I am all for people doing "science for the sake of science"... as long as they do it with their own money. When they want to do it with my money (or public money that is forcibly removed from my pocket by taxation), then I expect to be listed as a co-author.
If the authors of this paper did this without public funds, then that is wonderful. If they did it with tax dollars, then a lot of Spainards would be quite justified in being angry that food is being taken out of their mouths by their gov't to fund such illegitimate gov't activity.
Science for science's sake is good.
Science for the sake of getting a gov't grant to read comics is bad.
"Shut up, John, you'll be a cooling system engineer just like your father was, and his father before him, and so on".
What, are we assuming that communist China is launching this spaceship?
Why would we throw out capitalism just because the people are going to be living in a starship? Little Johnny can be a professional ballerina... if he can make enough wealth doing that to "make ends meet." Sure, some people will have to do basic services... just there are people who have to take care of Earthbound infrastucture. If not enough people want to be cooling system engineers, then they will have to be recruited into doing it with higher salaries or better benifits, just like we do here on Earth. Where does the money come from? What, surely you didn't think you could escape taxes just by leaving the solar system! If being a ballerina does not generate any benifit for the rest of the crew then Johnny won't be able to make any money doing it, and it will have to simply remain a hobby. I doubt there will be National Endowment for the Arts grants in the ark, because they won't have the spare resouces for such non-wealth generating luxuries. But perhaps a corrupt ship governer might raise everyone's taxes a little extra so he could pay some people to engage in unproductive activity that he personally wants (so if he is a ballet fan... or just likes little boys in Tutus, perhaps Johnny can have his dream) and claim that he is doing so for the benifit of the ship as a whole (by bringing the "enlightened" joys of ballet to the ignorant commoners in the crew who, if they kept their money, would just spend it on crude entertainment like gambling or liquor). Sort of like PBS in space*.
If we expect the future colonists of this new world to be good capitalists then the generations that live on the ship will need to be as well. If we force them to live in a tyranical state for the generations it takes to get there, then either their connection to Western Culture will be gone by the time they get there, or they will never get there at all. I'm not sure which is worse.
* Not that I mind too much. I like opera and documenteries. But I do feel a little guilty that my fellow "culturally enlightened" persons have conspired to fund our tastes out of the public's treasury, which was collected from people forcibly. Fortunately PBS is being funded more and more by private funds and I can enjoy my "public" TV without my concience bothering me.
Sadly, no matter how rich poor people get, there will still be poor. It has nothing to do with education, it is simple math. We define our standard of poor relative to the current average wealth. Most of our "poor" in this country are incredibly wealthy in terms of other cultures (especially historically), but we define them relative to OUR culture. As we get richer as a society, our expectations also increase with it. That is why I belive the "war on poverty" will never be won by the current way of thinking. Get rid of the bottom 20% of the economy... and ther e is a new bottom 20%. I'm sure there is some commie out there who will suggest that if we just make evertyone exactly average in material wealth, then that would do it... in which case I'd suggest they just move to Cuba or China for a couple of years then come back and explain how easy it is to acomplish that.
Oh, and of course the PDA will have to be controlable from the outside. It might even be interesting to give some of the parents limited control over it. All kinds of useful things might come out of that. For example, the parents might discover that by turning off or on various outputs from the PDA they could make the child more docile, or even send it into a catatonic state; very useful for when it is making too much noise in a theater or airplane.
Take the 3000 kids and implant them with a PDA. Just have a bunch of input and output wires strung all over their brains. 10 to 15 is too old, though; start them when they are babies (You'll have to be careful with the equipment as their body grows). As their brains are figuring out things like "oh, this connection moves my hand", it will also learn how to control the PDA, and interpret it's output (though some output, like a good strong shock, will be understood instinctively). Some of the kids PDA's could be linked together wirelessly so that the kids could "think" at each other. You would probably want to have several groups with different levels of interconnectedness and when this interconnectedness was turned on (you can't explain to a baby why someelse's thoughts are in their head, and since we don't know what this will do to them some groups should not have that feature turned on until they can understand the concept of other people), to see how much of a group mind they develop. This would be particularly interesting if at least one group was spread out geographically and/or culturally.
Perhaps some could be given baby toys that are remotely controled by the PDA, to see if that accellerates the speed with which their mind learns how to manipulate the PDA; I bet it would.
Consider using a chording keyboard as one input method. I doubt many of these kids have been taught touch typing yet. Considering how good some kids get at "texting" each other with a telephone style keypad, I would imagine that many of them would pick up on using the chording keyboard very quickly once they figured out how much faster they can be than whatever the other input method(s) are for it. A chording keyboard consisting of half a dozen keys around the perimiter of the PDA would allow someone to hold it and input information 1 handed. It would seem to be a perfect match for a PDA... theoretically. But since most people already know how to type (not a problem with these children, as I said) and are afraid of learning a new system, no large PDA company has taken the chance on one. This might be a good opportunity to test them out and see just how hard or easy to use they really are. Even if they don't become popular with us adults who have become set in our ways, if it becomes popular with children's electronic devices then it will become popular with adults in 10+ years when those children have grown up.
It certainly also needs some kind of IR input/output like the Palm/Handsprings. A large stand alone IR transmitter/reciever so that a teacher or other such person could brodcast information to a whole class at once would be useful, too. For that matter, they'd be good at trade shows and presentations for palm/hanspring customers. "My business card, and accompanying notes for this presentation will be boadcast now, for those of you with compatible PDAs." Perhaps a jammer, to keep kids from using these to cheat on tests also. LOL
If you could make them so that it was easy to program your own applications for them using someting like BASIC (or even LOGO!, everyone remember that experiment.) or some other language that is designed to be easy for young people to learn so that even non-computer geek kids could write small applications for themselves, it would be interesting to see how many kids would do that.
