I always hear the argument of the lifetime of nuclear waste when people oppose nuclear energy. The reality is, we've already crossed that bridge. Like it or not, we have already created nuclear waste. We are now stuck. So, why not just go ahead and create more if it helps our energy problems? Either way we are going to have to store the stuff for 10,000 years. How much of the waste we have shouldn't matter that much (up to a point).
The article (written by a sociology professor-??!) did make a good point about the realities of nuclear energy:
"The probability of improbable accidents increases with the number of "green" nuclear plants; each "occurrence" awakens memories of all the others, across the world."
No doubt, if we continue to use nuclear energy, there will be another Three Mile Island type incident. No one was actually hurt by Three Mile Island, but the incident made people very afraid.
(Chernobyl, of course, did really hurt people, but that reactor was a poor design with no containment. With proper designs, I do believe accidents like that can be avoided in the future).
Re:Back in the day...
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Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 2, Insightful
And somehow the country did not grind to a halt and fall apart.
True, but how often did people get to travel to the other side of the globe (or country if it's large like the US) for the heck of it? Reasonably priced air travel allows people to see much of the world that they wouldn't get to otherwise. Yes, this is progress!
Re:Back in the day...
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Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Seriously, the week after the grounding of all flights, the air was clearer than it has been in decades. We really have to cut back on useless air travel - it's a "luxury" our children will be paying for, and cursing us for. Take a train, take a boat, take some TIME and enjoy it - getting there is supposed to be half the fun.
Seriously, you can't be serious. Maybe you are a student with months of vacation a year, but the rest of us simply don't have the time. An hour of air travel (actual flight time) equals a day of travel by other means.
No air travel for me would mean... No vacations further than 2 days car/train travel. No conferences or meetings further than 1 day car/train travel. Many fewer visits to my parents (although my wife might consider this a good thing).
That's not to say if prices go way up, people won't adjust. People flew much less in the 60's. Although I don't think we'll get to that point, we will surely see people fly less as costs go up. To expect people to take a major step backward and give it up completely is ridiculous.
Also, note that air travel fuel efficiency is about 50-100 mpg per passenger. So, having everyone drive around in cars doesn't save anything. Trains, boats, and buses are indeed more efficient.
Except that waist size has been shown to have a high correlation for people at risk for heart attack.
So yes Virginia waist size is a valid metric.
Perhaps waist size is a valid metric, but 33 1/2 inches as the limit seems awfully low to me. Is the correlation across the board, or is just that at large waist sizes the risk increases?
Obesity is one thing, but a little extra weight as you get older is not unhealthy. Studies usually show that the lowest mortality groups are actually slightly overweight.
Also, do those studies at all look at height? Most people would consider me thin (although I certainly don't have flat stomach), and my waist size is over the limit according to this article. Of course, I'm also fairly tall.
I know someone who has a thyroid issue. She is an exercise buff, and does physical training for a living. She recognized something was wrong when she started lacking energy and was putting on weight, despite her diet and exercise routine. Now, she receives treatment that supposedly puts her in what is considered the normal range for her hormones. Although she's better than she was, she still has more weight than one would expect for someone who eats and exercises like she does. So, the therapy helps, but it's not the same as when your body does it on it's own properly.
SEM imaging is not going to offer much improvement over TEM. The main advantage of a SEM is that you (usually) look at the electrons scattered from the surface instead of having to transmit the electrons through the sample. This does have some important advantages - you don't need to thin samples, and you can use lower electron energies. Lower electron energies might lead to less damage, but all that energy is deposited right at the surface. Plus, you only end up imaging the surface, which is why it's useful for images, but not for looking at internal structure. The resolution of a SEM tops (bottoms?) out at 1-2 nm.
This is interesting work, but as others have pointed out it'll need to achieve better resolution to really be useful. (22 nm is similar to what can be achieved with an x-ray microscope). I'm not sure what's limiting the resolution right now, but I'm guessing it's a signal to noise problem. One exciting thing this work has to potential to do is 3-D reconstructions. Think of this technique as crystallography without needing the ordered crystal to produce the data. That's (perhaps) the potential of the technique. The reality is, however, that radiation damage might be too much of a problem no matter how many advances they make.
