You're not being imaginative enough. One very hot topic of research in reliable computing right now are self-describing file formats. They are less space-efficient but they should effectively solve the software-side problem of long term storage. Interesting enough, the US National Archive is one of the biggest players on the block when it comes to thing kind of research.
"from what I know Einstein seemed to be motivated by things like the discovery of knowledge and genuine concern for mankind." - the real motiviation behind the "Eistein" letter was Leo Szilard, who wrote the letter and then persuaded his friend Einstein to co-sign it so that it would get noticed. (Einstein had name recognition, Szilard did not, and Szilard knew it). For further reading, I highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won the 1988 Pulitzer-Prize for Non-Fiction.
"Or, by your logic, we shouldn't have most traffic rules, because people might ignore them." - my logic is that public policy is based on how people actually behave, not how we want them to. And in the real world, most people follow most of the traffic rules most of the time. But pretending that everyone follows all the rules all of the rules all of the time is asinine. To use your example, if putting in a yield sign causes an increase in traffic accidents, then damn right it's a bad idea and it should be removed. But that doesn't mean all yield signs are a bad idea. With red light cameras, almost all of them cause an very large increase in traffic accidents, with a statistically negligible safety impact.
"By your logic, people will behave badly and potentially get AIDs, " - Agreed. Case and point - after 30 years of educating the public of the dangers of AIDS, a lot of people still get infected through high-risk sexual activity. "so why do anything about it?" - I didn't say we should do nothing about it; I said the policy response should be based on how people actually behave. That is to say, policymakers should assume some people will engage in high risk behavior and compensate accordingly. If some people are going to have lots unprotect sex with lots of strangers, make sure that second-line measures like AIDS testing and notification, free condoms, low-cost antiretrovirals etc are available. Your pretending that everyone follows all of the rules all of the time is exactly the same mindset used by people who preach abstinence-only education despite mountains of evidence that show it is absolutely ineffective because people don't behave that way.
People who deal with public policy have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as they would like it to be. In a perfect world, people would leave enough room in front of them so that if the other driver panic stops, they don't rear-end them. The problem is, won't don't live in a perfect world, and saying "Oh well, I'm going to pretend it is" (which is essentially what you are saying) does not make for good public policy.
Or, to point out another real world analogue to what you are saying: From a public health perspective, it would be great if everyone was monogamous and had protected sex. By your logic, it would be perfectly OK to cut public funding for AIDS testing and notification because, after all, if everyone is monogomous and has safe sex, there's no reason anyone would ever need AIDS testing or notification. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why this approach is flawed.
"as you're always supposed to keep enough distance to account for a possible panic-stop." - maybe that's true in fantasyland, but not where these cameras are being installed.
You must not drive in an area with these cameras installed. They are not passive -- they are plainly visible next to the light and frequently accompanied by signs saying "This intersection is monitored with red-light cameras". Upon seeing the camera, drivers will tend to slam on the breaks instead of going through the intersection on a yellow and risking a ticket. Hence, the huge increase in rear-end collisions.
Except that red-light cameras do not have any effect on driver safety, but they do cause a *large* numbers of rear-end collisions. (I've seen claims that they increase the chances of a rear end collision anywhere between 200% and 800%). See this for an explanation of how camera proponents lie with statistics.
From TFA: Just to make sure someone didn't do the opposite and take the text of the introduction and make it the Wikipedia page, I looked, and as I'm typing this, the Wikipedia page hasn't been updated since April -- and it looks like the bulk of that page has actually been in place for quite some time. The bill was introduced on May 6th.
I don't think anybody ever accused Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Reagan of being a "scientific or technical elite." Obama, at least, seems scientifically/technically literate, but that's a far cry from being elite. So the Eisenhwoer quote probably gets ignored because it's entire irrelavant to modern political discourse.
Back when I was working in New Mexico, there was a fair in Taos. One of the guys there was selling Dave's hot sauces, including their new ghost pepper variety. I bought the "temporary insanity" (57,000 scoville units according to this), and it's too hot for me except small doses. About a year later, the bottle is still mostly full.