Personally, I suspect that dinosaur fossils were put there to give 3rd grade children something "cool" to get them interested in science.
But, then I also think the idea of creation having to occur at the "start" of time makes about as much sense as someone saying that a record (or a vinyl, or LP, or whatever people are calling them now) must have been manufactured starting with the first track. So, obviously I have a pretty screwed up view of space-time.
CSIS did a very good analysis of this back in the 1980s, called Crisis Management in a Society of Networks but I don't think any copies are available now (for obvious reasons).
Also, because technology allows man to accomplish more (communicate or travel over longer distances, calculate things faster, make more powerful chemical reactions, provide energy to more complex and powerful devices, kill people and creatures more easily and at longer ranges, store food longer before it spoils, etc.) in every area of human endeavor, it gives the common man more power to do both good and evil. I have a little box in my house and another at my office that can perform calculations in mere seconds that took the Manhattan Project scientists weeks and Tycho Brahe years. I can access more power in my home's electrical outlets and my car's engine than a Medieval engineer could imagine getting from the biggest waterwheel or horse powered machine. I can buy chemicals to clean my clothes or to fumigate my house that would make the most sophisticated alchemist CuO with envy.
As the average person gains the power to do things (good things, AND evil things) that are equal to or exceed that which could only be accomplished in previous times by Kings and Emperors, it is perhaps understandable that we will begin to worry that our neighbors can do a little TOO much (or we may especially worry that our subjects can do too much if we are "leaders")and that we must trust in either their good nature or the deterrence of the law to prevent them from doing us harm. Few people complain, however, that THEY have too much power... only their neighbors.
One of the key areas where this trend first became visible is in gun control, probably because guns are an obvious symbol of power. A dainty young woman can go to the store and buy a gun that allows her to achieve a level of lethality in only a few weeks of practice that was once only attainable by a few very strong and/or dedicated martial artists after years of work. Perhaps the 1st society to be freaked out by this was feudal Japan, which saw them as a huge threat to the established order (which is probably accurate, it just wouldn't do to have some lowly peasants with rifles or muskets having the power to kill the Emperor's best warriors). But just as firearms give the average man the power to do much greater good (the fact that a large number of peasants CAN defeat a small number of elite units allows, and perhaps requires, modern democracies where those who rule are the ones who can get the support of the greatest number of people rather than maintaining an unpopular rule with the use of a handful of elite knights or samurai warriors) it also allows the average man to do much greater evil than before. Because the potential for abuse with this technology is popularly known, there are a large number of people who seek to ban or restrict the average person's access to it in order to protect themselves from their now powerful neighbors. Of course guns have been around for a lot longer than the idea of a "grass roots" gun ban effort (as opposed to a "top down" effort from a threatened aristocracy), but I suspect that is because people moved around less and were more likely to know and trust their neighbors back then, whereas in today's more mobile and less community based societies people trust their politicians and government employees more than they do their neighbors.
Of course, as I said at the beginning of the last paragraph guns are an obvious symbol of power, but there are plenty of other technologies now available to the average person that are equal to or exceed (sometimes greatly) the power to do harm that guns have. There is a great deal of uproar about keeping guns away from kids after the Columbine and other school shootings, but a devious and malicious high school student could do a lot more harm with a box of rat poison (or a hundred other technologies) than he could ever hope to be able to do with a pistol. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks demonstrated that the power contained in a score of airplane tickets is equal to or greater than the power in a small weapon of mass destruction. So now people are working to restrict access to airlines. But there are a nearly infinite technical solutions to any problem. The Foreign Policy article (and the earlier CSIS report) is now starting to hint at what may be a crucial challenge to free societies everywhere. As technology advances, it is no longer possible to stop people from being able to accomplish great harm by simply restricting a few "dangerous" technologies. In a society where the average man has access to a wide variety of powerful technologies (many, like modern airline travel, don't even seem dangerous without a great deal of thought), there are nearly an infinite number of ways for evil men to do a great deal of harm... too many ways to be thwarted by simply banning a few technologies. We can rethink the use of and availability of technologies like firearms, and cryptography, and airlines, and high-rise buildings, and microbiology; but the next attack could be based on other technologies, like chemical poisons, or tractor-trailer rigs, or hydroelectric plants, or trains, or.... Well... almost anything.
How do we prevent men from doing greater evil as society's technology improves? Can we make technology that can only be used for good? Can we restrict access to technology to only "good" or a "approve" people? Who decides who is "good" and "approved", and can we have such a society without destabilizing it's tendency to remain a democracy? Was the unibomber right? Can our judicial system prevent these problems simply through deterrence, and not the banning of "dangerous" technologies? How can you ban one technology without banning all the others it is based on? Would that require making certain knowledge or research "forbidden"? Do the Amish have the ultimate answer? How long before such a society was conquered by its neighbors who did not ban technologies? Are these risks just the price we must pay to live in a free and technologically advanced society? Can we find a regulatory or legal compromise that strikes a balance between giving the average person power over his environment (and his government) while minimizing (but not eliminating) the risks of immature or criminal people abusing technology?
I don't know, but I do suspect that these questions are no longer going to be limited to a few high-profile technologies with obvious associations to military power like cryptography and firearms. As wrongdoers have become (and are forced to become even more) inventive in their misuse of all sorts of technology, more and more people will realize that this is an issue that cuts across all types of technology. Gun control can perhaps be seen as a preview of the same types of arguments that will soon be had over a wide range of technologies.
