If it were grains of sand packed under the foundation of your house, it might be important.
But protons only aggregate in small groups that don't get close to each other very often. In fact, they emit a force-field that prevents it, so the size of the proton rarely if ever comes into play even in interatomic interactions.
Which brings up a rather glaring point: SLAC, Fermilab, CERN, et al have been colliding protons together for decades. You'd think they would have noted something funny in the statistics by now to indicate that their colliding objects were consistenly not colliding with the predicted probabilities. If "size" means anything, it means the most when you try to make objects bash each other head-on.
I'll be rightly surprised if the re-review of past data confirms that the 4% discrepancy was there and they simply ignored it.
And maybe I missed this yesterday when I read the story (linked from Twitter;/. is about as timely as the Wall Street Journal any more), but is the 4% volume, cross-sectional area, or radius? A 4% volume difference would be trivially easy to miss; a 4% radius error would be one hell of an oversight.
My money is on the possibility that the guys doing this new research bollixed the theory that predicts the frequency to use in their experiment. And then on the possibility that the theory they're using has never been confirmed very well. QED seems to be more concerned with photons and electrons and other less-massive particles (in fact, it doesn't say anything about mass, and if this 4% is real maybe it's a way to link gravity and GUT (the Grand Unified Theory of electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force...) to make the GUTE (Grand Unified Theory of Everything).
Other than the fact that it's sensationalist blather masquerading as insight?
QED's worked pretty well so far. The size of the proton doesn't seem to affect much else. And defining what "size" means for objects made of sub-objects of unknown size and shape is somewhat iffy in itself.
You don't remember Bush apparatchiks busting down the doors when the votes were being counted in Florida in 2000?
You didn't notice Sheriff Joe Arpaio using his "authoritie" to harass brown people for years, leading to the passing of the law that's caused the Federal Government to sue the state of Arizona?
You haven't seen news stories of gays being beaten, blacks being drag-murdered, or people showing up to Obama appearances with assault rifles strapped to their backs?
BTW, I didn't say I was completely anti-violence. I said I was anti pious right-wing liar making false distinctions between violence he'll defend and violence he'll decry for disingenuously self-promoting motives.
When they are in the shit, they are not likely to be hitting on chicks on facebook.
Anyone who has internet connectivity is probably at a base that can be found on the Jane's website or Wikipedia, and Google Mapped to get recent satellite pictures.
Which is pretty pointless, since the "insurgents" already know where the bases are, and what they look like, and way more about their vulnerabilities than a satellite picture is going to reveal.
There's nothing more costly to security than security based on false fears.
Really? Prager? That dude's logic meter was broken the day he was born.
He's pro-violence in the media because it makes money for his right-wing buddies, just like his pro-religion and pro-right-wing anything does.
Being "against the glorification of immoral violence" is a straw-man, set up to demonize anyone who points out that his idea of "morality" is extremist.
There are six times as many of them as there are of us, and they've never had much of an open society (beyond a few port cities), much less a ground-up melting-pot culture like America or Europe. It's not a bit surprising that many of them have gone so long being insular, and are displaying the characteristics of a population coming to grips with integration.
And this: "To his clients he just became that much more worldly and respectable because he keeps foreigner friends - this man obviously has some connections", is absolutely true.
But don't expect racism to go away, or to be so benign as this. America is a prime example from top to bottom that people will use racial divisions to their own ends no matter how many times we go through the process of beating the bigots and throwing them in the river.
It's more like discussing modern dance by performing it as a sequence of ballet moves.
Or deconstructing poetry.
Or using your words instead of your numbers.
In the end, mathematics is a means of manipulating facts to reveal other facts in a deterministic manner (even if they're facts about non-deterministic things). If you can't subsequently describe both sets of facts in terms a non-mathematician can understand, you haven't reached a result that non-mathematicians will know about, much less be able to form the idea that they should ask what it means.
Physics, being the means of describing the natural world, can be conducted in non-mathematical terms, since the math is just a symbolic model of the physical features, which exist regardless of the shorthand you used to reason about it.
Math will help you turn one symbolic model into another, but unless you understand what the subsequent model means when turned back from symbols into physical concepts, you haven't done any physics.
Or you could just engage in the same cherrypicking reductio ad absurdum as the propagandist you link to and attempt to pretend that NASA is selling its rockets and buying burqhas for female astronauts to use on school tours of Riyadh.
Slashdot Mirror
If it were grains of sand packed under the foundation of your house, it might be important.
But protons only aggregate in small groups that don't get close to each other very often. In fact, they emit a force-field that prevents it, so the size of the proton rarely if ever comes into play even in interatomic interactions.
Which brings up a rather glaring point: SLAC, Fermilab, CERN, et al have been colliding protons together for decades. You'd think they would have noted something funny in the statistics by now to indicate that their colliding objects were consistenly not colliding with the predicted probabilities. If "size" means anything, it means the most when you try to make objects bash each other head-on.
I'll be rightly surprised if the re-review of past data confirms that the 4% discrepancy was there and they simply ignored it.
And maybe I missed this yesterday when I read the story (linked from Twitter; /. is about as timely as the Wall Street Journal any more), but is the 4% volume, cross-sectional area, or radius? A 4% volume difference would be trivially easy to miss; a 4% radius error would be one hell of an oversight.
