They may not have known the name. They may not have known all the details of where the satellites were being manufactured or where the data was being analyzed. But the very article linked to mentions aspects of the program that were impossible to hide (e.g. rocket launches) and mentions that other nations knew what sort of program the US had in place. It's one thing for people to keep secret that they are the ones working on this particular secret project and it's another thing entirely for people to keep secret that they are working on a secret project.
Consider the woman in the article who didn't know what her dad did for a living. She concluded it was a secret. She may not have known what the secret was. But degrees, professional certifications, and prior work history were all available to her should she have wanted to explore. This sort of situation would be different from someone's whose father worked for a front for a secret project. In that situation, the man's daughter would not have even known that there was something to hide. That second sort of secret is the sort of secret that conspiracy theorists generally want us to believe in. It takes quite a bit more effort than the first kind of secret which amounts to the proverbial `elephant in the room' that everyone knows is there but nobody dare speak of.
I posted this bit FTFA above, but it's worth reposting it in this thread as well.
In 1975, a `60 Minutes' television piece on space reconnaissance described an `Alice in Wonderland' world, where American and Soviet intelligence officials knew of each other's `eyes in the sky' — and other nations did, too — but no one confirmed the programs or spoke about them publicly.
This sort of secret, one which everyone actually knows of but just don't know the details is an entirely different kind of secret than the kind that most conspiracy theorists advocate. It's one thing for the culture of an entire town to be such that no one talks about the proverbial `elephant in the room' and it's another thing entirely for there to be a secret that no one knows even exists.
In 1975, a `60 Minutes' television piece on space reconnaissance described an `Alice in Wonderland' world, where American and Soviet intelligence officials knew of each other's `eyes in the sky' — and other nations did, too — but no one confirmed the programs or spoke about them publicly.
Despite 1,000 workers mostly keeping mum, both the US and the USSR had a general idea of the operational capacity of the other nation. The `secret' was the proverbial `elephant in the room.' Everyone knew it was there, they just didn't talk about it.
That is an entirely different animal than actually keeping a conspiracy secret.
As a point of pedantry, that Ozzy was dismayed by security at ``the Hilton, where Ronald Reagan had been shot'' does not imply in any way that ``security isn't very good at the White House.''
I'd be willing to concede that the White House may have less than stellar security. But that security didn't appear air tight to Ozzy during a state dinner at a private establishment doesn't tell us anything about the White House.
It depends on how much you value your time. As I mentioned in my comment above, the 1949 film adaptation of The Fountainhead will tell you all know need to know to get the jokes (or see her philosophy laid bare depending on how you look at it).
Or take a shortcut and just watch The Fountainhead. Rand herself adapted her novel for the screen. Not even Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal could save that steaming mound of crap.
Atlas Shrugged is basically the same plot except with engineering instead of architecture.
It's more about philosophy, specifically the philosophy of science. But it's an intriguing work that takes seriously the criticisms of the likes of Feyerabend and Quine against logical empiricism and logical positivism. Along the way it covers why the doctrine of Sola Scriptura fails, why this critique also extends to tradition, how that effects schools of philosophy that tends towards absolutism (i.e. most forms of empiricism) and what one is left with once all the dust settles.
Feyerabend's Against Method. This is a fantastic romp through 20th century philosophy of science as seen through the eyes of someone who loves slaughtering sacred cows.
Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. In a US where ``the fed'' is a four letter word, it's useful to go back and see the arguments for a strong central government and national bank that uses debt as a tool.
Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone. This is the memoir of a boy soldier caught up in the conflict that took place in Sierra Leone. For a memoir, the writing in this is very strong. My chief complaint is that it doesn't have a real ending. Beah's story just kind of stops. But until that point, the narrative is unbelievably compelling.
Of Plymouth Plantation. This is basically the diary of a former governor of Plymouth Plantation. It has all sorts of interesting bits about why the Pilgrims left England for Holland and Holland for the New World. It bursts quite a few myths about the founding fathers of the US. It also helps set the stage for understanding the culture of the US in general.
Fiction:
Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. This book about a conspiracy theory that starts as a hoax is everything that the Davinci Code ought to have been but wasn't.
Carlos Ruiz Zafron's The Shadow of the Wind. This novel is set in Franco era Spain. Barcelona comes alive almost as an additional character. Reading this book was the last time that I picked up a book and wasn't willing to put it down until I finished.