Note: my use of "man" and "men" in this post is meant to refer to people of both genders.
There already exists a "Radio Free Zone" in the United States that is far more free of stray electromagnetic fields than Mendocino could ever hope to be. It is a very large area around the Greenbank Radio Telescope facility (and some military facilities) in West Virginia called the National Radio Quiet Zone.
If these kooks really want to be "free" from the EM spectrum then they should stop trying to take over the politics of Mendocino and force the locals to give up their technology so these "sensitives" can all move there. Instead they should just move to the 13,000 square miles of land already covered by the National Radio Quiet Zone. That way the people of Mendocino can enjoy their wireless technology and cell phones and the "sensitives" can live as sheltered an existence as they could ever hope to have.
"Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry, for there are many good [people] in this world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good [people] in the world who cannot pass an examination in honesty."
- Madison Sarratt (1891-1978), dean, Vanderbilt University.
I did not ask if DEFINING a unit of measure was a gov't problem (which it admittedly is), I asked if SELECTING one was.
I wasn't suggesting that we could all run around with different definitions of a kilogram or troy ounces, but I was suggesting that it is not the gov'ts business to tell me when to use one or the other in my own calculations or private transactions. Of course, the gov't can and does specify units (usually metric) when you do business with them, but that is perfectly understandable.
The previous poster seemed to think that the President Reagan should have some how shoved the use of metric units down the public's throat under penalty of death or imprisonment (isn't all law ultimately based on one of those threats?). I agree that misrepresenting a unit of measure should be a crime, but I really don't think that using a "non government approved unit of measure" should be one. That seems just a little to draconian for me. If I want to think in feet and pounds then that is my decision. If I want to buy 10 fathoms of rope (and can find a rope-seller that knows what a fathom is), then why can't I?
If I have equipment that makes ¼-20 bolts, and my customers want to buy them then what business is it of the President's? Sure, because they aren't metric bolts I may have problems selling them overseas, but if I don't want to export my bolts then I don't care. If the metric bolt market is profitable enough for me to justify the capital expense of new metric based equipment, then I'll buy one and start making metric bolts. But often the capital cost to retool my business to a new unit of measure cannot be justified (see story below). The gov't could put a gun to my head and make me do it. But telling me that it is "for the good of the country" because some pointy-headed academics think it would be cool if we all used the metric system will not magically change the economics of the situation. If it is profitable then the businessmen will do it without coercion... or they will be put out of business by people who will. There is no reason for the gov't to spend billions of dollars brainwashing the entire population into believing that there is only one true system of measurement (and causing huge economic and technical losses as a result) just so a few anal retentive people can feel comforted by the fact that there are now more "nice round numbers" in the world. They would be horrified by a physicist friend of mine who regularly invents his own units so that he could make parts of his equations cancel out or go to zero (and he would then convert back into "regular" units at the end of the calculation).
A brief little aside: All Air Force transports are built with a certain minimum height for the cargo bay area. That minimum height is the height of a knight on horseback, including his helmet. Of course that is not how it is written in the RFP; it is no doubt given in meters or centimeters (because the gov't is trying to encourage metric use)... but fundamentally the unit is "one mounted knight, including helmet." Just like when I see a blueprint in metric units that calls for a measurement of 25.4mm, I know that the real unit that the part was designed to was 1 inch and it was then converted to metric (probably because the customer wanted it that way). Why use such an archaic standard for aircraft cargo areas? Because the cargo areas have to carry U.S. Army vehicles, and those vehicles are usually designed to be shorter than a mounted knight. They are designed that way because they have to be able to pass under bridges in Europe, some of which date back to the Middle Ages. (I'm sure you can see where this is going) The monarchs ruling Europe back then didn't want to have their knights to have to take off their helmet when they went under bridges (because they would be more vulnerable to attack then) so they decreed that all bridges would be built tall enough to permit a fully armored knight to be able to ride underneath it without having to remove their helmets (I'm sure they used some primitive form of a 95th percentile knight, which probably means that there were one or two tall fellows who occasionally hit their head or had to lean over really far). So, modern aircraft are built to an ancient standard because it is cheaper to design the aircraft and tanks to the old standard than to get all the nations of Europe to rebuild their bridges to some nice round metric height like 10 meters. And that is the right decision... even if it screws horribly with the "nice round number utopia" that some people like to fantasize about.
Millihelen: The amount of beauty capable of launching one ship.
How come selecting a unit of measure is somehow a government problem? This is a free country. There is nothing to stop you from doing all your measuring and calculating in metric units, if you like them so much. Gov't agenicies, like NASA, generally want all their units to at least end up in metric if you do any contracting for them (how you get them there is usually your own problem). What more would you want? Should we throw engineers in jail who don't "get with the program" and think in metric? Mandate that any manufactured product that is not evenly divisible in millimeters be confiscated and destroyed? If I want to measure all my stuff relative to some long dead monarch's body parts (or even my own body parts, for that matter) then that is my own #@&^ business. Units of measure are a tool, not a religion. There is no reason we HAVE to limit ourselves to just one system. Often using "strange" units can make your equations much easier (eg. measuring accel. in gees instead of m/s^2).
BTW, the "metric to english conversion error" that cost us the mars probe was just one small symptom of a sick management program. Unit conversion alone (either within or between systems) should not pose that big of a technical hurdle for a group like JPL. #@!!, it shouldn't even pose that big a problem to freshman engineering students.
As for metric being easier, now that I own one of these new, cool pocket-sized calculating engines that Messrs. Hewlett and Packard make I can just as easily convert between feet and miles as between centimeters and kilometers. Pick one up yourself, they are a great invention.