My roommate, who has a much higher threshold for spicy food than anyone I've ever met, brought the newly unveiled ghost pepper brand (2.5 million scoville units, according to the bottle, if memory serves).
The dealer gave us a taste of it (a tiny drop on the tip of a toothpick) and my god did it burn.
The guy who sold it to us told us a few interesting things about it: (1) It instantly blisters skin on contact (2) it's very expensive to buy over the internet because it has to be shipped as a hazardous materiel. (3) Not only is it good for eating, but it works great as a caustic agent for degreasing driveways, engines, etc.
In short - ghost peppers are not something you play around with.
FWIW, what you're thinking of is called the MacDonald Triad. But to be fair, what the MacDonald triad means is that while many (most?) serial killers exhibited those behaviors, but not all people who exhibit those behaviors go on to become serial killers.
It's very difficult to speak with certainty about physical and psychological side effects from hormones because the chemical pathways followed by hormones are extremely complicated. (Example: When the Soviets bred foxes for tameness, their fur changed color. They realized - in retrospect - that breeding for tameness was in effect breeding them for less adrenaline, which is converted into melanin. So more tameness -> less adrenaline -> less fur coloring)
According to Wikipedia: The popular fear that soybeans might cause reduced libido and even feminine characteristics in men has not been indicated by any study; the popularity of the notion seems to be based on the simplistic misapprehension that estrogen and testosterone have a simple, inverse relationship in sexual hormone systems and sex-related behavior. Their interplay is very complicated and largely still unknown.
In short, WND's claims see to be no more credible than any other urban legend, except that it's coming from an outfit that has a long track record of distortion and misrepresentation.
The "pro-Obama" media doesn't respond to World Net Daily's rantings* because that would only give them what they crave most - attention, and the taint of legitimacy. It's exactly the same reason why many legitimate historians refuse to debate holocaust deniers.
You're in the right ball park, but (a) Mann wasn't making a prediction. He was making a temperature reconstruction -- a measurement of things that have already happened; and (b) it wasn't exponential, it a more-or-less linear increase. See this.
What makes you say that? There's nothing of any military or intelligence value to it. One of them was captured, put on tour, and is currently a museum piece.
When I first read this headline, I thought they had located the missing midget submarine used to attack Pearl Harbor. (See this) This is not the case. That ship still remains lost.
I'm sure there are plenty of people here who are going to mention the same few authors, so I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend a couple of obscure ones:
If you're aiming for a scifi-as-it-parallels-history motif, I think the best you can do is Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald. It's a short, gripping story about a soldier whose is to live in a bunker and press the big red button during a nuclear war.
Two others that are personal favorites of mine are: (1) "Casca" by Barry Sadler. It's about a roman soldier who is cursed by Jesus to be immortal. (2) Startide Rising by David Brin. Not terribly obscure, but this one is my favorite Scifi novel of all time.
"I mean, corporations do this all the time...many companies incorporate in Delaware for the tax breaks they get, even while most of their manufacturing/business/warehouses are in other states." - speaking as someone who has lived in Delaware for most of his life, this is false. I don't believe Delaware has an especially lax/favorable corporate tax system. Unless I'm mistaken, corporations incorporate in Delaware (a) because Delaware has the most favorable bankruptcy laws, and (b) because the Delaware Court of Chancery is the best Chancery court in the country (And, unlike most courts, the Chancery court is able to hear issues arising in equity rather than law. This has had profound legal implications in the past related to, among other things, desegregation. See Gebhart v. Belton, the only time separate-but-equal was beaten prior to Brown v Board of Education case)
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You're not being imaginative enough. One very hot topic of research in reliable computing right now are self-describing file formats. They are less space-efficient but they should effectively solve the software-side problem of long term storage. Interesting enough, the US National Archive is one of the biggest players on the block when it comes to thing kind of research.