My money is on the possibility that the guys doing this new research bollixed the theory that predicts the frequency to use in their experiment. And then on the possibility that the theory they're using has never been confirmed very well. QED seems to be more concerned with photons and electrons and other less-massive particles (in fact, it doesn't say anything about mass, and if this 4% is real maybe it's a way to link gravity and GUT (the Grand Unified Theory of electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force...) to make the GUTE (Grand Unified Theory of Everything).
Other than the fact that it's sensationalist blather masquerading as insight?
QED's worked pretty well so far. The size of the proton doesn't seem to affect much else. And defining what "size" means for objects made of sub-objects of unknown size and shape is somewhat iffy in itself.
That's no longer a limitation, actually.
cf. Dilbert on asking users to help define product requirements:
User: I want free nuclear power that won't mutate me. Unless the mutation gives me x-ray vision.
If twitter doesn't want to fall over, it should stabilize itself by scaling up its hardware, not by jabbing its cane into its users' asses.
Because that's a good way to stay upright, and be alone.
It looks like it's about the size and complexity of a fully dressed touring motorcycle. $20k ought to be about the right price.
Then talk about insurance. Because motorcycles are self-stabilizing, and that car-like thing is not.
The article says it will reach 99 mph, but it doesn't say it will make it through a 90-degree corner at any speed.
it also says, ca. 2008, that the thing would be in "limited production" by 2010. YMMV on wikipedia "facts."
there's never any close enough to my home to be useful.
Your home is cheaper because of that. Use the money to buy a car. Or better yet, one of these newfangled contraptions.
Depends. How are you profiting from their losing weight?
Because I'm putting in a moving walkway to get the fattest people from the bus stop to my McDonald's.
It'll pay for itself in a month.
You don't remember Bush apparatchiks busting down the doors when the votes were being counted in Florida in 2000?
You didn't notice Sheriff Joe Arpaio using his "authoritie" to harass brown people for years, leading to the passing of the law that's caused the Federal Government to sue the state of Arizona?
You haven't seen news stories of gays being beaten, blacks being drag-murdered, or people showing up to Obama appearances with assault rifles strapped to their backs?
BTW, I didn't say I was completely anti-violence. I said I was anti pious right-wing liar making false distinctions between violence he'll defend and violence he'll decry for disingenuously self-promoting motives.
Ah, but...can it fly while slashdotted?
Prager is the pious version of Glenn Beck.
Since when is NASA supposed to help people feel good about shit?
Since it stopped being the sixth branch of the military and became a political football.
I wish someone would blow up social engineering.
When they are in the shit, they are not likely to be hitting on chicks on facebook.
Anyone who has internet connectivity is probably at a base that can be found on the Jane's website or Wikipedia, and Google Mapped to get recent satellite pictures.
Which is pretty pointless, since the "insurgents" already know where the bases are, and what they look like, and way more about their vulnerabilities than a satellite picture is going to reveal.
There's nothing more costly to security than security based on false fears.
And then you'd catch myxomatosis and be hyper-aggressive for months.
Really? Prager? That dude's logic meter was broken the day he was born.
He's pro-violence in the media because it makes money for his right-wing buddies, just like his pro-religion and pro-right-wing anything does.
Being "against the glorification of immoral violence" is a straw-man, set up to demonize anyone who points out that his idea of "morality" is extremist.
Exactly.
Although I don't know why they didn't use the correlation between World Cup success and genital shaving.
This is the Internet, after all.
I had the 3D printer set up to make a solid gold PS3 controller. Now I have a solid gold Slate article. Oh yes, the bill will be forthcoming.
What if they pay double for Africans?
There are six times as many of them as there are of us, and they've never had much of an open society (beyond a few port cities), much less a ground-up melting-pot culture like America or Europe. It's not a bit surprising that many of them have gone so long being insular, and are displaying the characteristics of a population coming to grips with integration.
And this: "To his clients he just became that much more worldly and respectable because he keeps foreigner friends - this man obviously has some connections", is absolutely true.
But don't expect racism to go away, or to be so benign as this. America is a prime example from top to bottom that people will use racial divisions to their own ends no matter how many times we go through the process of beating the bigots and throwing them in the river.
Would you be impressed if you didn't already know the subject?
It's more like discussing modern dance by performing it as a sequence of ballet moves.
Or deconstructing poetry.
Or using your words instead of your numbers.
In the end, mathematics is a means of manipulating facts to reveal other facts in a deterministic manner (even if they're facts about non-deterministic things). If you can't subsequently describe both sets of facts in terms a non-mathematician can understand, you haven't reached a result that non-mathematicians will know about, much less be able to form the idea that they should ask what it means.
Physics, being the means of describing the natural world, can be conducted in non-mathematical terms, since the math is just a symbolic model of the physical features, which exist regardless of the shorthand you used to reason about it.
Math will help you turn one symbolic model into another, but unless you understand what the subsequent model means when turned back from symbols into physical concepts, you haven't done any physics.
Or you could just engage in the same cherrypicking reductio ad absurdum as the propagandist you link to and attempt to pretend that NASA is selling its rockets and buying burqhas for female astronauts to use on school tours of Riyadh.
(kicks you in the nuts)
Protecting yourself includes hiring police, prosecutors, and judges to enforce the laws.
This has the effect of discouraging most crime.
Claiming there's no problem just because the victims of a con were conned is not rational behavior.