If a toy includes a rare earth magnet as a part and that part is easy to detach and consume, then a house with that toy would probably count as an environment where children have easy access to rare earth magnets, no?
You mentioned the hardware issues. Another big issues with commercial concerns is the langage on patent licensing.
But I think that the big thing was the talk of closing the "web loophole" during drafts of v3 spooked quite a few vendors. I don't think it made it into the final version but by that point I think the damage had already been done.
Another big issue is that the language in the licence that an existing version can be replaced by a future version was first given serious thought by people opposed to some of the language in the various v3 drafts. All of a sudden, Linus looked prescient for explicitly specifying v2 of the license instead of using the FSF's standard boilerplate.
It was socialism that supposed to be transitional in Marx's writings. Communism, the great unknown of what comes about when humanity is no longer alienated from itself because class warfare has ceased to exist, is what Marx thought that socialism was supposed to help transition to.
In order for the magnets to pose a danger, they have to be where people have easy access to them. I think it pretty safe to say that someone waking up one morning, walking down the block and into the shop around the corner just to buy a magnet to eat is a pretty rare occurrence.
How many places where children are typically found usually have these sorts of magnets in places where the kids could easily get hold of them?
Funny typos aside, that's besides the point. How many children live (or play) in environments with easily obtainable rare earth magnets compared to those who live (or play) in environments with easily obtainable poisonous substances?
I don't know the answer to that. My point is that if we're going to compare, we should find out. Otherwise we're comparing the price of tea in China to the price of coffee in Tokyo.
I think a better comparison would be deaths (or injuries) compared to prevalence of the items in question. Of the 300,000,000 people in the US, only a small fraction live in an environment with access to rare earth magnets. But most, if not all, live in an environment where there are poisonous substances. Not to mention that according to the CDC, the overwhelming number of non-intentional poisonings are drug overdoses.
In 2007, 93 percent of unintentional poisoning deaths were caused by drugs. Opioid pain medications, such as methadone, hydrocodone, or oxycodone, were most commonly involved, followed by cocaine and heroin.
They tried everything from taking pregnant rats into space to observe the effects on fetal development to fertilizing embryos in microgravity to the effects of microgravity on the reproductive organs of rats.
Being an atheist doesn't mean that one doesn't believe in religion. Quite a few atheists believe in religion. There is a strain of political philosophy that can be traced through the early enlightenment and to the late medieval era that argued that religion is a tool created by philosophers for people unequipped to be reasonable and, consequently, live moral lives. Some argue that this view goes back as far as Plato (see, for example, the role that an artificially created religion plays in The Laws).
Moreover, many people that don't believe in religion would not call themselves atheists. Probably one of the most rapidly growing groups of irreligious people in the US are precisely those that consider themselves `spiritual but not religious.' Individuals in this group tend to believe in God, they just generally don't see the value in any sort of institutionalized religion.
And I don't think that either of these phenomena is exclusive to the United States. Take Russia as an example, according to the most recent polls I've seen, a majority of Russians self-identify themselves as Orthodox Christians but only a minority of Russians confess that they believe in God.
Odds are pretty high that math curricula have changed quite a bit since he went to high school unless he's under 40. When I was in 8th grade, it was amazing that the kids that did best at math were invited to take PRE ALGEBRA. When my daughter to eighth grade, it was no big deal for her and her peers to be taking pre calc.
I'm pretty certain that the school board member in question could explain the difference between the 4th and 8th grade NAEP questions you looked at and 10th grade FCAT questions. Most commenters on this thread must sit around lazily all day, brains atrophying due to a lack of usage, because they're too dim to notice obvious and basic facts.
Not only was the grade level different, it was put out by a different organization for a different purpose.
There is also a generational sea-change at work. When the board member was in school, standardized tests focused on solving math problems. Look at the 10th grade FCAT. The first question is theoretical, given a rhombus of.... why can one solve...
Orange County Florida board of education member Rick Roach took the 10th grade FCAT test. His less than stunning results were narrated by Marion Brady in the Washington Post.
The informal quiz on the Washington Post's web page has example questions from 4th and 8th grade questions by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Visit the practice FCAT test page to download a practice FCAT math test and answer key. It's an entirely different kind of test than the one at the Washington Post's web site. Consider the very first question:
Figure ABCD is a rhombus. The length of AE is (x + 5) units, and the length of is EC (2x 3) units.