I think the current Democratic nominee for PotUS kinda disproves this. Obama is certainly more charismatic than Hillary, so yes, he appears less self-obsessed. Whether he truly is or not is impossible to know. He hasn't been around politics as long as the Clintons, so he hasn't had a chance to amass quite as many shady dealings, nor has he had as much time for them to air out.
However, I'd argue that a lot of his baggage (in particular his associations with certain people in the black community) are a result of his desire to get ahead in politics. For a dark skinned politician to get ahead in Illinois, he needed to sell himself as a part of the black community. Therefore he joined a prominent church, and became a prominent member of that church. Whether or not he agrees with all the junk that the church spews forth, he needed to be a part of that church to get ahead in politics.
I'm not saying this as an attack on Obama. I'm just saying that any politician who works his/her way up in politics is going to have a lot of crap in their history. Whether or not people interpret this as a problem with their character, depends on many things, but rarely has anything to actually do with their character.
First of all, unless you cherry-pick polls, there is no statistical evidence that Hillary (or some other candidate) would be more successful against McCain. My general impression is that (if the election were held right now) Obama would have more trouble in the important swing states. Clinton won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and probably still would of won Florida if they had a proper primary. If you look at the states where Obama won, most of them aren't going to swing to the Democrat side in a general election. In addition to the swing states, Clinton won most of the important Democratic strong holds (the northeast and California).
Your "learn from history" canard reminds us of 2004, when Democratic primary voters chose John Kerry on this cynical view that he was the most likely to "win". Well, he lost. So much for that. This a very good point; you can't always predict things. Kerry ran a weak campaign, and Bush ran a brilliant one. Neither Kerry nor Hillary are very charismatic. Obama, however, is very charismatic. If he runs an effective campaign, he could pull back those swing states and maybe even convert a few typically Republican states. However, it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle.
Considering that the current Republican president is about as unpopular as a president can get, it should be a slam-dunk for the Democrats to win the next election. The fact that it isn't, is not a good sign.
Hillary (like Bill) is hyper-ambitious... And how many politicians aren't? It's pretty much a job requirement.
and a sore loser. Right now she's still steaming and trying to plot a new course for the only person she ever cared about in this election (herself). She'll be back in a new form soon enough (no doubt trying to strong-arm her way into the VP spot). I can't entirely argue with this. Still, that's how politics and politicians work. You don't get to run for president otherwise, unless you inherit the position (like our current president) or make a name for yourself outside of politics.
Indifferent? Not at all. I believe this primary has had more attention and better voter turnout than any in recent history. I might agree that a large number of people are voting against, not for a candidate, though.
Please read some history. I'm by no means an expert (so correct me if I'm wrong - if you can provide legitimate sources), but you are mistaken if you think history is as simple as the Jews taken over most of Palestine and calling it Israel.
After WWI, the area then known as (British Mandate of) Palestine was ruled by the British. The British made many promises, and perhaps some were contradictory. They certainly promised the Jews a state, and they may have also promised the Arabs that they would give all of the land to them (the Arabs). Up until this point, there was no great distinction between Arabs living east or west of the Jordan river. All of them could have been considered Palestinians. I have seen maps which divide the region into Palestine and Transjordon, and Maps which just call all of it Palestine. (I've even seen some which call of it Jordan). I think any distinctions made between nations in the middle east at this point in history problematic. There were no true nations or boundaries, so any division into nations is somewhat arbitrary.
When Jordon was formed, it was agreed (although it's not clear who agreed) that this part of the mandate would not be used for the Jewish state, and the whole rest of the mandate was set aside for the Jewish state. Let me repeat this, the whole area west of the Jordon river (which includes the West Bank and Gaza) was set aside in the 20's to become a Jewish state. This was a 77/23% split of the mandate of Palestine. For the next 20 years or so there was a lot of bickering and fighting, but nothing was decided. The Arabs didn't feel that all that land (or perhaps any of it) should go to the Jewish state, and/or they wanted authority over any Jewish state there might be. A large number of Jewish people also started immigrating to what is now Israel, which many of the Arabs (and British) didn't like. Then WWII happened and the British had more important things to worry about.
