Look if you can't get past your own religion to enjoy a story, then don't go see stories that present different perspectives. The terrible irony is, they gave a scientific explaination for the spirits and gaia. In fact they observationally proved them in the context of the story. You choose to reject this and ask them to present the story with an explaination which would be consistant with the real world we know and love? I hope I got that wrong. I really hope that is not what you mean, and those wild mushrooms I had with the chicken marsala were not what I think they were. Maybe the movie would have been more real if they all sat around eating mac and cheese out of self cooking pouches while they luxuriated watching the erotic clone of Brook Burke Wild Off Earth at the hottest lunar night spots, while their solar powered robomower took care of the grunt work.
Seriously, maybe I took your comment as wrong as I could, but this reminds me of the time I went to see Mulan. During the avalanche scene a teenage girl behind me said, in disgust, "That's so fake." I'm sorry. Was she your sister? If I can find her, should I hook you two up? Maybe you were both lost. Cause in both cases you were in a movie theater, not a documentary theater.
Do you really object to all films that have any kind of an afterlife ingrained in their stories? The list is literally huge, and some are even good. That said, since you're such a staunch proponant of micotargeted entertainment, did it perhaps occur to you that atheists are in the extream minority.
Again I've got no problem with people who object to how a premise of a movie is carried out (as long as they agree with me). By and large I'm all about different strokes for different folks. But you're objecting to the premise of the movie period. Don't go see that movie. What's the point of subjecting yourself to something you know *before hand* you can't enjoy?
The Force. WTF is that crap. Its so unrealistic, they've got pan-galactic travel, you'd think they could come up with a realistic explanation for the Force too. Duh.
What you find lacking, is oddly one of the things I really liked about the film. It is really an eastern tale told and more or less packaged for us in the west. But if these eastern influanced, Hollywood polished tales are what I can expect when I go see a Sony/Columbia picture, I can see myself going just because I know that it will be different enough, and good enough to entertain me. But as to the end. The short commings of mans inability to manage the technology he creates solves the problem, but at the price of making his world smaller, and lesser. It's almost exactly the same story that Princess Mononoke tells. The primary difference being who's female and who's not, and the actual ending with respect to those characters.
First off I'd like to pointlessly quibble about some semantics. The voices and motion capture I would consider acting, all else animating. That said, if you or anyone else told me that I would see a picture this summer that was 100% computer animated and would make me do a double take in any scene, I would have told you, "Cut back on the crack, it's affecting your judgement." Even then, there is expectation. Personally, if I lived in an appocolyptic future where invisible things could kill anything with only a touch, I can imagine I might be a little bit jadded. Perhaps after seeing this on a scale large enough to wipeout what would seem to be many billions of people, including most peoples families, I would think fear would be a rather indistinct emotion you feel, and acknowledge, before moving on. But its all about expectation. That can pretty dramatically change the movie going experience. I like stories I'm not familiar with. I watch a lot of them. (A mix of hong kong action, indepedent efforts, small studio efforts with a dash of different imports and probably most major studio releases) That and the fact I'm something of a sinophile certainly provides a different context for me, so my milage varies. One of the things I like about Sony's efforts at cultural assimilation is they don't pander to the American audiance. In a fair amount of Asian cinema, as in life, the best ending of all that might be possible is rare. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and even dramatic action movies like Bullet in the Head tell somewhat cautionary tales. The sun doesn't always have to come out tomorrow, nor should it, and it takes some guts to ignore the conventional wisdom, perhaps at the expense of the bottom line.
I guess I can see why people pay to see the same movies over an over, they might not average a movie a week, so that new car smell may linger. Who knows. But to me, an experience taken from another culture but packaged just for me? And it's only $8.75, or $5.25 before 6? That's an offer I find hard to pass up.
Even with all of this. Ignore the fact that this was essentially the first nearly photoreal cartoon. I challenge those who had problems with the acting, story and dialogue to put it up against the rest of the scifi genre. Quite frankly, the acting didn't have to be good to be better than its competition.
Really? the overall plot of the movie differed hardly at from your name sake. The differences (as I see them): the setting, sex of the hero, actual form of technology. I hope you forgive me for assuming you agree with Katz in this. Katz is probably autistic judging from some of his reviews. Its nice to see him getting out. Whats your excuse?
For christs sake some of the people posting, about how bad the plot, acting, script are, are almost certainly Star Trek fans, hell I'd bet the vast majority. The gall one must have to like that claptrap and find fault with anything anywhere certainly meets my definition of "unmitigated". I can't help but wonder if this fairly negative overall reaction (which doesn't seem to be shared by those I know who have seen it) isn't at least a partial reaction to some of the eastern elements. I'm not saying it couldn't have been better. But I saw where the 137 million went. On top of that, it was a decent story, with better dialogue that most scifi, acting that might not have been inspired but was certainly passable.
I certainly considering odd that a faint star should happen to be about a light year from our sun at the same time a hypothesized faint star is expected to be about a light year from our sun. But that's me. I can see how these nearly identical predictions could seem unrelated to some people. Just an observation now. But I didn't suggest that the people who found it thought that it might be, or even considered it could be Nemesis. In fact, considering that's not what it's named, I'm willing to bet they didn't. I did however highlight the similarity of this star to the aforementioned Nemesis, and provide what I thought were some interesting links about that star.
The obvious question is, given some true statements about a star, why would it be unreasonable to assume that there are true statements about that same star which are not initially given and cannot be derived?
The last detailed description of the "probable" orbit of Nemesis was something that might best be described as an attempt to draw a rose without lifting pen from paper. The real beauty of this proposed orbit for Nemesis was more its ability closely fit the very odd pattern that impacts seem to have. They seem to be getting spaced farther and farther apart, and not quite in tune with anything. But there is a real period there; or at least something that looks suspiciously like one. When one sees the impact data, it certainly doesn't look random. Sure, its not quite evenly spaced, but it certainly seems to have a pattern. To some extent, I would think rounding to the nearest million would probably be fine due to the scale of distances the objects travel, and the fair number of variables involved would introduce a fair amount of noise. On the surface it would certainly seem straigh forward enough. Create an fairly simple model of nemesis disturbing the oort cloud and throwing a bunch of rocks towards the sun, and inevitably earth, and compare it to a truly random set, or better yet run each 100 times, and see which looks more like the observed. (This idea is so terribly obvious, I'd be amazed if it hasn't been done.) This is where the elegance of Nemesis comes into it own. Those who would like to blame the oscillations of our solar system through the galactic plane have a fair amount of hand waving attached to their argument. Nemesis, other than the idea the sun might have an unknown companion star, doesn't really. In fact, some current ideas of star formation predict campanion stars to be quite common (hence the earlier link). The fact is since our sun is so unremarkable in an abundance of respects why should it be more remarkable in this? It certainly is an idea worth considering (not that you have denied this, but there are those who do), and it's elegance has quite an appeal. Then on top of it someone just happens to find a star that seems to have all the right properties and is arriving on time? It seems to me, that this might be one of those moments of serendipity.