"My results seem to be off from what I expected by about a factor of 10. I must have a metric conversion error in... well... somewhere."
Pounds (of force and mass) are great units for working with rocket equations because you can "cheat" on your units and use specific impulse (measured in seconds... sort of) instead of using exhaust velocity. I also find it makes it easier to use gees as your unit of accel. than using m/s^2 with kg of mass and newtons of force.
Metric is great fun for calculating electrical problems (IMHO), but English is better for rocketry. In adv. physics, just pick whatever strange units (like measuring velocity in %c) make the equations come out easy then convert back when you are done. Units of measure are just a tool, no need to be a zealot about them.
There are more people looking at this for space launch than just a handful
of guys in Huntsville launching model airplanes. And a lot more than
$30,000 is being spent on it. These guys just did a little better PR
(perhaps the fact that Huntsville is a short drive from CNN's facilities
in Atlanta helped). Surely you don't expect CNN to have the latest
(or even accurate) aerospace news, do you? Do they do an accurate job
reporting about software? Go spend the money on (or find a library
that has) a subscription to Aviation Leak and Space Technology, Janes, or
better yet Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets if you really want to know what
is happening.
So, let me get this right... you "honor and respect" dirt?
Or did you mean, "Earth" instead of "earth."
Gee, if you honor and respect "her" the least you could do is capitalize your pagan god's name.
Honor it all you want, I am striving to leave this mudball ASAP and tour the rest of the universe. Alas, it is a hobby that has not yet paid off.
You claim you are "practicing a religion whose members are generally accepting of other religions." Funny, you don't seem very accepting of other religions in your post. Most major religions are "narrow minded" about the fact that they are the one true way to salvation/enlightenment/etc. Are they "evil" because they seek to prevent people from straying down the path of destruction (as they see it)? Isn't it the right thing for them to warn other people not to take a path that they believe to be dangerous, as long as they stick to persuasion and argument (as opposed violence or the force of law). Is it now "evil" to openly question other people's beliefs and engage them in peaceful debate? If it is, then that is all the more reason for me to move to a less crowded planet (and one without delusions of divinity). Or by "accepting of other religions" do you mean just a few other fruitcake, feel-good, new age superstitions that don't challenge your world view?
I can't believe this is 2001, I don't have a flying car... and people in the industrialized world are still shelling out good money for witch doctors to read Tarot cards and chicken bones for them. That was not what the sci-fi novels promised me!
This is actually a problem that the real Army has complained about. In his book The Art of Manuever, Richard Leonhard complains that because military simulations don't accurately depict troop morale, it distorts the predicted effectiveness of various weapons and tactics. For example, in the simulations you want to "open up" with a weapon as soon as the enemy is in range to maximize the amount of time you have to shoot at him. In real life you want to wait until the enemy gets closer and then open fire suddenly with a lot of different weapon systems in a very short period of time, to cause shock and confusion amoung the troops that don't get killed.
The Close Combat series of games includes troop morale. It was supposedly designed with the help of a military psychologist. The "shock and confusion" of an ambush that Leonhard was complaining was absent in military sims is a factor in Close Combat. National Defense magazine reported several months ago that some Army units had begun using Close Combat to suppliment their officer training courses, giving a new meaning to "armchair General."
"You seem to make out that it's almost a matter of fact that someone is going to rampage with a gun."
No, but it IS a matter of fact that a business must take "reasonable care" to prevent security problems that could injure it's employees, customers, or visitors. Workplace violence is one of those problems. If a business does not take these steps, and something does happen then they are very likely to be sued for negligence. Even if they do take those steps, they can still be sued; but if the business can demonstrate that they exersized "due dilligence" then they have a chance of winning the case.
I don't think it is a "matter of fact" that every house will burn down or have a flood, but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't have insurance. Is the underlying mentality of flood insurance scary, too?
If the attacker does get into the office with a gun, though then he only has unarmed opponents to worry about.
In some cases it makes more sense to allow many trusted employees to carry on premises, that way if any one person goes on a shooting spree, he is outnumbered by other armed employees. If a facility has its own armed response team, then this policy could cause a problem where the response team doesn't know who to shoot at; in which case the "nobody carries guns at work except security" policy is the way to go. If the facility does NOT have the resources to spend on an armed resonse team, then allowing (or even encouraging) certain employees to "pack heat" makes more sense. I know of a law firm in Memphis that does that (though they are more worried about a disgruntled client than they are about one of the partners going Postal... I don't know what that says about the quality of their work).
Whether to allow employees to carry firearms on the premises is actually a complex trade off that should be made by someone aware of the security and legal pros and cons, not something that should be quickly decided by someone in the HR dept.
Let me see if I can summarize your points in 2 statements:
Statement 1: The state of the art in military technology has advanced to the point that a militia unit equipped only with rifles cannot stand against a normal military unit.
Statement 2: The purpose of the "right to keep and bear arms" is to keep the gov't in check.
Well, then it seems to me that the logical solution to the problem you describe in your post would be to start considering anti-tank and anti-aircraft assets as "arms" covered under the 2nd Amendment.
Actually, now that I think about it, that is not so crazy. A TOW 2 or a Bofors AAA cannon are WAY too big to be useful in 99.9999% of all crimes. It is not like you could carjack somebody with a Stinger or walk into a liquer store with a AT-4 rocket hidden in your coat. Heck one round would be worth more than you could get in the robbery anyway. It would make things like wipping out the Branch Davidians in Waco more difficult; but isn't that the idea, to make the gov't think twice before using military force against civilians (even if they evenutally decide that the answer is still "yes")? I still doubt it would ever become law. Hopefully if it such a thing ever happened, enough military units would defect to give the rebels a chance (assuming they deserve one). Still, isn't that the situation we wanted to avoid in the 1st place, where the whim of those in the military is more important in determining the outcome of a rebellion than the "will of the people."