After WWII the UN eventually tried dividing up the remaining part of Palestine roughly 50/50 between the Jewish people and the Arabs. I don't think either side was happy, but the Jews pretty much said, "Fine, it's better than nothing", and the Arabs immediately declared war since they didn't agree to it. The Jews won the war and pushed the Arabs back to what the UN now recognizes as the boarders of Israel. Many Arabs were indeed displaced at this point. Some were forced out because they fought against Israel, and some left simply because they didn't want to live in a Jewish state. (And no doubt some were pushed out with no good reason). I'm not sure of the number of Arabs (I think it's 700,000) that were displaced. I will point out that roughly an equal number of Jewish people were pushed out of Arab countries into Israel at this time.
Jordon and Egypt then grabbed the remaining parts of Palestine.
You'd think that this could a relatively happy end to the story at this point. Sure, neither the Jews or the Arabs got all the land they may have believed they had coming to the them, but other than sharing Jerusalem, there is no good reason for conflict. The Jews have a state. The Arabs merely have to recognize the state, and let the refugees settle in their countries. Since Jordon and Egypt already annexed the land those Arabs are living on, apparently they want those people as part of their country, right?
Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Rather then letting the refugees settle into their countries, the Arab nations decided it would be better to just let them rot on little bits of land next to Israel.
This is why I blame the majority of the problems on the Arab nations. (Not to say Israel is perfect and has no blame). If they simply let the refugees resettle and become real parts of their countries we wouldn't have the problems we have today.
The refugees were not properly resettled for a number of reasons. One is that it would have been political difficult for Jordon and Egypt to assimilate such a large number of ref
Flaws? What flaws are there in evolution which are so dramatic that the theory is in doubt? Sure, there are some things we don't understand completely, and some aspects are still up for debate. Taken as a whole, though, I'm not aware of any flaws in evolution which would make people likely to doubt it if it wasn't for its cultural significance.
Sorry to reply to myself, but... 2) A theory that... a) uses a construct to handle unanswered questions in an earlier theory b) this construct can never be used to make predictions c) this construct can never be proven or disproven
I think I just proved that string theory isn't science.
Never teach students WHAT to think. Teach them HOW to think.
Be careful what you ask for. I think this is a great idea. First we teach students about problem solving, deduction, and, yes, scientific method. Then we give them two examples theories, and ask them which one is scientific.
1) A theory that... a) was deduced using the available evidence at the time. b) makes predictions that almost always turn out to be true. c) on the occasion that the predictions are not 100% correct, refinements are made (unless the theory can not be refined to include the new evidence - in which case it is thrown out). d) We go back to step b) and continue to make predictions and test the theory
or 2) A theory that... a) uses a construct to handle unanswered questions in an earlier theory b) this construct can never be used to make predictions c) this construct can never be proven or disproven
furthermore... I don't expect teacher's to teach the Aboriginal ideas of creation. Why not? One religion's ideas of creation isn't any worse then anyone else's. The only reason ID doesn't seem as crazy as the Aboriginal ideas of creation is because ID stands on the evidence of evolution.
This is a story that gets repeated time and time again throughout history. Facts are taken in. (Stars are up in the sky). We don't have a scientific explanation for it, yet, so we turn to the supernatural. (The stars are the Gods - or put there by God). Eventually we learn, and we have more facts, and we realize, "hey, it wasn't God, after all". But as our knowledge isn't limitless, there's always going to be some things we don't know. It seems to be human nature to try to fill in our knowledge gaps with supernatural explanations, but it's never turned out to be correct in the past.
I generally agree with your statement that we shouldn't tie teacher's hands. We should allow them to teach things that aren't necessarily going to be on the curriculum. However, because of the separation of church and state, religion in a public school is a special circumstance. Any curriculum that teaches religion as truth, or even a possible truth is a bad idea. And make mistake about it, ID is most definitely teaching religion as a possible truth.
Gridlock, non-gridlock - it doesn't matter. Anytime the roads are crowded (which is pretty much all the time except the middle of the night), someone is going to cut in front of you if you are driving a safe distance behind the person in front of you. It's just how they drive there.
I used to frequently drive back and forth from NJ to LI, and I always tried to time it for the afternoon or after the evening rush. At those times of the day, the traffic was moving quickly, but it was pretty dense. And if you dropped back because you didn't like tailgating at 60-70 mph, someone would immediately jump in front of you.
Actually if you're following at the correct distance...
You, sir, have never driven on any of the highways near NY city. If you had, you would know that it is impossible to drive the correct distance behind the car in front of you. It's not merely that you'd be only person on the highway doing such a thing (annoying the cars behind you); it's that those car lengths will instantly be taken up by people cutting in front of you. You would then be forced to slow down, and the process would repeat until you find yourself driving backward.