With reguard to the paper you linked to. First off, it was a letter to the editor, which while not quite the same thing as a letter to the editor of say Discover, is a little bit differnet than a typical paper (In my experience). They typically reperesent an opposing or unrepresented view point. That said, the writer certainly has an interesting and legitimate point of veiw (ie the subjective choice of the researchers concerned with proving their points might create a pattern more agreeable with their arguments). I would argue that their conclusion, the period for mass extinctions is every 2.8 million years as opposed to ~28 million, is likewise flawed. They don't do a lot of justification for what they consider the threshold where a die off become a mass extinction. But the various researchers involved aren't looking for just any mass extinction, they're looking for a specific kind. One that kills nearly everything, everywhere caused by an extraterrestrial object. So while the periodic extinctions they find, may well have a greater significance, or stand out more than those chosen by proponants of the "galactic carousel" or Nemesis, but they really don't address the point of those proponants. Essentially they say, this period for our much larger set of mass extinctions is more statistically convincing, than this subset, which may not have a causal relation. When they do look at the impact crater data, they find that those who came before Muller, Alvarezet al introduced, unwittingly, a significant bias into the data. The writer interestingly implies in their conclusion that this introduction of human bias into the data has totally corrupted it and made it of nominal value. And like all letters to the editor, it's really just an excuse to bust out the asbestos skivvies and shout, "Flame On!"
The arduous task for future geological research is to determine more accurate (preferably non-integer) revised ages for impact craters to eliminate the "haman-signal", which may lead may then lead to a detection of real periodicity.
-- from the conclusion of The "human" statistics of terrestrial impact cratering rate in PDF
The individual who wrote the paper doesn't acctually test any of the models. He just tests the data, determines that it has been tainted to some degree, accidently, then takes his ball and goes home. Ok. But in the end that says very little about the merits of Nemesis, or one of its competitors "the galactic carousel" (our solar system moving in basically a sinusoidal manner through the galactic plane). Again, that's probably why its in the letters section. It's an interesting addition, but really says very little about these models, and more than anything admonishes people to remember where the data they're relying on came from. As long as I'm wandering, I'd just like to say, science journal flames are the best. It also goes to show that what journals print is at least in part determined by who the paper is sent to and if they agree with you. Fermi's paper to Nature on the nature of neutrino's gets regected because everyone knows neutrinos aren't real, they're a bookkeeping method. And I'm pretty sure Ponds and Fleishman(sp?) fired off at least one paper on cold fusion which got accepted. How you get a PhD in Chemistry without knowing about convection will forever escape me. Science journals are like every other human endevour, prone to human error. So while a paper submitted to a peer reviewed journal might garner more of my respect than say a newspaper article, on its face it garners no more than another paper. After all, have not both been peer reviewed? A short anecdote about data. One lab I did way back, hit exactly the predicted value, but the catch was it was +/- 50% of that value. Oops. I took the point of view that we coincidently hit the "book" value, but would could say little if anything due to the unreliability of the data. Turns out the TA's disagreed, while you might not want to build a bridge relying on such data, you can speak about probable trends. Its just one of those things that sticks with you.
As far as divine retribution goes, that was my lame play off Nemesis the Greek Goddess of just retribution. I'm not going to comment on the state of the art in 1 million AD, and I probably couldn't accurately predict 10 years ahead. But that said, it's not going to be one comet from the Oort cloud on an earth crossing trajectory. It will be many many heading towards the sun. Who knows, maybe thousands. This would certainly complicate matters a little. But still, I get your point:).
But if Nemesis does exist, I'll certainly offer it a toast, after all without it, we'd still be rodents foraging for seeds in the brush. Then there is the whole thing about being able to appreciate the vulnerability of yourself, your tribe, whatever with respect to the void, forces of chaos etc, predict the probable form of armeggedon, and quite another to be able to circle Judgement day on your calander.
This seems shockingly similar to the prediction of Dr. Richard Muller of a companion star to our own sun. He theorized that this star would fly by every 30 million years or so, disturb the Oort cloud, and send a great many missles towards the inner solar system. He predicted the fairly complicated orbit of this star, too complicated for me to describe here, in his book Nemesis: The Death Star. A fitting name considering how many species this companion star has wiped out.
We can see our clock ticking. Divine retribution seems to be a million years away But the animal smaller than dogs can take solace, as IIRC this might be Nemesis' last fly by, so they will inherit the earth for an indeterminate period of time.
KOH is most certainly a virus. It "infects" the boot sector under some versions of MSDOS. On hard drives you can elect to uninstall it, not so on floppies.
If the intent is important, what about the viruses with innocous payloads. Often a virus payload will amount to low level graffiti.
What of the more helpful case of a spam busting virus that kills or moves all emails with suspicious headers? Why one could even have a boot virus that protects from other boot viruses. Dubiously useful, transmundane? Sure. But they would afford a certain usefulness? I think so. Why I could probably come up with five or so useful tasks a virus could do. One might consider the remote management feature of XP a trojan horse. It certainly has similar functionality. Again, this is largely hyperbole. Democracies are capable of all manner of stupid things. But when the going gets ridiculous the invisible hand usually flips the proverbial bird to the visible idiots.
The only entity who's really given a stick in this law (or so it would seem from my ignorant perspective) is the government with reguard to encryption. One would think, should it be that important, that encryptions tools to combat this formality will switly arrive. That said, if your government has: sufficent motivation, time, and enough money for an electron microscope and the professionals to run it, then nothing, save shooting your prefered data storage device into space, will save your infromation from their prying eyes. All you can do at that point is endevour to not be worth the effort.
In any event, I would imagine that it will die a lingering death. In the event it does become the law of that land down under, I would bet it won't be as damaging as the DCMA and other errant peices of legislation in my homeland. But even here eventually thing like this will fly or die based not on what some congressmen pander to, but what view the people take. While 300 million people might be wrong, they'll still get what they want, it just might not be in the most efficient manner.
Granted, there might not be a lot, but there are some. Would a virus like KOH which asks if you'd like to encrypt and protect your information be illegal? The encryption can be fairly robust even.
If American sites are liable in Austrailian courts what can be done about a site more informative than this one? Would my link of this site where one can chose to download KOH for their MSDOS 3.1 machine or one of the other less friendly viruses be a no no? Who gets the 10 years, me or CmdTaco? Is hyperbole the primary cause of a receeding hair line?
But enough about viruses. What about trojans? Back Orifice has features similar to carbon copy and pcAnywhere. The primary difference being that the creators gave both the source and program away for free. Not to mention that it uses less resources, and can typically do more (for good or ill). Is it illegal because it doesn't cost $50 dollars and come in a non-returnable shrinkwrapped box? To say nothing of spyware.
Personally, I think the world could use a few more good viruses. I think a nice macro virus that effectivly muted spam could be a wonderful gift to all those outlook express users.