I know a guy who has a different version of that story. He was carrying a Heckler and Koch MP5 in his check in baggage. For those who don't know what an MP5 is, it is not an even better way to swap sound files than an MP3... a very scary looking submachine gun ( http://www.mp5.net/home.htm ). Anyway, this guy trains SWAT teams on submachinegun use; everything is properly licensed and permitted. He was flying across the country to teach a marksmanship class. He takes the luggage up to the counter like he is supposed to and delcares to the person at the counter that he is transporting a firearm in his luggage and needs the proper forms. The airline clerk hands him the forms and says that he needs to visually inspect the firearm to make sure it is unloaded. "Certainly," my friend replies but he suggests they step into the airline office to do it privately. The clerk replies that they can't do that, and he needs to see the firearm right there. "I think that is a bad idea" my friend warned, but the airline clerk was insistant. So, right in the middle of a crowded airport he unzips the bag, pulls out a full-auto MP5 and loudly racks the slide back to show the clerk the empty chamber. Of course EVERYONE within sight freaks out and dives for cover as my friend and the clerk are standing there checking the gun in. After a few seconds everyone realized that it was not some sort of attack and started to carefully get up off the floor. Well, airline regulations do say the clerks have to inspect the firearms to see that they are unloaded... but he really should have taken my friends advice and done it in a more private place.
Fortunately this took place before Sept. 11. Now, I would be worried that nervous security guards would mistakenly open fire.
"And why should it be considered acceptable for me to relinquish my Fourth Ammendment rights so I can go work on in my lab?"
If it was "your lab" then you would have a point, but it isn't. Good grief, you work at N.I.H. in Bethesda, MD; you should be upset if they DIDN'T search you!
If it really bothers you, then quit and start your own lab, then you can take whatever stupid risks you want.
As for some of the "have fun with it" suggestions for putting gross things in your briefcase; I would be careful about that. I'm sure most of these people have never worked in a secure facility and have no idea how little of a sense of humor a good security force is supposed to have. If you still want to "make it fun" that is fine, just be careful how you do it. Putting that creative mind to some positive use and doing a little "cross functional teaming" with the security manager could make it more tolerable and also improve security. For example, get together with some of the folks you work with, and the supervisor of the security guards and suggest ongoing "tests" of the searchers. A good security force needs to be audited at irregular intervals anyway; and if the supervisor has the co-operation of some non-security employees, that can make it easier. What I recommend for audits is to use dice. If I need to audit a dept. about once a week, I roll a 10 sided dice (you do have some of those left over from D&D, don't you) and if it comes up 9 or 10, then I do an audit that day. That way, the audits occur about the right frequency but are not predictable. The supervisor could even add a carrot along with the stick and offer some small prize (a "quality" pen or a gift certificate for a box of donuts) to whoever finds the employee trying to smuggle the test item through. Of course, there would have to be more employees in on the audits than just you, or else they would soon figure out to just search you thoroughly, and the whole point is lost.
You mean this:
http://www.mitsi.com/Projects/alp.htm
I heard a story (I have no idea how true it is) that a bunch of engineers for a TV mfg. company built a giant laser projection TV to demonstrate at the company picnic one year. Supposedly it worked great at first, but after watching it for a few minutes it would give people headaches. They didn't know why, so they never made one again.
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I am all for people doing "science for the sake of science"... as long as they do it with their own money. When they want to do it with my money (or public money that is forcibly removed from my pocket by taxation), then I expect to be listed as a co-author.
If the authors of this paper did this without public funds, then that is wonderful. If they did it with tax dollars, then a lot of Spainards would be quite justified in being angry that food is being taken out of their mouths by their gov't to fund such illegitimate gov't activity.
Science for science's sake is good.
Science for the sake of getting a gov't grant to read comics is bad.
I have no clue which this is.
"Shut up, John, you'll be a cooling system engineer just like your father was, and his father before him, and so on".
What, are we assuming that communist China is launching this spaceship?
Why would we throw out capitalism just because the people are going to be living in a starship? Little Johnny can be a professional ballerina... if he can make enough wealth doing that to "make ends meet." Sure, some people will have to do basic services... just there are people who have to take care of Earthbound infrastucture. If not enough people want to be cooling system engineers, then they will have to be recruited into doing it with higher salaries or better benifits, just like we do here on Earth. Where does the money come from? What, surely you didn't think you could escape taxes just by leaving the solar system! If being a ballerina does not generate any benifit for the rest of the crew then Johnny won't be able to make any money doing it, and it will have to simply remain a hobby. I doubt there will be National Endowment for the Arts grants in the ark, because they won't have the spare resouces for such non-wealth generating luxuries. But perhaps a corrupt ship governer might raise everyone's taxes a little extra so he could pay some people to engage in unproductive activity that he personally wants (so if he is a ballet fan... or just likes little boys in Tutus, perhaps Johnny can have his dream) and claim that he is doing so for the benifit of the ship as a whole (by bringing the "enlightened" joys of ballet to the ignorant commoners in the crew who, if they kept their money, would just spend it on crude entertainment like gambling or liquor). Sort of like PBS in space*.
If we expect the future colonists of this new world to be good capitalists then the generations that live on the ship will need to be as well. If we force them to live in a tyranical state for the generations it takes to get there, then either their connection to Western Culture will be gone by the time they get there, or they will never get there at all. I'm not sure which is worse.