I agree 100%. By far my favorite controller. It was also the best example of KISS in engineering. Just a ball on a stick with metal plates to make contact to. You could not break the thing. The only issue was that the contacts would oxidize after a while and you had to open it up and clean it with sandpaper.
Uhm, since you bring this up twice, which thread do I reply do? I'll pick this one...
I wouldn't say that thumpads are necessarily more comfortable than a joystick; it's just harder to make a good comfortable joystick.
Yes, many of the home joysticks made, sucked. The Atari joysticks had a fair amount of dead space, and required a bit of force to move. However, the TAC-2 (brought up in a thread above) didn't have those problems (and was cheap). It had very little dead space (you didn't have to move the joystick far to get it to respond) and it only required a light touch. The WICO (leaf-spring) based joysticks also only required a light touch, but had far too much dead space in my opinion. (Also, the leaf spring mechanism was pretty expensive for a home controller).
I think that thumbpads are superior in a number of important ways - they are cheap to make, they are compact, they are (as the GGGGP pointed out) amenable to a lot of buttons in your hand, and they are relatively comfortable to use. However, they are much less precise a controller (for me, anyway). I pretty much stopped playing games from the Nintendo era until FPSs came out. I didn't realize until later that the real reason I hated all those games was because I hated the thumbpad controller. (Heck, I even enjoy those games using a emulator and a keyboard. Just don't make me play them with a thumbpad - yuck!)
Starting in the mid-90s, games emerged that required players to do things like select units, lasso groups of units, click on targets and waypoints, aim FPS weapons, etc. The joystick really was not suited to these actions.
No way. Some of it may be personal preference, but joysticks are way more precise for me than any thumbpad. (I'll agree that a mouse is the perfect interface for FPSs and RTS, but if we limit ourselves to consoles I'll point out that they don't use a mouse, either). The real problem with a joystick is it's big. As you point out, games in the 90's required a lot of actions, and therefore require a lot of buttons. You can't make a joystick with 8 buttons in a hand-held form (unless you call an analog thumbpad a joystick).
I just want to add that, you are right. It is impossible to know how much race is impacting the white person's vote. It could be that if an equally charismatic young senator was running instead, he would be doing much better or worst. There's no real way of knowing. My original point was, I don't believe that race is that much of a factor (with white people, at least), and I still believe that to be true.
So what you're saying is that white people aren't racist.
Oops, my statement kind of came out that way, didn't it? No, it's more that most white racists aren't registered Democrats. (insert smiley face here). If you look at the polls, race doesn't seem to that much of a factor for white people voting. Women favor Clinton, older people favor Clinton, young people favor Obama, white males are pretty well split.
Only non-whites might be racist but how should you know what all those people with funny colored skins are thinking. I see. Yes, the truth is I'm much better at understanding what's happen in my culture than someone else's. In addition, if you look at the polls, black people do favor Obama over Clinton to a large extent. I could have pointed that out before, but I didn't want to be accused of being racist.
Keep up the good work, we need more colorblind people like you. Like it or not, we all have our prejudices. The best we can do is do our best to treat people fairly (and equitably) despite them.
People don't seem to support him because of issues or anything like that, they support him because he's the magical black guy candidate.
I don't think race is a big reason why white people are voting for or against Obama. (Race might be important for other groups, but I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that). I think people like Obama because, well, he's likable. He comes across as very personable and very intelligent (and not in that "I know more than you" way that other Democratics can sometimes come across). I think he comes across as too idealistic (and often says little of substance), but I still think he's a good candidate.
With these two candidates, there has been a stong preference depending on age. The young like Obama and the old like Clinton. I fall somewhere in the middle, and I'm somewhat torn. I'd be happy with either, so my biggest concern is who can win against McCain. (Honestly, I wouldn't be too unhappy with McCain as long as he doesn't begin to pander to the religous right - which may happen by taking Huckabee as a VP on his ticket).
Some of the difference may be due to the inclusion of unpledged delegates on CNN. But even so, Huckebee should be probably listed as 21, not 31, (and puts Romney considerably ahead).
I think there are a rew reasons people like Hillary:
1) They liked Bill's presidency, and they want it again. You can expect that Hillary's presidency will look a lot like Bill's, both in terms of personel and policy. Although I may not agree with everything Bill did, '92-00 were prosperous times, and other than personal issues, there weren't any major screw-ups like our current adminstration.