Magnesium diboride only superconducts at about 30K, which is much higher than other metals. The hope is that this odd metal, will provide insight useful for advancing other high temperature superconductors. A better bet for high temperature superconducting, at least near term, might be the quantum wires that exhibit ballitsic superconductivity. Essentially, their narrowness only allow 1 electron through at a time, or so i've read.
The web site linked seems to be a press release of sorts with some quotes taken somewhat out of context, and almost certainly out of order.
I would guess, and it is a guess, that some of the fantastic Jetson type applications might be real 3d copying of objects refered to, not a 3d printer (of which there are many types that operate at room temperature). The 2 to 3 year time frame cited, almost certainly is a suggestion that the integration of a few atomic optic devices might be working together by then. It might even refer to the possibility of a technology demonstrater for a atomic laser gyroscope or gravity sensor, or even a new brand of atomic clock. Reading the page I get the impression someone with only a peripheral understanding of the subject tried to boil the information down to some crucial points, but a little context got lost in the process.
That said, I've seen people who should have known better make outragious claims, that they were glad no one held against them.
Anyway, unless we come up with a refrigerator/power generator that can "work around" *wink wink* the second law of thermodynamics they're really going to have a temperature problem with trying to move these contraptions in to the more practical arena. Liquid helium is fine for big government, the DOE, DOD, and big science, but not big business. They've got quite the thermal challenge between liquid helium and liquid nitrogen (which cost some where between milk and beer when I did research).
I never did get around to making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. I really regret that. But I bet ice cream made with liquid helium wouild be like 10 times smoother. Mmmmm neopolitane.
It might be self promotion. But it could easily be a case of narcissim with a little naivete thrown in. Sometimes people see their research as of the upmost importance and opening up a whole new age of enlightement. They just assume that with the potential applications dependent on this infant technology, why wouldn't the world throw all the money and intellectual might it could at it? In some sence they don't really appreciate the difference between best and good enough, and often don't factor in cost. I think maybe the reason I've see it in the proportions I have is the self-love, and blinders feed the dedication. They push themselves, and those around them as hard as possible in a very narrow single minded pursuit, often for years. Getting atoms to fuse is relatively simple. Getting cheap power out of if is quite another problem. Same thing applies.
Now this is enlightenment.
on
Review: A.I.
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· Score: 2
Why thanks for all your constructive comments pointing out my numerous errors in wrong-headed thinking. In the future I will try to be more cognizant of the opinions of l337 h4x0rs such as yourself. Please do not flame my web page or trick me into downloading Sub7 while I surf for porn.
I only wonder which of the movies you have an unnatural affinity for. 2001? The Thin Red Line? Titanic? or do you love the comic stylings of Carrot Top? It is important for me to know, so I do not repeat my egregious error. Perhaps if you're not too busy cowering, you coward, you could instruct me in the etiquette of proper bleating. I cannot imagine a greater sin than failing to blend in with the rest of the heard.
For my part, I appreciate movies on a whole host of levels. The levels are chosen in part by what the movies purport to be. First and foremost a movie should be internally consistant. Its not alot to ask. I'll go see a movie just for special effects, but the better be special. Comedies better be funny. When I see a movie, I want to be drawn in, and maybe escape for a little while into this shared experience with everyone else there, where I almost forget its a movie. Sadly, movies like that are pretty rare, and 2001 isn't one of them. Hell if it's symbolism and heady parallels you want, why not pick The Matrix? It certainly has as many as any other movie, more than even some independent quasi-religious efforts (Pi, Omega Code). Why the morons writing the Omega Code didn't even know where the pentagram came from. (A group of Greeks who worshiped numbers, particularly irrational numbers such as the square root of 5) In fact movies such as those, are in many respects fairly shallow. They don't have as many layers to play with to start, they don't have the money, the talent, and in many cases the concept isn't as polished. Whether some Hollywood blockbuster choses to add additional layers and weave a better tale, well that's different. I like all manner of film. For me, it's all about how well the movie excetutes the story it attempts. How well it entertains. 2001 is NyQuil on disc. It offers prescious little. I would submit Brazil, THX, Andromida Strain, are all much better movies than 2001.
A.I.? It needed a rewrite, Syd Mead, a director in his prime, and an editor. But that's just what I get from having seen the previews. And quite frankly, I've seen enough.
I'm not saying everything Kubrick did was crap. But 2001 was. Just because a few people like it, and a lot of sheep bleat in agreement doesn't make it good. A movie that's not as widely recognized but I would submit is far superior: The Duel. Just cause a goose once laid a golden egg, doesn't mean you should take everything it shits to the bank.
I haven't seen A.I. nor will I. I have a feeling my time might be better spent in watching TNN or QVC. Movies like A.I. and The Thin Red Line, or even 2001 are just so much mental masturbation that hopes to preoccupy the audiance with delusions of superiority to obscure their extream mediocrity. I would also offer proof to those who claim some might lack the requiset attention span to fully appreciate such an effort. Titanic. Need anything else be said? An entirely forgettable movie that was 3 hours long, and made a billion dollars.
In the end, it about the story a movie set outs to tell, and how well that idea is executed. If a movie sets out to tell a "real" story, I damn well expect it. I don't expect long monologues that preach to the audiance. If something just throws itself out there as a thrill ride, I use the appropriate measuring stick. If a movie is directed by Roland Emmerich, and yet I'm still somehow watching it (probably being tortured for state secrets), I compare it to watching paint peel off growing grass while Carrot Top pokes me with a stick. Apples to apples, round fruit to round fruit.
In short, "Me too!"
Welcome to bad analogy theater.
on
ORBS Forks
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· Score: 1
The concept is simple enough. It's like being forced to pay to read mail you have no intrest in nor asked for. Most spam simply lacks a return address, most junk mail has a return address. That said spam universally lacks anything resembling useful information. Spam is just proof that we're not as litigious as we prehaps should be.
Those giant monoliths were screwed outta some big bucks by the primary researcher who "created" the golden rice you alude to. He could have patented it, but he decided that giving the gift of sight to millions was a better buy than a new Lexus, or a new corporate jet for General Foods. I can't say I dissagree with his choice. (I think it may be patented, but in anycase during the process he insured that it would be some thing the poorer people of asia could still use.) I wish I could remember his name, but as I recall, his commitment comes from having worked on his family's farm in Taiwan. The great thing about a guy like this is, he spent years of his life in the dogged pursuit of a maybe. Saw his idea to fruition, and GAVE it away. He, unlike most everyone else, will now visibly change the world for the better in his own life time. I can't tell you how it pains me, that his name is on the tip of my tongue but I can't seem to spit it out. What a shame that I know who George Bush is, and have forgotten someone worth remembering.
