to be there for some items like copper.
I appreciate the concern of the article that lost helium is irrecoverable; nevertheless it appears that quite a bit is currently going unclaimed, so there's really not a SHORTAGE. There's merely a shortage of CHEAP helium.
It may be that in the future there is a third technology: with abundant/limitless energy resources, it may become true that resource CREATION from element manipulation is cheaper/easier than either acquisition or recovery, but I'd expect this only to be true for exceedingly precious materials.
Don;t forget: I can watch a movie when I've got nothing else to do: Check
....but the fact is that after the TV news is over and I have the choice of watching crappy TV or DVD's that I've already viewed, I can browse around Netflix and find a Jim Gaffigan video or perhaps Last of the Mohicans - well, it's better than nothing and it's FREE.
Look, obsess all you want about
DRM (why, did you pay for the movies and want to make copies?),
low-def (TV resolution... maybe I'm a Neanderthal, but as much as I love watching movies in high-def, moderate resolutions - esp if I'm watching on a 15-17" monitor or laptop - are perfectly fine)
Watch only on computer (simply wrong - dude, buy decent video card and a cable?)
Limited Selection: true
No non-streaming option: well, no, it's a 'streaming movie service' not a video download service. Your computer doesn't make orange juice, either.
No Linux/Mac: your choice to run those OS's (shrug)
"I applaud people being proactive in preventing governmental abuse of power."
I do too. I just have some trouble sorting them out from the shrill 'activists' who ceaselessly complain about meaningless inconveniences and ridiculously hyperbolize in pursuit of "their cause", for example equating benign incarceration with "a holocaust", or the idea that the FBI are jackbooted fascists just WAITING for their opportunity to oppress someone, anyone, to work out their "inner Goebbels".
How do you tell the difference?
I like the associated linked story: "REAL ID In Its Death Throes, Says ACLU"
I know people are going to flame about this, but seriously, on my list of urgent daily concerns...this ranks somewhere below seeing the replies to my slashdot posts.
National ID mandated? (shrug)
My civil rights are being infringed, somehow? (shrug)
I'll get upset when it gets in my way. Getting all frothy and bothered about something before it happens is the luxury of those with too much time on their hands.
I replied more expansively to an earlier similar comment, but to reply to yours seriously:
it's possible, yes, that couches are created (by market forces) due to the need for Fat Men to have a place to sit while watching TV.
I'd assert it's more likely that a comfy couch in proximity to a nice TV is reasonably likely to fatten a randomly present man.
This allegory illustrates my point. The simple presence of two things together aren't ipso facto a causal relationship, even it seems plausible. Occam's razor applies, of course, but there could be many formulations of cause & effect that involve the 3 entities (TV, Fat Man, and Couch) which are either discrete, or even rely on the permutation of some other, assumed ambient condition to end with the observed effect. This range of formulations are also going to have a range of probabilities ranging from the likely to the absurd.
But to go back to the OP, it should be abundantly clear that simply because A and B coexist, A was not THEREFORE causing B, which seems to be the basis for their supposition that hard x-ray binaries are causing the positron densities. TFA doesn't even HINT at a mechanism, but in fact says essentially "we don't really know how it would do it but anyway we think this is the case"...I'd say that's logical weaksauce and the sort of thing that would/should get a grant proposal tossed into the dustbin without someone doing the intervening step of coming up with a reasonably plausible mechanism HOW they could be connected, at least theoretically.
I know you were going for +1 funny, but you actually prove my point.
... both hypothesis then substantially & logically contradict TFA's assertion that these pairs are CREATING the positrons. And I believe (IANAA) that either is reasonably likely.
Fat Men + Televisions = Couches (which I'd used as my example)
is not the same as
Televisions + Couches = Fat men --- which you assert and I would agree is arguably more likely.
Referring to the OP, they say that these binary pairs are creating a high quantity of positrons.
One might alternatively suggest either:
- a high density of positrons in the neighborhood makes it more likely you get these binary systems
or
(more likely, in my view) - whatever local condition or phenomena is creating the higher positron frequency is ALSO conducive to more of these particular types of binary pairs.
.
.
I don't think it takes an astrophysicist to understand that correlation does not prove causation?