2) Hillary is pragmatic. She is (at least perceived as) the candidate most likely to try to think things through carefully before acting.
3) Obama is too young and inexperienced. He's only been a senator for a couple of years. Coupled with #1, the choice is between the young and unknown, and the older (although not old as presidents go) and known. From what I can tell, Obama's support is much stronger amoung the young, and Hillary's support is stronger amoung the older.
That's right: Clinton took 9 delegates and Obama took 9 delegates in NH. Edwards took the remaining 4.
Yes, and on the Republican side, Romney is way in the lead in the total number of delegates pledged so far, despite having lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. The media makes it sound like his campaign is in dire straights, and yet he's actually winning by a fair margin! (This is in no way an endorsement of Romney, I just don't get the media).
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I always hear the argument of the lifetime of nuclear waste when people oppose nuclear energy. The reality is, we've already crossed that bridge. Like it or not, we have already created nuclear waste. We are now stuck. So, why not just go ahead and create more if it helps our energy problems? Either way we are going to have to store the stuff for 10,000 years. How much of the waste we have shouldn't matter that much (up to a point).
The article (written by a sociology professor-??!) did make a good point about the realities of nuclear energy:
"The probability of improbable accidents increases with the number of "green" nuclear plants; each "occurrence" awakens memories of all the others, across the world."
No doubt, if we continue to use nuclear energy, there will be another Three Mile Island type incident. No one was actually hurt by Three Mile Island, but the incident made people very afraid.
(Chernobyl, of course, did really hurt people, but that reactor was a poor design with no containment. With proper designs, I do believe accidents like that can be avoided in the future).
And somehow the country did not grind to a halt and fall apart.
True, but how often did people get to travel to the other side of the globe (or country if it's large like the US) for the heck of it? Reasonably priced air travel allows people to see much of the world that they wouldn't get to otherwise. Yes, this is progress!Seriously, the week after the grounding of all flights, the air was clearer than it has been in decades. We really have to cut back on useless air travel - it's a "luxury" our children will be paying for, and cursing us for. Take a train, take a boat, take some TIME and enjoy it - getting there is supposed to be half the fun.
Seriously, you can't be serious. Maybe you are a student with months of vacation a year, but the rest of us simply don't have the time. An hour of air travel (actual flight time) equals a day of travel by other means.No air travel for me would mean...
No vacations further than 2 days car/train travel.
No conferences or meetings further than 1 day car/train travel.
Many fewer visits to my parents (although my wife might consider this a good thing).
That's not to say if prices go way up, people won't adjust. People flew much less in the 60's. Although I don't think we'll get to that point, we will surely see people fly less as costs go up. To expect people to take a major step backward and give it up completely is ridiculous.
Also, note that air travel fuel efficiency is about 50-100 mpg per passenger. So, having everyone drive around in cars doesn't save anything. Trains, boats, and buses are indeed more efficient.
Except that waist size has been shown to have a high correlation for people at risk for heart attack.
So yes Virginia waist size is a valid metric.
Perhaps waist size is a valid metric, but 33 1/2 inches as the limit seems awfully low to me. Is the correlation across the board, or is just that at large waist sizes the risk increases?
Obesity is one thing, but a little extra weight as you get older is not unhealthy. Studies usually show that the lowest mortality groups are actually slightly overweight.
Also, do those studies at all look at height? Most people would consider me thin (although I certainly don't have flat stomach), and my waist size is over the limit according to this article. Of course, I'm also fairly tall.
I know someone who has a thyroid issue. She is an exercise buff, and does physical training for a living. She recognized something was wrong when she started lacking energy and was putting on weight, despite her diet and exercise routine. Now, she receives treatment that supposedly puts her in what is considered the normal range for her hormones. Although she's better than she was, she still has more weight than one would expect for someone who eats and exercises like she does. So, the therapy helps, but it's not the same as when your body does it on it's own properly.
SEM imaging is not going to offer much improvement over TEM. The main advantage of a SEM is that you (usually) look at the electrons scattered from the surface instead of having to transmit the electrons through the sample. This does have some important advantages - you don't need to thin samples, and you can use lower electron energies. Lower electron energies might lead to less damage, but all that energy is deposited right at the surface. Plus, you only end up imaging the surface, which is why it's useful for images, but not for looking at internal structure. The resolution of a SEM tops (bottoms?) out at 1-2 nm.