Personally, I would love to kill that Dole bill that helps privitize public research. I think if the fruits of public research are patented, the public (the Treasury) should own a proportion of the patent equal to the proportion of the reseources they provided. No taxation without representation; that includes corporations.
you can goto home depot, or whatever, and get a little lightning shield that attaches to your fuse box. It provides lightning with the fastest route to the ground protecting all your outlets for about the price of a nice surge suppressor. Then you can use surge suppressors anyway.
Be sure to protect your modem too, a surge off a telephone line can be every bit the party one from an outlet is. Myself, I just use the $10 dollar jobs that protect your modem too.
Look Braniac, I know you're busy plotting to use giant lobsters to destroy the Justice League, steal the wonder twin powers, and take over the world. But the fact is, the WHOLE economy we enjoy has sprung from those early investments. You call them risks, or accidents and pay homage to your gods of luck. The real world doesn't work like that. Sure, there was no foreknowledge of what form those fruits might take, or which ones would boom or bust. But the simple fact is, knowledge for its own sake is good. No, it's great. Ideas are one half of capitalism. (I would argue the most important half.) But once the knowledge is there, and available, it WILL find its way to people who will exploit it. The truth is, the government has, through its funding of these ideas in their infancy, built a better world. That's what people invented government for, to do the big and difficult things that might otherwise never be done. Look at the industries spawned from those innovations, so deliberately, and tenderly nurtured by, predominently, the western governments. They have brought the riches of the world to our door step in a way no conquering army ever could. I reap the benifits of this every damn day. I, simply by a trick of geography, was born into a life of privilege the vast majority of the world will only know from TV. All of the wealth, information, and freedom I and every other American (and a great many others I might add) enjoy flows from the government getting in on the ground floor, sometimes supporting ideas for decades.
You would call this foolhardy, perhaps liken it to gambling? Well, I would make the clam that "big science" endevors such as these are more like numerology. If one considers Bible codes where "researchers" claim to find all manner of hidden messages that seem to "predict" the future, you find when you look. "Bible codes" and other similar "patterns" are obviously crap. Nothing more than interesting coincidence. Now, when you start looking for coincidences like that, you'll never know what they might relate to until you look. But its trivial to show that you WILL find something. When you look at undertaking challenging projects, such as NASA does, you know you will find something of intrest. When you look, you find. People such as yourself look at a dark room and conclude by its darkness it must be empty. A little illumination is always in order. As much as I would personaly like to get a hate on for people like you, and as much as I thoroughly despise the exhaltation of ignorance, I just can't bring myself to do it. It that damn situational myopia. Its not your fault you can't see anything beyond that which is immediately in front of you. Once more how can I truly admonish one for possessing, what I consider to be, an all too common trait. But still. The selection of ignorance over enlightenment? The painful irony is the information is free, at your library, on the internet, and bookstores with cafes. But you don't want to know. You acctually don't want to know. You want to cloak yourself in not knowing, and preach that knowing is bad. I've got to say, I find that far more offensive than anything that happens in Tijuana between two consenting mammals.
Look I'll admit big government makes big mistakes, but I still say it also makes bigger advances. Small governement serves small intrests, typically those with deep pockets. With some of the choices the Republicans and some of the Democrats seem to be headed towards, I would expect my Euro-Pacific fund to really take off ten years from now. Things like the national super collider in Texas might have cemented us as the leaders in high temperature superconductors, and a few other areas of materials engineering. Maybe that would have lead to early breakthroughs in fusion research. Probably not, but still what a risk to pass up.
What about risk anyway. You seem to think risk is something to be avoided. Not so. It's something to be controlled. Boeing, for all its trouble of late, might not even be around if not for some of the risks they took. They basically bet the farm on the 747, arguably one of the greatest aviation successes ever. The 777 was a risk in its own right as well. And now raytheon is building on that, planning to offer a jet with an all composit airframe. I suppose my final observation will be that the greatest risk of all might be never taking any risks.
freebasing is still popular. Mana from NASA (the brutally abridged version)
Superplastic manufacturing methods, particularly with aluminum.
Aluminum cans (related to the above).
World wide communications networks.
Accurate weather prediction.
Protection for all the worlds power grids.
Ceramics
Photovoltaics
I could quite literally go on for hours I'm sure. In fact one might make the case that the only government programs that were more beneficial were those of the DoD that produced computers, nuclear power, or DoE programs that brought water and power to every corner of the US. The fact of the matter is programs like NASA are what the government does right. If for some reason, these labors seem superfluous try doing with out them. Big government is what made the US what it is. If you think it was the bible, trucks with curtains and gun racks that made the US great, well I salute your ignorance. The effort it must have taken to get through life learning so little of your history is truly an achivement worth recognizing if not repeating.
Few things are funnier than reading your buddies resume and knowing the jargon well enough to understand how pedestrian some of the things on there are.
Tin foil is like magic. It got an power of ten improvement in performance of a PVD chamber I built and used. Some of the big science going on in my department got to trillionths of an atmosphere, I got to a billionth, but we all used tin foil. I wonder why you never see any tin foil in those promotional shots from Intel or TRW? Maybe the public would think it's unsetteling, but if they're not using tin foil at all then they're not doing their best.
I can say this is mostly true at the university I attended. But I suppose it would depend on the projects themselves. If for instance you had phillip moris sponsering a study to find out how addictive tabacco is relative to green m&m's I might take it with a grain of salt. However, if it's a project sponsored by a medical equipment manufacture trying to build a better ball joint for hip replacements well I'd be somewhat more trusting.
In any case, all research is best viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Everyone knows people with doctorates who think the universe should conform to their idea of what it should be, are grossly incompitent, or in some cases espouse the "virtues" of sophistry. If you believe blindly what what others write, I have a Cold Fusion kit for sale, serious offers only please.
Why do companies bother with universities? How else could you get experts in a given field who sub-specialize in extream esotirica to work 70 hours a week for less money than one might make picking fruit, if for money at all? Why do universities bother with companies? Some rake in half a billion a year. That buys a lot of acetate from the chemistry store.
That said, my greatest shock at seeing how real science is done was the dependence on tin foil. It's unreal. You rap your device in tin foil and you can get an order of magnitude improvement. Wonder why the Safeway near your university is always out of reynolds wrap? Grad students and some undergrads hard at work.
Carbon fiber is not magic. It is carbon fiber, embeded in a matrix of well basically plastic. As such it has certain advantages over aluminum, and certain severe disadvantages. Strength was mentioned specifically. But there are many other variables in consideration: Specific strength, toughness, corrosion resistance (coffee, water, salt water, fretting, microbial, hydralic fluids, different materials mated to it), resistance to UV light, fatigue (both from pressure, load, and thermal varations), and then there is the expence of raw materials and ease of manufacture. Well to think that aluminum will not come out ahead on a least some of the elements in this incomplete list is naive at best.