* Not that I mind too much. I like opera and documenteries. But I do feel a little guilty that my fellow "culturally enlightened" persons have conspired to fund our tastes out of the public's treasury, which was collected from people forcibly. Fortunately PBS is being funded more and more by private funds and I can enjoy my "public" TV without my concience bothering me.
It's those biathletes you really have to worry about.
Sadly, no matter how rich poor people get, there will still be poor. It has nothing to do with education, it is simple math. We define our standard of poor relative to the current average wealth. Most of our "poor" in this country are incredibly wealthy in terms of other cultures (especially historically), but we define them relative to OUR culture. As we get richer as a society, our expectations also increase with it. That is why I belive the "war on poverty" will never be won by the current way of thinking. Get rid of the bottom 20% of the economy... and ther e is a new bottom 20%. I'm sure there is some commie out there who will suggest that if we just make evertyone exactly average in material wealth, then that would do it... in which case I'd suggest they just move to Cuba or China for a couple of years then come back and explain how easy it is to acomplish that.
Oh, and of course the PDA will have to be controlable from the outside. It might even be interesting to give some of the parents limited control over it. All kinds of useful things might come out of that. For example, the parents might discover that by turning off or on various outputs from the PDA they could make the child more docile, or even send it into a catatonic state; very useful for when it is making too much noise in a theater or airplane.
Take the 3000 kids and implant them with a PDA. Just have a bunch of input and output wires strung all over their brains. 10 to 15 is too old, though; start them when they are babies (You'll have to be careful with the equipment as their body grows). As their brains are figuring out things like "oh, this connection moves my hand", it will also learn how to control the PDA, and interpret it's output (though some output, like a good strong shock, will be understood instinctively). Some of the kids PDA's could be linked together wirelessly so that the kids could "think" at each other. You would probably want to have several groups with different levels of interconnectedness and when this interconnectedness was turned on (you can't explain to a baby why someelse's thoughts are in their head, and since we don't know what this will do to them some groups should not have that feature turned on until they can understand the concept of other people), to see how much of a group mind they develop. This would be particularly interesting if at least one group was spread out geographically and/or culturally.
Perhaps some could be given baby toys that are remotely controled by the PDA, to see if that accellerates the speed with which their mind learns how to manipulate the PDA; I bet it would.
Consider using a chording keyboard as one input method. I doubt many of these kids have been taught touch typing yet. Considering how good some kids get at "texting" each other with a telephone style keypad, I would imagine that many of them would pick up on using the chording keyboard very quickly once they figured out how much faster they can be than whatever the other input method(s) are for it. A chording keyboard consisting of half a dozen keys around the perimiter of the PDA would allow someone to hold it and input information 1 handed. It would seem to be a perfect match for a PDA... theoretically. But since most people already know how to type (not a problem with these children, as I said) and are afraid of learning a new system, no large PDA company has taken the chance on one. This might be a good opportunity to test them out and see just how hard or easy to use they really are. Even if they don't become popular with us adults who have become set in our ways, if it becomes popular with children's electronic devices then it will become popular with adults in 10+ years when those children have grown up.
It certainly also needs some kind of IR input/output like the Palm/Handsprings. A large stand alone IR transmitter/reciever so that a teacher or other such person could brodcast information to a whole class at once would be useful, too. For that matter, they'd be good at trade shows and presentations for palm/hanspring customers. "My business card, and accompanying notes for this presentation will be boadcast now, for those of you with compatible PDAs." Perhaps a jammer, to keep kids from using these to cheat on tests also. LOL
If you could make them so that it was easy to program your own applications for them using someting like BASIC (or even LOGO!, everyone remember that experiment.) or some other language that is designed to be easy for young people to learn so that even non-computer geek kids could write small applications for themselves, it would be interesting to see how many kids would do that.
Personally, I suspect that dinosaur fossils were put there to give 3rd grade children something "cool" to get them interested in science.
But, then I also think the idea of creation having to occur at the "start" of time makes about as much sense as someone saying that a record (or a vinyl, or LP, or whatever people are calling them now) must have been manufactured starting with the first track. So, obviously I have a pretty screwed up view of space-time.
CSIS did a very good analysis of this back in the 1980s, called Crisis Management in a Society of Networks but I don't think any copies are available now (for obvious reasons).
Also, because technology allows man to accomplish more (communicate or travel over longer distances, calculate things faster, make more powerful chemical reactions, provide energy to more complex and powerful devices, kill people and creatures more easily and at longer ranges, store food longer before it spoils, etc.) in every area of human endeavor, it gives the common man more power to do both good and evil. I have a little box in my house and another at my office that can perform calculations in mere seconds that took the Manhattan Project scientists weeks and Tycho Brahe years. I can access more power in my home's electrical outlets and my car's engine than a Medieval engineer could imagine getting from the biggest waterwheel or horse powered machine. I can buy chemicals to clean my clothes or to fumigate my house that would make the most sophisticated alchemist CuO with envy.
As the average person gains the power to do things (good things, AND evil things) that are equal to or exceed that which could only be accomplished in previous times by Kings and Emperors, it is perhaps understandable that we will begin to worry that our neighbors can do a little TOO much (or we may especially worry that our subjects can do too much if we are "leaders")and that we must trust in either their good nature or the deterrence of the law to prevent them from doing us harm. Few people complain, however, that THEY have too much power... only their neighbors.