[Figure deleted]
Which statement best explains why the equation x + 5 = 2x 3 can be used to solve for x?
A All four sides of a rhombus are congruent. B Opposite sides of a rhombus are parallel. C Diagonals of a rhombus are perpendicular. D Diagonals of a rhombus bisect each other
At the installations I've seen, first flags are put up on the perimeter and the owner walks the dog around the flags. Then the owner disciplines the dog every time the dog runs by the flags on its own. Then the "fence" goes in. Then the flags come out. Each of these steps goes on for a week or so.
Because in 2011 T-Mobile International AG announced that they weren't going to invest any new money in T-Mobile USA and would like to sell it off to any willing buyer.
They've been losing subscribers steadily since 2005 or so. Their parent company doesn't want to invest in new infrastructure upgrades to keep the company competitive to stem the losses.
Slashdot Mirror
They may not have known the name. They may not have known all the details of where the satellites were being manufactured or where the data was being analyzed. But the very article linked to mentions aspects of the program that were impossible to hide (e.g. rocket launches) and mentions that other nations knew what sort of program the US had in place. It's one thing for people to keep secret that they are the ones working on this particular secret project and it's another thing entirely for people to keep secret that they are working on a secret project.
Consider the woman in the article who didn't know what her dad did for a living. She concluded it was a secret. She may not have known what the secret was. But degrees, professional certifications, and prior work history were all available to her should she have wanted to explore. This sort of situation would be different from someone's whose father worked for a front for a secret project. In that situation, the man's daughter would not have even known that there was something to hide. That second sort of secret is the sort of secret that conspiracy theorists generally want us to believe in. It takes quite a bit more effort than the first kind of secret which amounts to the proverbial `elephant in the room' that everyone knows is there but nobody dare speak of.
I posted this bit FTFA above, but it's worth reposting it in this thread as well.
This sort of secret, one which everyone actually knows of but just don't know the details is an entirely different kind of secret than the kind that most conspiracy theorists advocate. It's one thing for the culture of an entire town to be such that no one talks about the proverbial `elephant in the room' and it's another thing entirely for there to be a secret that no one knows even exists.
FTFA
Despite 1,000 workers mostly keeping mum, both the US and the USSR had a general idea of the operational capacity of the other nation. The `secret' was the proverbial `elephant in the room.' Everyone knew it was there, they just didn't talk about it.
That is an entirely different animal than actually keeping a conspiracy secret.
As a point of pedantry, that Ozzy was dismayed by security at ``the Hilton, where Ronald Reagan had been shot'' does not imply in any way that ``security isn't very good at the White House.''
I'd be willing to concede that the White House may have less than stellar security. But that security didn't appear air tight to Ozzy during a state dinner at a private establishment doesn't tell us anything about the White House.
It depends on how much you value your time. As I mentioned in my comment above, the 1949 film adaptation of The Fountainhead will tell you all know need to know to get the jokes (or see her philosophy laid bare depending on how you look at it).
BTW, She's a she.
Or take a shortcut and just watch The Fountainhead. Rand herself adapted her novel for the screen. Not even Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal could save that steaming mound of crap.
Atlas Shrugged is basically the same plot except with engineering instead of architecture.
Bas C. van Fraassen's The Empirical Stance.
It's more about philosophy, specifically the philosophy of science. But it's an intriguing work that takes seriously the criticisms of the likes of Feyerabend and Quine against logical empiricism and logical positivism. Along the way it covers why the doctrine of Sola Scriptura fails, why this critique also extends to tradition, how that effects schools of philosophy that tends towards absolutism (i.e. most forms of empiricism) and what one is left with once all the dust settles.
If a toy includes a rare earth magnet as a part and that part is easy to detach and consume, then a house with that toy would probably count as an environment where children have easy access to rare earth magnets, no?
You mentioned the hardware issues. Another big issues with commercial concerns is the langage on patent licensing.
But I think that the big thing was the talk of closing the "web loophole" during drafts of v3 spooked quite a few vendors. I don't think it made it into the final version but by that point I think the damage had already been done.
Another big issue is that the language in the licence that an existing version can be replaced by a future version was first given serious thought by people opposed to some of the language in the various v3 drafts. All of a sudden, Linus looked prescient for explicitly specifying v2 of the license instead of using the FSF's standard boilerplate.