Facts (as far as I can tell from TFA):
There's an asymmetry in the positron cloud at the center of the galaxy.
There is a SIMILAR asymmetry in the distribution of low-mass, x-ray binary stellar systems.
How do you go from that to some sort of causation?
By the same logic, fat men and televisions in close proximity are CREATING couches.
Slashdot, where the brave crusaders against perceived racism show their strength of character... by flinging turds anonymously from the shadows.
The current system, with all of its perceived unfairness, will NEVER be changed because it is impossible to imagine any objective change (if one could find one) satisfactory to enough of the whinging, worthless class of people that live on politics, both inside and outside the beltway.
EVEN IF A SYSTEM WAS DEVELOPED BY SOMEONE UTTERLY OBJECTIVELY (and who with any credibility at that level of political events is considered objective?), some troglodytes in the basement of the GOP or the DNC would crunch the numbers in all conceivable situations and find that there MIGHT be a 0.0001% advantage to the other side, causing said party to throw its entire weight and propoganda engine against such a plan.
It's the reason the Constitution is similarly safe. Most people at least dimly perceive that it's better to have something less than perfect, than to let slimy politicoes unlock the cabinet and "improve" (dry-hump) it until it disintegrates and loses all value.
"kids do stupid things; adults do stupid things"
Ah, but how do you identify something as self-evidently "stupid", when every effort is made to protect people from the consequences of their actions?
What's so sad is that this relatively simple and clear-cut incident is being so vehemently argued by some.
It seems a parallel to our society where nobody wants to take responsibility for any choices they make. If I CHOOSE to drop out of (free) public education, if I CHOOSE to have children before marriage, and if I CHOOSE to get married before I'm 21, I just hit the 3 key predictors (to 90%+) of a lifetime of poverty in the US. I will probably be poor, entirely through choices I made. Yet, there is an abundant safety net of government money and programs to make sure my life is tolerable.
Seems to me that we've taken empathy for our fellow citizens (and in this case, proto-citizens) entirely too far when we protect them from the relatively trivial negative results of stupid choices.
1) The 'carbon trading system' is itself non-progressive, in the sense that it promotes NOTHING in the sense of preventing the emission of carbon. All people are doing is justifying their carbon emissions by pointing at some other carbon sequestration going on somewhere else. Sure, there is a TINY incentive to perform carbon sequestration but since there is so much capacity elsewhere and the revenue generated by incremental change is infinitesimal, that's really no incentive at all.
... might have an incentive to overvalue what they are selling? I'd be curious to see how many of the alleged owners of carbon credits (which should be anyone that owns forestland or farmland, right?) ACTUALLY have seen a dime of the guilt-money wrung from the first world on their behalf. It's White Guilt that you can absolve with CASH! W00t! Perfect for your (white) wealthy urbanite who feels that somehow they don't deserve the abundance around them. Now they can sleep with the peace of moral certitude, for only $X.
2) "There's a heightened potential for deception" - ya think? A globe-spanning system of compelling people into spending their money, which is neither monitored, audited, nor regulated by any objective authority. One might think that there would be an incentive for the members which feed off that system...be they scientists getting grants to study it, former government officials who are paid ridiculous fees to talk about it (& they get world recognition and adulation, itself a useful currency), or the mandarin who pass these off as genuine transactions
I stand on a beach. The tide has rolled out. I say "look at all this cool free land that nobody owns!" and my friends and I promptly build houses on it. When the tide inevitably rolls back in, I cry to the government that they must save us, and I make a tendentious movie purporting to prove that the tide has only now rolled in since humans built on the beach, that it MUST be humans' fault.
Different time scales, but otherwise just as stupid.
I'm from Eden Prairie.
"I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school."
Short answer: They weren't.
An anonymous person stopped by the high school and dropped off a CD containing the images saved off numerous Facebook sites.
Links as well, I believe, but am not sure. Of course speculation is that it was some kid who wasn't invited; I rather speculate it was a parent who was sick of the hypocrisy of the rules never being enforced, and dropped it off to confront the administration and FORCE them to act.