Why aluminum is one of the weakest materials in common use. One might think, from reading many of these posts, that we should have abandoned it shortly after the bronze age. Even steel, for all its commercials, is quite weak given the alternatives, as long as we're sticking to a single design criteria. Why even lowly glass is much stronger than steel and even exhibits good corrosion resistance. Why don't we make everything out of glass? It's stronger. Ahhh. But glass is brittle, low toughness. So it's VERY dificult to control and predict failure. That's why metals are great. You don't have to think real hard. Their flaws are predictable, they tolerate large cracks (multi foot long cracks are not uncommon in airframes), they're easy to manufacture (for the most part, extreamly easy in the case of aluminum), and by in large metals are cheap (to name a few qualities).
Raytheon is wise to proceed with challenges that are managable. A small airframe is much simpler than a large one. The other nice thing about buisness jets is, in addition to being less complicated, they have higher margins. Even better for Raytheon, they'll be able to charge a premium for their offering because it will be much cheaper to operate, practically sipping fuel in a time of swiftly increasing fuel costs. I can practically guarantee that Raytheon will probably loose money on every plane for something like the first 6 months. It took something like a year for Boeing to bring the all composite tail of the 777 into the profitable range. What was Boeing going to make the tail for the 777 out of if the composites didn't work out? Aluminum.
Another thing to consider is that composites are much more difficult to repair, but this increased cost of ownership is almost always offset by the reduction in fuel consumption.
That said, its all about the right tool for the right job. If I were to espouse the use of hammers in microsurgury, they would certainly be considered unproven in that circumstance, and I might be a crackpot. No one has made an all composite airframe for a mass produced business jet at a profit. I would call that unproven. It doesn't mean you can't make a nice wing spar, a golf club, or even a bridge. Just means Raytheon is gunning to be the first in this respect.
To that end, kudos to Raytheon. Buy their stock. I think its a good do-able plan. Sure they'll have some challenges; I bet they'll solve the problems that come up. And in the process they'll learn a little something, pass that on, and the sum of our knowledge grows. Even if they fail, we'll win. And who doesn't love that?
I'm not sure if this is a troll or not. I strongly suspect it is, that said, I'm going to ignore my better judgement.
Light does not have mass. Light does respond to the curvature of spacetime, as does everything. But this in no way even hints that light has mass. Which is why I'm pretty sure this is a troll. I could almost buy into that someone might mistake radiation pressure and the fact light has momentum as proof light has mass, but not this.
However, should my estimation be wrong, I have a few suggestions.
Relativity by Albert Einstein, Wings books ISBN 0-517-029618 (cloth) -025302 (paper)
Modern Physics by Tipler, Worth Publishers ISBN 0-87901-088-6
Relativity is actually pretty light on math, short and easy to read. I'd say one could read it easily in an evening. Tipler's on the other hand is my old text book, it's solid in that respect, but not particularly enthralling.
The gravitational lensing which you describe is mearly the result of light following a straight line on spacetime (which is curved). As such it's totally independant of whether or not light has mass.
Light has no mass. But is has momentum and energy. E=mc^2 doesn't work for light for obvious reasons. If I gave you a photon of some arbitrary energy value, you can't determine its mass with that equation. Neutrinos on the other hand DO have mass (not thanks to the Canadians but the Japanesse 1996 IIRC). Sure they might get most of their mass from relativistic effects, but so what, they have mass. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the experiment above is wasting its time. Why something on the order of 30% of our universe is neutrinos, so I would expect many significant contributions from all of the neutrino experiments in operation. But proving the neutrino has mass isn't a contribution of this experiment. It's probably just the obligitory paper, following up with a "me too". Maybe this would be "News for Nerds" is the title was "Another experiment...." Maybe I should get a hobby.
And yet in your example one group of people have a risk of personal injury, and another wastes 5 seconds of their time. To somehow imply that each of these assualts is equal is itself dishonest. No? Oh, as for typos, coming for one of the worst spellers our species has ever produced, I've never accidently stumbled on over to Swedish Erotic Goat Massage during the course of looking for anything. But to those unable or unwilling to use a bookmark, well thems the breaks. Why typosquatting is just negative reinforcement with the laudible aim to improve everyones spelling.
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Seriously, maybe I took your comment as wrong as I could, but this reminds me of the time I went to see Mulan. During the avalanche scene a teenage girl behind me said, in disgust, "That's so fake." I'm sorry. Was she your sister? If I can find her, should I hook you two up? Maybe you were both lost. Cause in both cases you were in a movie theater, not a documentary theater.
Do you really object to all films that have any kind of an afterlife ingrained in their stories? The list is literally huge, and some are even good. That said, since you're such a staunch proponant of micotargeted entertainment, did it perhaps occur to you that atheists are in the extream minority.
Again I've got no problem with people who object to how a premise of a movie is carried out (as long as they agree with me). By and large I'm all about different strokes for different folks. But you're objecting to the premise of the movie period. Don't go see that movie. What's the point of subjecting yourself to something you know *before hand* you can't enjoy?
The Force. WTF is that crap. Its so unrealistic, they've got pan-galactic travel, you'd think they could come up with a realistic explanation for the Force too. Duh.
First off I'd like to pointlessly quibble about some semantics. The voices and motion capture I would consider acting, all else animating. That said, if you or anyone else told me that I would see a picture this summer that was 100% computer animated and would make me do a double take in any scene, I would have told you, "Cut back on the crack, it's affecting your judgement." Even then, there is expectation. Personally, if I lived in an appocolyptic future where invisible things could kill anything with only a touch, I can imagine I might be a little bit jadded. Perhaps after seeing this on a scale large enough to wipeout what would seem to be many billions of people, including most peoples families, I would think fear would be a rather indistinct emotion you feel, and acknowledge, before moving on. But its all about expectation. That can pretty dramatically change the movie going experience. I like stories I'm not familiar with. I watch a lot of them. (A mix of hong kong action, indepedent efforts, small studio efforts with a dash of different imports and probably most major studio releases) That and the fact I'm something of a sinophile certainly provides a different context for me, so my milage varies. One of the things I like about Sony's efforts at cultural assimilation is they don't pander to the American audiance. In a fair amount of Asian cinema, as in life, the best ending of all that might be possible is rare. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and even dramatic action movies like Bullet in the Head tell somewhat cautionary tales. The sun doesn't always have to come out tomorrow, nor should it, and it takes some guts to ignore the conventional wisdom, perhaps at the expense of the bottom line.
I guess I can see why people pay to see the same movies over an over, they might not average a movie a week, so that new car smell may linger. Who knows. But to me, an experience taken from another culture but packaged just for me? And it's only $8.75, or $5.25 before 6? That's an offer I find hard to pass up.
Even with all of this. Ignore the fact that this was essentially the first nearly photoreal cartoon. I challenge those who had problems with the acting, story and dialogue to put it up against the rest of the scifi genre. Quite frankly, the acting didn't have to be good to be better than its competition.