This is interesting work, but as others have pointed out it'll need to achieve better resolution to really be useful. (22 nm is similar to what can be achieved with an x-ray microscope). I'm not sure what's limiting the resolution right now, but I'm guessing it's a signal to noise problem. One exciting thing this work has to potential to do is 3-D reconstructions. Think of this technique as crystallography without needing the ordered crystal to produce the data. That's (perhaps) the potential of the technique. The reality is, however, that radiation damage might be too much of a problem no matter how many advances they make.
However, I'd argue that a lot of his baggage (in particular his associations with certain people in the black community) are a result of his desire to get ahead in politics. For a dark skinned politician to get ahead in Illinois, he needed to sell himself as a part of the black community. Therefore he joined a prominent church, and became a prominent member of that church. Whether or not he agrees with all the junk that the church spews forth, he needed to be a part of that church to get ahead in politics.
I'm not saying this as an attack on Obama. I'm just saying that any politician who works his/her way up in politics is going to have a lot of crap in their history. Whether or not people interpret this as a problem with their character, depends on many things, but rarely has anything to actually do with their character.
Indifferent? Not at all. I believe this primary has had more attention and better voter turnout than any in recent history. I might agree that a large number of people are voting against, not for a candidate, though.
Please read some history. I'm by no means an expert (so correct me if I'm wrong - if you can provide legitimate sources), but you are mistaken if you think history is as simple as the Jews taken over most of Palestine and calling it Israel.
After WWI, the area then known as (British Mandate of) Palestine was ruled by the British. The British made many promises, and perhaps some were contradictory. They certainly promised the Jews a state, and they may have also promised the Arabs that they would give all of the land to them (the Arabs). Up until this point, there was no great distinction between Arabs living east or west of the Jordan river. All of them could have been considered Palestinians. I have seen maps which divide the region into Palestine and Transjordon, and Maps which just call all of it Palestine. (I've even seen some which call of it Jordan). I think any distinctions made between nations in the middle east at this point in history problematic. There were no true nations or boundaries, so any division into nations is somewhat arbitrary.
When Jordon was formed, it was agreed (although it's not clear who agreed) that this part of the mandate would not be used for the Jewish state, and the whole rest of the mandate was set aside for the Jewish state. Let me repeat this, the whole area west of the Jordon river (which includes the West Bank and Gaza) was set aside in the 20's to become a Jewish state. This was a 77/23% split of the mandate of Palestine. For the next 20 years or so there was a lot of bickering and fighting, but nothing was decided. The Arabs didn't feel that all that land (or perhaps any of it) should go to the Jewish state, and/or they wanted authority over any Jewish state there might be. A large number of Jewish people also started immigrating to what is now Israel, which many of the Arabs (and British) didn't like. Then WWII happened and the British had more important things to worry about.
After WWII the UN eventually tried dividing up the remaining part of Palestine roughly 50/50 between the Jewish people and the Arabs. I don't think either side was happy, but the Jews pretty much said, "Fine, it's better than nothing", and the Arabs immediately declared war since they didn't agree to it. The Jews won the war and pushed the Arabs back to what the UN now recognizes as the boarders of Israel. Many Arabs were indeed displaced at this point. Some were forced out because they fought against Israel, and some left simply because they didn't want to live in a Jewish state. (And no doubt some were pushed out with no good reason). I'm not sure of the number of Arabs (I think it's 700,000) that were displaced. I will point out that roughly an equal number of Jewish people were pushed out of Arab countries into Israel at this time.
Jordon and Egypt then grabbed the remaining parts of Palestine.
You'd think that this could a relatively happy end to the story at this point. Sure, neither the Jews or the Arabs got all the land they may have believed they had coming to the them, but other than sharing Jerusalem, there is no good reason for conflict. The Jews have a state. The Arabs merely have to recognize the state, and let the refugees settle in their countries. Since Jordon and Egypt already annexed the land those Arabs are living on, apparently they want those people as part of their country, right?
Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Rather then letting the refugees settle into their countries, the Arab nations decided it would be better to just let them rot on little bits of land next to Israel.