It was socialism that supposed to be transitional in Marx's writings. Communism, the great unknown of what comes about when humanity is no longer alienated from itself because class warfare has ceased to exist, is what Marx thought that socialism was supposed to help transition to.
Sure. But how many households have?
In order for the magnets to pose a danger, they have to be where people have easy access to them. I think it pretty safe to say that someone waking up one morning, walking down the block and into the shop around the corner just to buy a magnet to eat is a pretty rare occurrence.
How many places where children are typically found usually have these sorts of magnets in places where the kids could easily get hold of them?
Funny typos aside, that's besides the point. How many children live (or play) in environments with easily obtainable rare earth magnets compared to those who live (or play) in environments with easily obtainable poisonous substances?
I don't know the answer to that. My point is that if we're going to compare, we should find out. Otherwise we're comparing the price of tea in China to the price of coffee in Tokyo.
I think a better comparison would be deaths (or injuries) compared to prevalence of the items in question. Of the 300,000,000 people in the US, only a small fraction live in an environment with access to rare earth magnets. But most, if not all, live in an environment where there are poisonous substances. Not to mention that according to the CDC, the overwhelming number of non-intentional poisonings are drug overdoses.
I'm not certain that we're talking about the same class of problems here.
Your information is a bit old. Reproduction of rats in micro-gravity and zero-gravity has been being studied the last few years: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=rats+reproduction+microgravity
They tried everything from taking pregnant rats into space to observe the effects on fetal development to fertilizing embryos in microgravity to the effects of microgravity on the reproductive organs of rats.
Being an atheist doesn't mean that one doesn't believe in religion. Quite a few atheists believe in religion. There is a strain of political philosophy that can be traced through the early enlightenment and to the late medieval era that argued that religion is a tool created by philosophers for people unequipped to be reasonable and, consequently, live moral lives. Some argue that this view goes back as far as Plato (see, for example, the role that an artificially created religion plays in The Laws).
Moreover, many people that don't believe in religion would not call themselves atheists. Probably one of the most rapidly growing groups of irreligious people in the US are precisely those that consider themselves `spiritual but not religious.' Individuals in this group tend to believe in God, they just generally don't see the value in any sort of institutionalized religion.
And I don't think that either of these phenomena is exclusive to the United States. Take Russia as an example, according to the most recent polls I've seen, a majority of Russians self-identify themselves as Orthodox Christians but only a minority of Russians confess that they believe in God.
Odds are pretty high that math curricula have changed quite a bit since he went to high school unless he's under 40. When I was in 8th grade, it was amazing that the kids that did best at math were invited to take PRE ALGEBRA. When my daughter to eighth grade, it was no big deal for her and her peers to be taking pre calc.
I'm pretty certain that the school board member in question could explain the difference between the 4th and 8th grade NAEP questions you looked at and 10th grade FCAT questions. Most commenters on this thread must sit around lazily all day, brains atrophying due to a lack of usage, because they're too dim to notice obvious and basic facts.
Not only was the grade level different, it was put out by a different organization for a different purpose.
There is also a generational sea-change at work. When the board member was in school, standardized tests focused on solving math problems. Look at the 10th grade FCAT. The first question is theoretical, given a rhombus of .... why can one solve ...
Orange County Florida board of education member Rick Roach took the 10th grade FCAT test. His less than stunning results were narrated by Marion Brady in the Washington Post.
The informal quiz on the Washington Post's web page has example questions from 4th and 8th grade questions by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Visit the practice FCAT test page to download a practice FCAT math test and answer key. It's an entirely different kind of test than the one at the Washington Post's web site. Consider the very first question:
At the installations I've seen, first flags are put up on the perimeter and the owner walks the dog around the flags. Then the owner disciplines the dog every time the dog runs by the flags on its own. Then the "fence" goes in. Then the flags come out. Each of these steps goes on for a week or so.
Because in 2011 T-Mobile International AG announced that they weren't going to invest any new money in T-Mobile USA and would like to sell it off to any willing buyer.
They've been losing subscribers steadily since 2005 or so. Their parent company doesn't want to invest in new infrastructure upgrades to keep the company competitive to stem the losses.
Most of the forms of Christianity in the EU have no qualms with the theory of evolution.
Are you sure about that?
I seem to recall something relatively recent about the laws of physics and making armored trucks . . .
Police are clearing out the park so that the owners can clean it.
Once they are done cleaning it, the protesters will be allowed back in so long as they do not bring tents, sleeping bags, etc.