For christs sake some of the people posting, about how bad the plot, acting, script are, are almost certainly Star Trek fans, hell I'd bet the vast majority. The gall one must have to like that claptrap and find fault with anything anywhere certainly meets my definition of "unmitigated". I can't help but wonder if this fairly negative overall reaction (which doesn't seem to be shared by those I know who have seen it) isn't at least a partial reaction to some of the eastern elements. I'm not saying it couldn't have been better. But I saw where the 137 million went. On top of that, it was a decent story, with better dialogue that most scifi, acting that might not have been inspired but was certainly passable.
I certainly considering odd that a faint star should happen to be about a light year from our sun at the same time a hypothesized faint star is expected to be about a light year from our sun. But that's me. I can see how these nearly identical predictions could seem unrelated to some people. Just an observation now. But I didn't suggest that the people who found it thought that it might be, or even considered it could be Nemesis. In fact, considering that's not what it's named, I'm willing to bet they didn't. I did however highlight the similarity of this star to the aforementioned Nemesis, and provide what I thought were some interesting links about that star.
The obvious question is, given some true statements about a star, why would it be unreasonable to assume that there are true statements about that same star which are not initially given and cannot be derived?
With reguard to the paper you linked to. First off, it was a letter to the editor, which while not quite the same thing as a letter to the editor of say Discover, is a little bit differnet than a typical paper (In my experience). They typically reperesent an opposing or unrepresented view point. That said, the writer certainly has an interesting and legitimate point of veiw (ie the subjective choice of the researchers concerned with proving their points might create a pattern more agreeable with their arguments). I would argue that their conclusion, the period for mass extinctions is every 2.8 million years as opposed to ~28 million, is likewise flawed. They don't do a lot of justification for what they consider the threshold where a die off become a mass extinction. But the various researchers involved aren't looking for just any mass extinction, they're looking for a specific kind. One that kills nearly everything, everywhere caused by an extraterrestrial object. So while the periodic extinctions they find, may well have a greater significance, or stand out more than those chosen by proponants of the "galactic carousel" or Nemesis, but they really don't address the point of those proponants. Essentially they say, this period for our much larger set of mass extinctions is more statistically convincing, than this subset, which may not have a causal relation. When they do look at the impact crater data, they find that those who came before Muller, Alvarezet al introduced, unwittingly, a significant bias into the data. The writer interestingly implies in their conclusion that this introduction of human bias into the data has totally corrupted it and made it of nominal value. And like all letters to the editor, it's really just an excuse to bust out the asbestos skivvies and shout, "Flame On!"
The individual who wrote the paper doesn't acctually test any of the models. He just tests the data, determines that it has been tainted to some degree, accidently, then takes his ball and goes home. Ok. But in the end that says very little about the merits of Nemesis, or one of its competitors "the galactic carousel" (our solar system moving in basically a sinusoidal manner through the galactic plane). Again, that's probably why its in the letters section. It's an interesting addition, but really says very little about these models, and more than anything admonishes people to remember where the data they're relying on came from. As long as I'm wandering, I'd just like to say, science journal flames are the best. It also goes to show that what journals print is at least in part determined by who the paper is sent to and if they agree with you. Fermi's paper to Nature on the nature of neutrino's gets regected because everyone knows neutrinos aren't real, they're a bookkeeping method. And I'm pretty sure Ponds and Fleishman(sp?) fired off at least one paper on cold fusion which got accepted. How you get a PhD in Chemistry without knowing about convection will forever escape me. Science journals are like every other human endevour, prone to human error. So while a paper submitted to a peer reviewed journal might garner more of my respect than say a newspaper article, on its face it garners no more than another paper. After all, have not both been peer reviewed? A short anecdote about data. One lab I did way back, hit exactly the predicted value, but the catch was it was +/- 50% of that value. Oops. I took the point of view that we coincidently hit the "book" value, but would could say little if anything due to the unreliability of the data. Turns out the TA's disagreed, while you might not want to build a bridge relying on such data, you can speak about probable trends. Its just one of those things that sticks with you.
As far as divine retribution goes, that was my lame play off Nemesis the Greek Goddess of just retribution. I'm not going to comment on the state of the art in 1 million AD, and I probably couldn't accurately predict 10 years ahead. But that said, it's not going to be one comet from the Oort cloud on an earth crossing trajectory. It will be many many heading towards the sun. Who knows, maybe thousands. This would certainly complicate matters a little. But still, I get your point :).
But if Nemesis does exist, I'll certainly offer it a toast, after all without it, we'd still be rodents foraging for seeds in the brush. Then there is the whole thing about being able to appreciate the vulnerability of yourself, your tribe, whatever with respect to the void, forces of chaos etc, predict the probable form of armeggedon, and quite another to be able to circle Judgement day on your calander.
What NASA says about Nemesis.
An excellent overview from IndiaWorld.
Why Nemesis isn't a wacked out theory, and might even be expected.
A fairly detailed account at space.com
We can see our clock ticking. Divine retribution seems to be a million years away But the animal smaller than dogs can take solace, as IIRC this might be Nemesis' last fly by, so they will inherit the earth for an indeterminate period of time.
If the intent is important, what about the viruses with innocous payloads. Often a virus payload will amount to low level graffiti. What of the more helpful case of a spam busting virus that kills or moves all emails with suspicious headers? Why one could even have a boot virus that protects from other boot viruses. Dubiously useful, transmundane? Sure. But they would afford a certain usefulness? I think so. Why I could probably come up with five or so useful tasks a virus could do. One might consider the remote management feature of XP a trojan horse. It certainly has similar functionality. Again, this is largely hyperbole. Democracies are capable of all manner of stupid things. But when the going gets ridiculous the invisible hand usually flips the proverbial bird to the visible idiots.
The only entity who's really given a stick in this law (or so it would seem from my ignorant perspective) is the government with reguard to encryption. One would think, should it be that important, that encryptions tools to combat this formality will switly arrive. That said, if your government has: sufficent motivation, time, and enough money for an electron microscope and the professionals to run it, then nothing, save shooting your prefered data storage device into space, will save your infromation from their prying eyes. All you can do at that point is endevour to not be worth the effort.
In any event, I would imagine that it will die a lingering death. In the event it does become the law of that land down under, I would bet it won't be as damaging as the DCMA and other errant peices of legislation in my homeland. But even here eventually thing like this will fly or die based not on what some congressmen pander to, but what view the people take. While 300 million people might be wrong, they'll still get what they want, it just might not be in the most efficient manner.
If American sites are liable in Austrailian courts what can be done about a site more informative than this one? Would my link of this site where one can chose to download KOH for their MSDOS 3.1 machine or one of the other less friendly viruses be a no no? Who gets the 10 years, me or CmdTaco? Is hyperbole the primary cause of a receeding hair line?
But enough about viruses. What about trojans? Back Orifice has features similar to carbon copy and pcAnywhere. The primary difference being that the creators gave both the source and program away for free. Not to mention that it uses less resources, and can typically do more (for good or ill). Is it illegal because it doesn't cost $50 dollars and come in a non-returnable shrinkwrapped box? To say nothing of spyware.