"from what I know Einstein seemed to be motivated by things like the discovery of knowledge and genuine concern for mankind." - the real motiviation behind the "Eistein" letter was Leo Szilard, who wrote the letter and then persuaded his friend Einstein to co-sign it so that it would get noticed. (Einstein had name recognition, Szilard did not, and Szilard knew it). For further reading, I highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won the 1988 Pulitzer-Prize for Non-Fiction.
"Or, by your logic, we shouldn't have most traffic rules, because people might ignore them." - my logic is that public policy is based on how people actually behave, not how we want them to. And in the real world, most people follow most of the traffic rules most of the time. But pretending that everyone follows all the rules all of the rules all of the time is asinine. To use your example, if putting in a yield sign causes an increase in traffic accidents, then damn right it's a bad idea and it should be removed. But that doesn't mean all yield signs are a bad idea. With red light cameras, almost all of them cause an very large increase in traffic accidents, with a statistically negligible safety impact.
"By your logic, people will behave badly and potentially get AIDs, " - Agreed. Case and point - after 30 years of educating the public of the dangers of AIDS, a lot of people still get infected through high-risk sexual activity. "so why do anything about it?" - I didn't say we should do nothing about it; I said the policy response should be based on how people actually behave. That is to say, policymakers should assume some people will engage in high risk behavior and compensate accordingly. If some people are going to have lots unprotect sex with lots of strangers, make sure that second-line measures like AIDS testing and notification, free condoms, low-cost antiretrovirals etc are available. Your pretending that everyone follows all of the rules all of the time is exactly the same mindset used by people who preach abstinence-only education despite mountains of evidence that show it is absolutely ineffective because people don't behave that way.
People who deal with public policy have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as they would like it to be. In a perfect world, people would leave enough room in front of them so that if the other driver panic stops, they don't rear-end them. The problem is, won't don't live in a perfect world, and saying "Oh well, I'm going to pretend it is" (which is essentially what you are saying) does not make for good public policy.
Or, to point out another real world analogue to what you are saying: From a public health perspective, it would be great if everyone was monogamous and had protected sex. By your logic, it would be perfectly OK to cut public funding for AIDS testing and notification because, after all, if everyone is monogomous and has safe sex, there's no reason anyone would ever need AIDS testing or notification. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why this approach is flawed.
"as you're always supposed to keep enough distance to account for a possible panic-stop." - maybe that's true in fantasyland, but not where these cameras are being installed.
You must not drive in an area with these cameras installed. They are not passive -- they are plainly visible next to the light and frequently accompanied by signs saying "This intersection is monitored with red-light cameras". Upon seeing the camera, drivers will tend to slam on the breaks instead of going through the intersection on a yellow and risking a ticket. Hence, the huge increase in rear-end collisions.
Except that red-light cameras do not have any effect on driver safety, but they do cause a *large* numbers of rear-end collisions. (I've seen claims that they increase the chances of a rear end collision anywhere between 200% and 800%). See this for an explanation of how camera proponents lie with statistics.
From TFA: Just to make sure someone didn't do the opposite and take the text of the introduction and make it the Wikipedia page, I looked, and as I'm typing this, the Wikipedia page hasn't been updated since April -- and it looks like the bulk of that page has actually been in place for quite some time. The bill was introduced on May 6th.
I don't think anybody ever accused Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Reagan of being a "scientific or technical elite." Obama, at least, seems scientifically/technically literate, but that's a far cry from being elite. So the Eisenhwoer quote probably gets ignored because it's entire irrelavant to modern political discourse.
Yes - yes they have.
Back when I was working in New Mexico, there was a fair in Taos. One of the guys there was selling Dave's hot sauces, including their new ghost pepper variety. I bought the "temporary insanity" (57,000 scoville units according to this), and it's too hot for me except small doses. About a year later, the bottle is still mostly full.
My roommate, who has a much higher threshold for spicy food than anyone I've ever met, brought the newly unveiled ghost pepper brand (2.5 million scoville units, according to the bottle, if memory serves).
The dealer gave us a taste of it (a tiny drop on the tip of a toothpick) and my god did it burn.