This is why I blame the majority of the problems on the Arab nations. (Not to say Israel is perfect and has no blame). If they simply let the refugees resettle and become real parts of their countries we wouldn't have the problems we have today.
The refugees were not properly resettled for a number of reasons. One is that it would have been political difficult for Jordon and Egypt to assimilate such a large number of ref
Flaws? What flaws are there in evolution which are so dramatic that the theory is in doubt? Sure, there are some things we don't understand completely, and some aspects are still up for debate. Taken as a whole, though, I'm not aware of any flaws in evolution which would make people likely to doubt it if it wasn't for its cultural significance.
Sorry to reply to myself, but...
2) A theory that...
a) uses a construct to handle unanswered questions in an earlier theory
b) this construct can never be used to make predictions
c) this construct can never be proven or disproven
I think I just proved that string theory isn't science.
Never teach students WHAT to think. Teach them HOW to think.
Be careful what you ask for. I think this is a great idea. First we teach students about problem solving, deduction, and, yes, scientific method. Then we give them two examples theories, and ask them which one is scientific.
1) A theory that...
a) was deduced using the available evidence at the time.
b) makes predictions that almost always turn out to be true.
c) on the occasion that the predictions are not 100% correct, refinements are made (unless the theory can not be refined to include the new evidence - in which case it is thrown out).
d) We go back to step b) and continue to make predictions and test the theory
or
2) A theory that...
a) uses a construct to handle unanswered questions in an earlier theory
b) this construct can never be used to make predictions
c) this construct can never be proven or disproven
furthermore...
I don't expect teacher's to teach the Aboriginal ideas of creation.
Why not? One religion's ideas of creation isn't any worse then anyone else's. The only reason ID doesn't seem as crazy as the Aboriginal ideas of creation is because ID stands on the evidence of evolution.
This is a story that gets repeated time and time again throughout history. Facts are taken in. (Stars are up in the sky). We don't have a scientific explanation for it, yet, so we turn to the supernatural. (The stars are the Gods - or put there by God). Eventually we learn, and we have more facts, and we realize, "hey, it wasn't God, after all". But as our knowledge isn't limitless, there's always going to be some things we don't know. It seems to be human nature to try to fill in our knowledge gaps with supernatural explanations, but it's never turned out to be correct in the past.
I generally agree with your statement that we shouldn't tie teacher's hands. We should allow them to teach things that aren't necessarily going to be on the curriculum. However, because of the separation of church and state, religion in a public school is a special circumstance. Any curriculum that teaches religion as truth, or even a possible truth is a bad idea. And make mistake about it, ID is most definitely teaching religion as a possible truth.
Gridlock, non-gridlock - it doesn't matter. Anytime the roads are crowded (which is pretty much all the time except the middle of the night), someone is going to cut in front of you if you are driving a safe distance behind the person in front of you. It's just how they drive there.
I used to frequently drive back and forth from NJ to LI, and I always tried to time it for the afternoon or after the evening rush. At those times of the day, the traffic was moving quickly, but it was pretty dense. And if you dropped back because you didn't like tailgating at 60-70 mph, someone would immediately jump in front of you.
Actually if you're following at the correct distance...
You, sir, have never driven on any of the highways near NY city. If you had, you would know that it is impossible to drive the correct distance behind the car in front of you. It's not merely that you'd be only person on the highway doing such a thing (annoying the cars behind you); it's that those car lengths will instantly be taken up by people cutting in front of you. You would then be forced to slow down, and the process would repeat until you find yourself driving backward.
hh the nostalgia... TAC-2 was THE joystick.
I agree 100%. By far my favorite controller. It was also the best example of KISS in engineering. Just a ball on a stick with metal plates to make contact to. You could not break the thing. The only issue was that the contacts would oxidize after a while and you had to open it up and clean it with sandpaper.
Uhm, since you bring this up twice, which thread do I reply do? I'll pick this one...
I wouldn't say that thumpads are necessarily more comfortable than a joystick; it's just harder to make a good comfortable joystick.
Yes, many of the home joysticks made, sucked. The Atari joysticks had a fair amount of dead space, and required a bit of force to move. However, the TAC-2 (brought up in a thread above) didn't have those problems (and was cheap). It had very little dead space (you didn't have to move the joystick far to get it to respond) and it only required a light touch. The WICO (leaf-spring) based joysticks also only required a light touch, but had far too much dead space in my opinion. (Also, the leaf spring mechanism was pretty expensive for a home controller).