Personally, I think the world could use a few more good viruses. I think a nice macro virus that effectivly muted spam could be a wonderful gift to all those outlook express users.
Magnesium diboride only superconducts at about 30K, which is much higher than other metals. The hope is that this odd metal, will provide insight useful for advancing other high temperature superconductors. A better bet for high temperature superconducting, at least near term, might be the quantum wires that exhibit ballitsic superconductivity. Essentially, their narrowness only allow 1 electron through at a time, or so i've read.
I would guess, and it is a guess, that some of the fantastic Jetson type applications might be real 3d copying of objects refered to, not a 3d printer (of which there are many types that operate at room temperature). The 2 to 3 year time frame cited, almost certainly is a suggestion that the integration of a few atomic optic devices might be working together by then. It might even refer to the possibility of a technology demonstrater for a atomic laser gyroscope or gravity sensor, or even a new brand of atomic clock. Reading the page I get the impression someone with only a peripheral understanding of the subject tried to boil the information down to some crucial points, but a little context got lost in the process.
That said, I've seen people who should have known better make outragious claims, that they were glad no one held against them.
Anyway, unless we come up with a refrigerator/power generator that can "work around" *wink wink* the second law of thermodynamics they're really going to have a temperature problem with trying to move these contraptions in to the more practical arena. Liquid helium is fine for big government, the DOE, DOD, and big science, but not big business. They've got quite the thermal challenge between liquid helium and liquid nitrogen (which cost some where between milk and beer when I did research).
I never did get around to making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. I really regret that. But I bet ice cream made with liquid helium wouild be like 10 times smoother. Mmmmm neopolitane.
It might be self promotion. But it could easily be a case of narcissim with a little naivete thrown in. Sometimes people see their research as of the upmost importance and opening up a whole new age of enlightement. They just assume that with the potential applications dependent on this infant technology, why wouldn't the world throw all the money and intellectual might it could at it? In some sence they don't really appreciate the difference between best and good enough, and often don't factor in cost. I think maybe the reason I've see it in the proportions I have is the self-love, and blinders feed the dedication. They push themselves, and those around them as hard as possible in a very narrow single minded pursuit, often for years. Getting atoms to fuse is relatively simple. Getting cheap power out of if is quite another problem. Same thing applies.
I only wonder which of the movies you have an unnatural affinity for. 2001? The Thin Red Line? Titanic? or do you love the comic stylings of Carrot Top? It is important for me to know, so I do not repeat my egregious error. Perhaps if you're not too busy cowering, you coward, you could instruct me in the etiquette of proper bleating. I cannot imagine a greater sin than failing to blend in with the rest of the heard.
For my part, I appreciate movies on a whole host of levels. The levels are chosen in part by what the movies purport to be. First and foremost a movie should be internally consistant. Its not alot to ask. I'll go see a movie just for special effects, but the better be special. Comedies better be funny. When I see a movie, I want to be drawn in, and maybe escape for a little while into this shared experience with everyone else there, where I almost forget its a movie. Sadly, movies like that are pretty rare, and 2001 isn't one of them. Hell if it's symbolism and heady parallels you want, why not pick The Matrix? It certainly has as many as any other movie, more than even some independent quasi-religious efforts (Pi, Omega Code). Why the morons writing the Omega Code didn't even know where the pentagram came from. (A group of Greeks who worshiped numbers, particularly irrational numbers such as the square root of 5) In fact movies such as those, are in many respects fairly shallow. They don't have as many layers to play with to start, they don't have the money, the talent, and in many cases the concept isn't as polished. Whether some Hollywood blockbuster choses to add additional layers and weave a better tale, well that's different. I like all manner of film. For me, it's all about how well the movie excetutes the story it attempts. How well it entertains. 2001 is NyQuil on disc. It offers prescious little. I would submit Brazil, THX, Andromida Strain, are all much better movies than 2001.
A.I.? It needed a rewrite, Syd Mead, a director in his prime, and an editor. But that's just what I get from having seen the previews. And quite frankly, I've seen enough.
I haven't seen A.I. nor will I. I have a feeling my time might be better spent in watching TNN or QVC. Movies like A.I. and The Thin Red Line, or even 2001 are just so much mental masturbation that hopes to preoccupy the audiance with delusions of superiority to obscure their extream mediocrity. I would also offer proof to those who claim some might lack the requiset attention span to fully appreciate such an effort. Titanic. Need anything else be said? An entirely forgettable movie that was 3 hours long, and made a billion dollars.
In the end, it about the story a movie set outs to tell, and how well that idea is executed. If a movie sets out to tell a "real" story, I damn well expect it. I don't expect long monologues that preach to the audiance. If something just throws itself out there as a thrill ride, I use the appropriate measuring stick. If a movie is directed by Roland Emmerich, and yet I'm still somehow watching it (probably being tortured for state secrets), I compare it to watching paint peel off growing grass while Carrot Top pokes me with a stick. Apples to apples, round fruit to round fruit.
In short, "Me too!"
The concept is simple enough. It's like being forced to pay to read mail you have no intrest in nor asked for. Most spam simply lacks a return address, most junk mail has a return address. That said spam universally lacks anything resembling useful information. Spam is just proof that we're not as litigious as we prehaps should be.
Personally, I would love to kill that Dole bill that helps privitize public research. I think if the fruits of public research are patented, the public (the Treasury) should own a proportion of the patent equal to the proportion of the reseources they provided. No taxation without representation; that includes corporations.
Be sure to protect your modem too, a surge off a telephone line can be every bit the party one from an outlet is. Myself, I just use the $10 dollar jobs that protect your modem too.
You would call this foolhardy, perhaps liken it to gambling? Well, I would make the clam that "big science" endevors such as these are more like numerology. If one considers Bible codes where "researchers" claim to find all manner of hidden messages that seem to "predict" the future, you find when you look. "Bible codes" and other similar "patterns" are obviously crap. Nothing more than interesting coincidence. Now, when you start looking for coincidences like that, you'll never know what they might relate to until you look. But its trivial to show that you WILL find something. When you look at undertaking challenging projects, such as NASA does, you know you will find something of intrest. When you look, you find. People such as yourself look at a dark room and conclude by its darkness it must be empty. A little illumination is always in order. As much as I would personaly like to get a hate on for people like you, and as much as I thoroughly despise the exhaltation of ignorance, I just can't bring myself to do it. It that damn situational myopia. Its not your fault you can't see anything beyond that which is immediately in front of you. Once more how can I truly admonish one for possessing, what I consider to be, an all too common trait. But still. The selection of ignorance over enlightenment? The painful irony is the information is free, at your library, on the internet, and bookstores with cafes. But you don't want to know. You acctually don't want to know. You want to cloak yourself in not knowing, and preach that knowing is bad. I've got to say, I find that far more offensive than anything that happens in Tijuana between two consenting mammals.