And for the Europeans who feel our 'policies on alcohol are bizarre': let's remember - to participate in student athletics in Minnesota, EVERY student must sign a pledge to entirely abstain from alcohol or tobacco as a student athlete, and (as I recall, it was 20 years ago I was in EPHS) even to avoid being PRESENT at such activities. Say what you want about the motivation behind the rule, the simple fact is that every one of them signed such a promise and are now blatantly proved to be breaking it. Busted.
My cynical view is that I would like to know WHEN this CD was dropped off. EP is a perennial powerhouse dominant in the local football league...coincidentally football season *just* ended 6 weeks ago. So no real penalties nor damage to the football team.
Y'know, even as annoyed as I was/am with SciAm, I'd say you're overstating my point.
To be clear: (and here I'm almost quoting from my last letter to their editors, I wish I could find it...) I'm not suggesting that they are part of some sort of sinister Leftist cabal. Not at all. I find academics tend to have a leftish bias, and in my view they are letting this inform too much of their writing.
For example, I particularly recall one editorial that attacked the concept of anti-ballistic-missile defense. they listed out the now-ubiquitous arguments of applicability (it's doubtful a nuclear attack on the US would come via missile when shipping a warhead here in a container is so much easier), economy (it costs so much to do so little), and geopolitics.
My beef with Sci Am is NOT that they as individuals hold these views. But as in so many fields, I've found that brilliant scientists (be they biochemists, physicists, or editors of scientific magazines) tend to presume that their brilliance logically applies to any OTHER field that they happen to be interested in. As I put it to Scientific American editors: If Henry Kissenger submitted an article to them on the reactions of protease inhibitors or the evolution of quasars, they'd be laughing out loud. Yet they don't HESITATE to wax poetic making authoritative pre/proscriptions regarding the nuances of international diplomacy - a field whose subtleties, I suspect, they have little actual experience with.
And this is where I term them a 'liberal advocacy magazine'. A science magazine is supposed to be about science - which CERTAINLY has its share of loaded political and social biases, but at least the intent is to try to get past them to the data and conclusions supported by testing and evidence. An advocacy magazine is equally legitimate, but dispassionate objectivity is no longer the goal. I believe this describes SciAm's position at this time.
...after being a subscriber for 21 years.
They had exhibited a definite political point of view, no doubt due to the change of editorship. I noticed the new 'tone' of their articles for several months before writing them in 2003, telling them that as a longtime subscriber I was unhappy with the polemic, political stance that they'd decided to take. By 2005, I'd had enough - they no longer were simply describing science or explaining the cutting edge of science discourse; they had decided to become a liberal advocacy magazine and I decided my subscription was better spent on what I was looking for. I've found it in the excellent and much more timely Science News - no political crap, just an update on the newest SCIENCE.
Hey, they don't need my paltry subscription; I'm sure that despite the two letters I sent, they couldn't care less that I'm gone. But I did what I felt was right, and I'm happy about that.
American website, discussing an article written by an American about American television news, and specifically American television networks and the American television program Dateline NBC.
So, sorry I just jumped to the radical unwarranted assumption that we were discussing this in an American context.
Who would that be?
PBS?
AHAAHAHAAHAAHAHA +10, Funny
Watch the now-common minute+ length "sponsored by...." COMMERCIALS and you'll see that they are simply tarted-up advertisements as well. Of course, with more sophisticated fish, you need more subtle bait....perhaps the mere advertising of this company's social "altruism" itself is succulent enough to suck in one more victim?
Here's a hint: any donation that isn't anonymous is about ego, not genuine altruism.
"Both of us have no problem (and quite enjoy) violent video games. What happens when we have a kid?"
Probably the same thing most people do who enjoy adult entertainments but then have kids (drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, etc.): if you're responsible, you're going to be awed by how impressionable and vulnerable this little mind is. You're going to realize with shock, and not a little trepidation, that you could essentially make this kid do anything, eventually, and moreover they'd accept it as NORMAL (at least until school age or more likely teenage).
Therefore you're going to insulate your children from your 'hobby'; if necessary, set aside your hobby in favor of their best interest (because it's not about you anymore, right?). Then, as you raise them to be intelligent, thoughtful, responsible actors in society, you'll probably loosen the reins little by little so that they are exposed to your preferred lifestyle, and they can learn about it even if not really participate.