I think that thumbpads are superior in a number of important ways - they are cheap to make, they are compact, they are (as the GGGGP pointed out) amenable to a lot of buttons in your hand, and they are relatively comfortable to use. However, they are much less precise a controller (for me, anyway). I pretty much stopped playing games from the Nintendo era until FPSs came out. I didn't realize until later that the real reason I hated all those games was because I hated the thumbpad controller. (Heck, I even enjoy those games using a emulator and a keyboard. Just don't make me play them with a thumbpad - yuck!)
Starting in the mid-90s, games emerged that required players to do things like select units, lasso groups of units, click on targets and waypoints, aim FPS weapons, etc. The joystick really was not suited to these actions.
No way. Some of it may be personal preference, but joysticks are way more precise for me than any thumbpad. (I'll agree that a mouse is the perfect interface for FPSs and RTS, but if we limit ourselves to consoles I'll point out that they don't use a mouse, either). The real problem with a joystick is it's big. As you point out, games in the 90's required a lot of actions, and therefore require a lot of buttons. You can't make a joystick with 8 buttons in a hand-held form (unless you call an analog thumbpad a joystick).
I just want to add that, you are right. It is impossible to know how much race is impacting the white person's vote. It could be that if an equally charismatic young senator was running instead, he would be doing much better or worst. There's no real way of knowing. My original point was, I don't believe that race is that much of a factor (with white people, at least), and I still believe that to be true.
So what you're saying is that white people aren't racist.
Oops, my statement kind of came out that way, didn't it? No, it's more that most white racists aren't registered Democrats. (insert smiley face here). If you look at the polls, race doesn't seem to that much of a factor for white people voting. Women favor Clinton, older people favor Clinton, young people favor Obama, white males are pretty well split.
Only non-whites might be racist but how should you know what all those people with funny colored skins are thinking. I see.
Yes, the truth is I'm much better at understanding what's happen in my culture than someone else's. In addition, if you look at the polls, black people do favor Obama over Clinton to a large extent. I could have pointed that out before, but I didn't want to be accused of being racist.
Keep up the good work, we need more colorblind people like you.
Like it or not, we all have our prejudices. The best we can do is do our best to treat people fairly (and equitably) despite them.
People don't seem to support him because of issues or anything like that, they support him because he's the magical black guy candidate.
I don't think race is a big reason why white people are voting for or against Obama. (Race might be important for other groups, but I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that). I think people like Obama because, well, he's likable. He comes across as very personable and very intelligent (and not in that "I know more than you" way that other Democratics can sometimes come across). I think he comes across as too idealistic (and often says little of substance), but I still think he's a good candidate.
With these two candidates, there has been a stong preference depending on age. The young like Obama and the old like Clinton. I fall somewhere in the middle, and I'm somewhat torn. I'd be happy with either, so my biggest concern is who can win against McCain. (Honestly, I wouldn't be too unhappy with McCain as long as he doesn't begin to pander to the religous right - which may happen by taking Huckabee as a VP on his ticket).
That doesn't match what is listed on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#R
Some of the difference may be due to the inclusion of unpledged delegates on CNN. But even so, Huckebee should be probably listed as 21, not 31, (and puts Romney considerably ahead).
I think there are a rew reasons people like Hillary:
1) They liked Bill's presidency, and they want it again. You can expect that Hillary's presidency will look a lot like Bill's, both in terms of personel and policy. Although I may not agree with everything Bill did, '92-00 were prosperous times, and other than personal issues, there weren't any major screw-ups like our current adminstration.
2) Hillary is pragmatic. She is (at least perceived as) the candidate most likely to try to think things through carefully before acting.
3) Obama is too young and inexperienced. He's only been a senator for a couple of years. Coupled with #1, the choice is between the young and unknown, and the older (although not old as presidents go) and known. From what I can tell, Obama's support is much stronger amoung the young, and Hillary's support is stronger amoung the older.
That's right: Clinton took 9 delegates and Obama took 9 delegates in NH. Edwards took the remaining 4.
Yes, and on the Republican side, Romney is way in the lead in the total number of delegates pledged so far, despite having lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. The media makes it sound like his campaign is in dire straights, and yet he's actually winning by a fair margin! (This is in no way an endorsement of Romney, I just don't get the media).