Look I'll admit big government makes big mistakes, but I still say it also makes bigger advances. Small governement serves small intrests, typically those with deep pockets. With some of the choices the Republicans and some of the Democrats seem to be headed towards, I would expect my Euro-Pacific fund to really take off ten years from now. Things like the national super collider in Texas might have cemented us as the leaders in high temperature superconductors, and a few other areas of materials engineering. Maybe that would have lead to early breakthroughs in fusion research. Probably not, but still what a risk to pass up.
What about risk anyway. You seem to think risk is something to be avoided. Not so. It's something to be controlled. Boeing, for all its trouble of late, might not even be around if not for some of the risks they took. They basically bet the farm on the 747, arguably one of the greatest aviation successes ever. The 777 was a risk in its own right as well. And now raytheon is building on that, planning to offer a jet with an all composit airframe. I suppose my final observation will be that the greatest risk of all might be never taking any risks.
Superplastic manufacturing methods, particularly with aluminum.
Aluminum cans (related to the above).
World wide communications networks.
Accurate weather prediction.
Protection for all the worlds power grids.
Ceramics
Photovoltaics
I could quite literally go on for hours I'm sure. In fact one might make the case that the only government programs that were more beneficial were those of the DoD that produced computers, nuclear power, or DoE programs that brought water and power to every corner of the US. The fact of the matter is programs like NASA are what the government does right. If for some reason, these labors seem superfluous try doing with out them. Big government is what made the US what it is. If you think it was the bible, trucks with curtains and gun racks that made the US great, well I salute your ignorance. The effort it must have taken to get through life learning so little of your history is truly an achivement worth recognizing if not repeating.
Tin foil is like magic. It got an power of ten improvement in performance of a PVD chamber I built and used. Some of the big science going on in my department got to trillionths of an atmosphere, I got to a billionth, but we all used tin foil. I wonder why you never see any tin foil in those promotional shots from Intel or TRW? Maybe the public would think it's unsetteling, but if they're not using tin foil at all then they're not doing their best.
In any case, all research is best viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Everyone knows people with doctorates who think the universe should conform to their idea of what it should be, are grossly incompitent, or in some cases espouse the "virtues" of sophistry. If you believe blindly what what others write, I have a Cold Fusion kit for sale, serious offers only please.
Why do companies bother with universities? How else could you get experts in a given field who sub-specialize in extream esotirica to work 70 hours a week for less money than one might make picking fruit, if for money at all? Why do universities bother with companies? Some rake in half a billion a year. That buys a lot of acetate from the chemistry store.
That said, my greatest shock at seeing how real science is done was the dependence on tin foil. It's unreal. You rap your device in tin foil and you can get an order of magnitude improvement. Wonder why the Safeway near your university is always out of reynolds wrap? Grad students and some undergrads hard at work.
Why aluminum is one of the weakest materials in common use. One might think, from reading many of these posts, that we should have abandoned it shortly after the bronze age. Even steel, for all its commercials, is quite weak given the alternatives, as long as we're sticking to a single design criteria. Why even lowly glass is much stronger than steel and even exhibits good corrosion resistance. Why don't we make everything out of glass? It's stronger. Ahhh. But glass is brittle, low toughness. So it's VERY dificult to control and predict failure. That's why metals are great. You don't have to think real hard. Their flaws are predictable, they tolerate large cracks (multi foot long cracks are not uncommon in airframes), they're easy to manufacture (for the most part, extreamly easy in the case of aluminum), and by in large metals are cheap (to name a few qualities).
Raytheon is wise to proceed with challenges that are managable. A small airframe is much simpler than a large one. The other nice thing about buisness jets is, in addition to being less complicated, they have higher margins. Even better for Raytheon, they'll be able to charge a premium for their offering because it will be much cheaper to operate, practically sipping fuel in a time of swiftly increasing fuel costs. I can practically guarantee that Raytheon will probably loose money on every plane for something like the first 6 months. It took something like a year for Boeing to bring the all composite tail of the 777 into the profitable range. What was Boeing going to make the tail for the 777 out of if the composites didn't work out? Aluminum.
Another thing to consider is that composites are much more difficult to repair, but this increased cost of ownership is almost always offset by the reduction in fuel consumption.
That said, its all about the right tool for the right job. If I were to espouse the use of hammers in microsurgury, they would certainly be considered unproven in that circumstance, and I might be a crackpot. No one has made an all composite airframe for a mass produced business jet at a profit. I would call that unproven. It doesn't mean you can't make a nice wing spar, a golf club, or even a bridge. Just means Raytheon is gunning to be the first in this respect.
To that end, kudos to Raytheon. Buy their stock. I think its a good do-able plan. Sure they'll have some challenges; I bet they'll solve the problems that come up. And in the process they'll learn a little something, pass that on, and the sum of our knowledge grows. Even if they fail, we'll win. And who doesn't love that?
Light does not have mass. Light does respond to the curvature of spacetime, as does everything. But this in no way even hints that light has mass. Which is why I'm pretty sure this is a troll. I could almost buy into that someone might mistake radiation pressure and the fact light has momentum as proof light has mass, but not this.
However, should my estimation be wrong, I have a few suggestions.
Relativity by Albert Einstein, Wings books ISBN 0-517-029618 (cloth) -025302 (paper)
Modern Physics by Tipler, Worth Publishers ISBN 0-87901-088-6
Relativity is actually pretty light on math, short and easy to read. I'd say one could read it easily in an evening. Tipler's on the other hand is my old text book, it's solid in that respect, but not particularly enthralling.
The gravitational lensing which you describe is mearly the result of light following a straight line on spacetime (which is curved). As such it's totally independant of whether or not light has mass.
Light has no mass. But is has momentum and energy. E=mc^2 doesn't work for light for obvious reasons. If I gave you a photon of some arbitrary energy value, you can't determine its mass with that equation. Neutrinos on the other hand DO have mass (not thanks to the Canadians but the Japanesse 1996 IIRC). Sure they might get most of their mass from relativistic effects, but so what, they have mass. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the experiment above is wasting its time. Why something on the order of 30% of our universe is neutrinos, so I would expect many significant contributions from all of the neutrino experiments in operation. But proving the neutrino has mass isn't a contribution of this experiment. It's probably just the obligitory paper, following up with a "me too". Maybe this would be "News for Nerds" is the title was "Another experiment...." Maybe I should get a hobby.
Neutrinos have a mass of about .1 eV at last check.
And yet in your example one group of people have a risk of personal injury, and another wastes 5 seconds of their time. To somehow imply that each of these assualts is equal is itself dishonest. No? Oh, as for typos, coming for one of the worst spellers our species has ever produced, I've never accidently stumbled on over to Swedish Erotic Goat Massage during the course of looking for anything. But to those unable or unwilling to use a bookmark, well thems the breaks. Why typosquatting is just negative reinforcement with the laudible aim to improve everyones spelling.