One of the key areas where this trend first became visible is in gun control, probably because guns are an obvious symbol of power. A dainty young woman can go to the store and buy a gun that allows her to achieve a level of lethality in only a few weeks of practice that was once only attainable by a few very strong and/or dedicated martial artists after years of work. Perhaps the 1st society to be freaked out by this was feudal Japan, which saw them as a huge threat to the established order (which is probably accurate, it just wouldn't do to have some lowly peasants with rifles or muskets having the power to kill the Emperor's best warriors). But just as firearms give the average man the power to do much greater good (the fact that a large number of peasants CAN defeat a small number of elite units allows, and perhaps requires, modern democracies where those who rule are the ones who can get the support of the greatest number of people rather than maintaining an unpopular rule with the use of a handful of elite knights or samurai warriors) it also allows the average man to do much greater evil than before. Because the potential for abuse with this technology is popularly known, there are a large number of people who seek to ban or restrict the average person's access to it in order to protect themselves from their now powerful neighbors. Of course guns have been around for a lot longer than the idea of a "grass roots" gun ban effort (as opposed to a "top down" effort from a threatened aristocracy), but I suspect that is because people moved around less and were more likely to know and trust their neighbors back then, whereas in today's more mobile and less community based societies people trust their politicians and government employees more than they do their neighbors.
Of course, as I said at the beginning of the last paragraph guns are an obvious symbol of power, but there are plenty of other technologies now available to the average person that are equal to or exceed (sometimes greatly) the power to do harm that guns have. There is a great deal of uproar about keeping guns away from kids after the Columbine and other school shootings, but a devious and malicious high school student could do a lot more harm with a box of rat poison (or a hundred other technologies) than he could ever hope to be able to do with a pistol. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks demonstrated that the power contained in a score of airplane tickets is equal to or greater than the power in a small weapon of mass destruction. So now people are working to restrict access to airlines. But there are a nearly infinite technical solutions to any problem. The Foreign Policy article (and the earlier CSIS report) is now starting to hint at what may be a crucial challenge to free societies everywhere. As technology advances, it is no longer possible to stop people from being able to accomplish great harm by simply restricting a few "dangerous" technologies. In a society where the average man has access to a wide variety of powerful technologies (many, like modern airline travel, don't even seem dangerous without a great deal of thought), there are nearly an infinite number of ways for evil men to do a great deal of harm... too many ways to be thwarted by simply banning a few technologies. We can rethink the use of and availability of technologies like firearms, and cryptography, and airlines, and high-rise buildings, and microbiology; but the next attack could be based on other technologies, like chemical poisons, or tractor-trailer rigs, or hydroelectric plants, or trains, or.... Well... almost anything.
How do we prevent men from doing greater evil as society's technology improves? Can we make technology that can only be used for good? Can we restrict access to technology to only "good" or a "approve" people? Who decides who is "good" and "approved", and can we have such a society without destabilizing it's tendency to remain a democracy? Was the unibomber right? Can our judicial system prevent these problems simply through deterrence, and not the banning of "dangerous" technologies? How can you ban one technology without banning all the others it is based on? Would that require making certain knowledge or research "forbidden"? Do the Amish have the ultimate answer? How long before such a society was conquered by its neighbors who did not ban technologies? Are these risks just the price we must pay to live in a free and technologically advanced society? Can we find a regulatory or legal compromise that strikes a balance between giving the average person power over his environment (and his government) while minimizing (but not eliminating) the risks of immature or criminal people abusing technology?
I don't know, but I do suspect that these questions are no longer going to be limited to a few high-profile technologies with obvious associations to military power like cryptography and firearms. As wrongdoers have become (and are forced to become even more) inventive in their misuse of all sorts of technology, more and more people will realize that this is an issue that cuts across all types of technology. Gun control can perhaps be seen as a preview of the same types of arguments that will soon be had over a wide range of technologies.
Note: my use of "man" and "men" in this post is meant to refer to people of both genders.
There already exists a "Radio Free Zone" in the United States that is far more free of stray electromagnetic fields than Mendocino could ever hope to be. It is a very large area around the Greenbank Radio Telescope facility (and some military facilities) in West Virginia called the National Radio Quiet Zone.
s at /nrqz.html
If these kooks really want to be "free" from the EM spectrum then they should stop trying to take over the politics of Mendocino and force the locals to give up their technology so these "sensitives" can all move there. Instead they should just move to the 13,000 square miles of land already covered by the National Radio Quiet Zone. That way the people of Mendocino can enjoy their wireless technology and cell phones and the "sensitives" can live as sheltered an existence as they could ever hope to have.
http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/faculty/haynes/a
It sounds like somebody has been reading David Gerrold's _War_on_the_Chtorr_ series.
"Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry, for there are many good [people] in this world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good [people] in the world who cannot pass an examination in honesty."
- Madison Sarratt (1891-1978), dean, Vanderbilt University.
actually, it is
"our aircraft carriers"
or, for you people who aren't from the U.S.
"the American taxpayers' aircraft carriers"
as I'm sure any Navy Capt. so unfortunate as to lose one would be reminded very strongly.
I did not ask if DEFINING a unit of measure was a gov't problem (which it admittedly is), I asked if SELECTING one was.
I wasn't suggesting that we could all run around with different definitions of a kilogram or troy ounces, but I was suggesting that it is not the gov'ts business to tell me when to use one or the other in my own calculations or private transactions. Of course, the gov't can and does specify units (usually metric) when you do business with them, but that is perfectly understandable.
The previous poster seemed to think that the President Reagan should have some how shoved the use of metric units down the public's throat under penalty of death or imprisonment (isn't all law ultimately based on one of those threats?). I agree that misrepresenting a unit of measure should be a crime, but I really don't think that using a "non government approved unit of measure" should be one. That seems just a little to draconian for me. If I want to think in feet and pounds then that is my decision. If I want to buy 10 fathoms of rope (and can find a rope-seller that knows what a fathom is), then why can't I?