The guy who sold it to us told us a few interesting things about it: (1) It instantly blisters skin on contact (2) it's very expensive to buy over the internet because it has to be shipped as a hazardous materiel. (3) Not only is it good for eating, but it works great as a caustic agent for degreasing driveways, engines, etc.
In short - ghost peppers are not something you play around with.
FWIW, what you're thinking of is called the MacDonald Triad. But to be fair, what the MacDonald triad means is that while many (most?) serial killers exhibited those behaviors, but not all people who exhibit those behaviors go on to become serial killers.
some people tolerate hardware flakiness until there's a good reason to bother with the pain of upgrading. --- AMEN to that.
It's very difficult to speak with certainty about physical and psychological side effects from hormones because the chemical pathways followed by hormones are extremely complicated. (Example: When the Soviets bred foxes for tameness, their fur changed color. They realized - in retrospect - that breeding for tameness was in effect breeding them for less adrenaline, which is converted into melanin. So more tameness -> less adrenaline -> less fur coloring)
According to Wikipedia: The popular fear that soybeans might cause reduced libido and even feminine characteristics in men has not been indicated by any study; the popularity of the notion seems to be based on the simplistic misapprehension that estrogen and testosterone have a simple, inverse relationship in sexual hormone systems and sex-related behavior. Their interplay is very complicated and largely still unknown.
In short, WND's claims see to be no more credible than any other urban legend, except that it's coming from an outfit that has a long track record of distortion and misrepresentation.
The "pro-Obama" media doesn't respond to World Net Daily's rantings* because that would only give them what they crave most - attention, and the taint of legitimacy. It's exactly the same reason why many legitimate historians refuse to debate holocaust deniers.
World Net Daily is a few fries short of a happy meal. This is the same news organization that claims that Obama worked to fund terrorists, that 9/11 was caused by the New Yorkers who had it coming, and that the Russian spy poisoned by the KGB using polonium was actually a muslim terrorist trying to sneak radioactive materials into the US. They are basically a forum for conspiracy theories wrapped up in nice packaging.
That's because PDF should only be used for printing. If you are reading PDFs on your computer monitor, somebody screwed up.
You're in the right ball park, but (a) Mann wasn't making a prediction. He was making a temperature reconstruction -- a measurement of things that have already happened; and (b) it wasn't exponential, it a more-or-less linear increase. See this.
What makes you say that? There's nothing of any military or intelligence value to it. One of them was captured, put on tour, and is currently a museum piece.
When I first read this headline, I thought they had located the missing midget submarine used to attack Pearl Harbor. (See this) This is not the case. That ship still remains lost.
How does that work? See this.
"Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it. " - This is not true at all
I'm sure there are plenty of people here who are going to mention the same few authors, so I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend a couple of obscure ones:
If you're aiming for a scifi-as-it-parallels-history motif, I think the best you can do is Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald. It's a short, gripping story about a soldier whose is to live in a bunker and press the big red button during a nuclear war.
Two others that are personal favorites of mine are:
(1) "Casca" by Barry Sadler. It's about a roman soldier who is cursed by Jesus to be immortal.
(2) Startide Rising by David Brin. Not terribly obscure, but this one is my favorite Scifi novel of all time.
"I mean, corporations do this all the time...many companies incorporate in Delaware for the tax breaks they get, even while most of their manufacturing/business/warehouses are in other states." - speaking as someone who has lived in Delaware for most of his life, this is false. I don't believe Delaware has an especially lax/favorable corporate tax system. Unless I'm mistaken, corporations incorporate in Delaware (a) because Delaware has the most favorable bankruptcy laws, and (b) because the Delaware Court of Chancery is the best Chancery court in the country (And, unlike most courts, the Chancery court is able to hear issues arising in equity rather than law. This has had profound legal implications in the past related to, among other things, desegregation. See Gebhart v. Belton, the only time separate-but-equal was beaten prior to Brown v Board of Education case)
Unless I'm mistaken, most international students have a J-1 visa, not an H1-B visa.