Once they are near-adults, you can essentially then go back to whatever you used to be (if you still find it interesting) and they will be equipped with the moral, intellectual, and character traits that allow them to make an informed decision if they want to emulate you or not.
Pretty much anything else is horribly, horrifically selfish.
If you watched that much TV, at least it wouldn't have to fall far.
I heard in 2007 that there was a serious threat of SETI being shut down for lack of funding.
If this is how they're spending it, they should be. I'm a staunch technophile, and I believe SETI is worth doing but a junket is a junket and wasted TAX DOLLARS is bullshit.
A ten hour flight in a government/private Gulfstream over the arctic to view a meteorite shower?
What, pray tell, do they expect to learn?
For Pete's sake, people, remember who is the customer in the "TV transaction".
It's NOT the viewers. It's the ADVERTISERS.
The advertisers pay the stations to wave their products in front of X number of eyeballs. The television shows (and yes, that includes news shows) are simply the bait to keep X at the highest possible number. The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT. Since the presence of bait+advertising is zero-sum (ie more bait means less minutes of advertising to viewers), then the ONLY tactical goal of the studio is to make a show that will keep a person watching even when the bait is taken away (commercial breaks).
Keep that in mind at all times, and you'll find that watching TV, while occasionally entertaining, quickly becomes repulsive.
I actually find it sociologically interesting and amusing that you are so well programmed into the nannystate that you assume without hesitation that I would disagree with your premise.
What if I said instead that I would prefer a society where muggers would run a reasonable risk of getting killed by holding up average citizens? I expect that such a society would have substantially less petty crime.
...nature's way of telling you that you're a dumbass.
It's financial Darwinism. And, as mentioned many times, the best cons take advantage of someone who "THINKS" that they are scamming someone else, to get something for nothing.
If you are SO gullible, that you think the widow of a Nigerian minister will out of the blue contact you to help claim $millions in aid money, then you, sir or madam, are a dumbass. I don't care if you're a blue-haired granny who makes wonderful cookies for your grandchildren and always is willing to help someone down on their luck.
Dumbass doesn't mean "bad", it just means stupid. And you can't legislate against stupidity. You can apparently ELECT it, but you can't legislate against it.
The moral of this of course, is that if granny gets taken to the cleaners, then perhaps her family shouldn't have let granny so loose on the financial leash, should they? And the upshot of that? Pay attention to the people you care about. Be interested in them and their lives, in what they're doing. If they're going off the rails and you care about them, get involved.
...is that pretty much every dream researcher has his or her own f'cked-up dream experiences, and it's much less stressful to assume that everyone ELSE has the same f'cked up dreams than to go get therapy for oneself.
Having just been on vacation and getting ample sleep, I found myself remembering a large number of dreams over the past week. None were terrifying, none were in any way 'threat simulations', and most were quite pleasurable, if a bit weird.
Perhaps this particular researcher just needs to relax a little?
Is that 1024-millions, or only 1000?
"I changed my mind about wanting to live in the US in 2007. It seems worth seriously considering a move to another country or even another continent. I'm thinking about vacationing in London. Canada and the UK don't seem like bad ideas right now. There's more wrong with this country than its president."
Meh; talk is cheap. Let me know when you actually move.
I used to think like you do, about how much is farking wrong with this place and how other countries seem to 'get it' better than we do on so many issues. But then working for an international megacorp, I *do* have the fortunate opportunity for extended stays in other countries from Sweden and Germany to the Far East.
Now, with a little more maturity, I'll continue to insist that very, very many things in the US are messed up, but I'd still rather live nowhere else. I own a 3400 sq ft, 5 bedroom home (roughly 340 sqm for you Continentals) for which I paid (in 1993) $105k, on the edge of a major metro area. Everything I could possibly want - from clear, drinkably clean fishing lakes, to ample farmer's markets with locally-grown produce (4-5 months of the year anyway), major sports, drama, and commercial venues are all within 1 hours' drive (sadly, no mountains tho). Within 4 hours drive I can be in a wilderness where I have camped without seeing another person or even a contrail of an aircraft for more than a week.
And yes, our government's screwed up. But there aren't any places in the world that I can think of where a government is MORE restrained from accomplishing anything than here, and the longer I live, the more I see that is a great thing.