If I have equipment that makes ¼-20 bolts, and my customers want to buy them then what business is it of the President's? Sure, because they aren't metric bolts I may have problems selling them overseas, but if I don't want to export my bolts then I don't care. If the metric bolt market is profitable enough for me to justify the capital expense of new metric based equipment, then I'll buy one and start making metric bolts. But often the capital cost to retool my business to a new unit of measure cannot be justified (see story below). The gov't could put a gun to my head and make me do it. But telling me that it is "for the good of the country" because some pointy-headed academics think it would be cool if we all used the metric system will not magically change the economics of the situation. If it is profitable then the businessmen will do it without coercion... or they will be put out of business by people who will. There is no reason for the gov't to spend billions of dollars brainwashing the entire population into believing that there is only one true system of measurement (and causing huge economic and technical losses as a result) just so a few anal retentive people can feel comforted by the fact that there are now more "nice round numbers" in the world. They would be horrified by a physicist friend of mine who regularly invents his own units so that he could make parts of his equations cancel out or go to zero (and he would then convert back into "regular" units at the end of the calculation).
A brief little aside: All Air Force transports are built with a certain minimum height for the cargo bay area. That minimum height is the height of a knight on horseback, including his helmet. Of course that is not how it is written in the RFP; it is no doubt given in meters or centimeters (because the gov't is trying to encourage metric use)... but fundamentally the unit is "one mounted knight, including helmet." Just like when I see a blueprint in metric units that calls for a measurement of 25.4mm, I know that the real unit that the part was designed to was 1 inch and it was then converted to metric (probably because the customer wanted it that way). Why use such an archaic standard for aircraft cargo areas? Because the cargo areas have to carry U.S. Army vehicles, and those vehicles are usually designed to be shorter than a mounted knight. They are designed that way because they have to be able to pass under bridges in Europe, some of which date back to the Middle Ages. (I'm sure you can see where this is going) The monarchs ruling Europe back then didn't want to have their knights to have to take off their helmet when they went under bridges (because they would be more vulnerable to attack then) so they decreed that all bridges would be built tall enough to permit a fully armored knight to be able to ride underneath it without having to remove their helmets (I'm sure they used some primitive form of a 95th percentile knight, which probably means that there were one or two tall fellows who occasionally hit their head or had to lean over really far). So, modern aircraft are built to an ancient standard because it is cheaper to design the aircraft and tanks to the old standard than to get all the nations of Europe to rebuild their bridges to some nice round metric height like 10 meters. And that is the right decision... even if it screws horribly with the "nice round number utopia" that some people like to fantasize about.
Millihelen: The amount of beauty capable of launching one ship.
How come selecting a unit of measure is somehow a government problem? This is a free country. There is nothing to stop you from doing all your measuring and calculating in metric units, if you like them so much. Gov't agenicies, like NASA, generally want all their units to at least end up in metric if you do any contracting for them (how you get them there is usually your own problem). What more would you want? Should we throw engineers in jail who don't "get with the program" and think in metric? Mandate that any manufactured product that is not evenly divisible in millimeters be confiscated and destroyed? If I want to measure all my stuff relative to some long dead monarch's body parts (or even my own body parts, for that matter) then that is my own #@&^ business. Units of measure are a tool, not a religion. There is no reason we HAVE to limit ourselves to just one system. Often using "strange" units can make your equations much easier (eg. measuring accel. in gees instead of m/s^2).
BTW, the "metric to english conversion error" that cost us the mars probe was just one small symptom of a sick management program. Unit conversion alone (either within or between systems) should not pose that big of a technical hurdle for a group like JPL. #@!!, it shouldn't even pose that big a problem to freshman engineering students.
As for metric being easier, now that I own one of these new, cool pocket-sized calculating engines that Messrs. Hewlett and Packard make I can just as easily convert between feet and miles as between centimeters and kilometers. Pick one up yourself, they are a great invention.
"My results seem to be off from what I expected by about a factor of 10. I must have a metric conversion error in... well... somewhere."
Pounds (of force and mass) are great units for working with rocket equations because you can "cheat" on your units and use specific impulse (measured in seconds... sort of) instead of using exhaust velocity. I also find it makes it easier to use gees as your unit of accel. than using m/s^2 with kg of mass and newtons of force.
Metric is great fun for calculating electrical problems (IMHO), but English is better for rocketry. In adv. physics, just pick whatever strange units (like measuring velocity in %c) make the equations come out easy then convert back when you are done. Units of measure are just a tool, no need to be a zealot about them.
There are more people looking at this for space launch than just a handful of guys in Huntsville launching model airplanes. And a lot more than $30,000 is being spent on it. These guys just did a little better PR (perhaps the fact that Huntsville is a short drive from CNN's facilities in Atlanta helped). Surely you don't expect CNN to have the latest (or even accurate) aerospace news, do you? Do they do an accurate job reporting about software? Go spend the money on (or find a library that has) a subscription to Aviation Leak and Space Technology, Janes, or better yet Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets if you really want to know what is happening.
U. of Washington EM Propulsion google cache (the original is either down or has been pulled for security reasons)
Gun Launched Satellites JH-APL (.pdf file)
So, let me get this right... you "honor and respect" dirt?
Or did you mean, "Earth" instead of "earth."
Gee, if you honor and respect "her" the least you could do is capitalize your pagan god's name.
Honor it all you want, I am striving to leave this mudball ASAP and tour the rest of the universe. Alas, it is a hobby that has not yet paid off.
You claim you are "practicing a religion whose members are generally accepting of other religions." Funny, you don't seem very accepting of other religions in your post. Most major religions are "narrow minded" about the fact that they are the one true way to salvation/enlightenment/etc. Are they "evil" because they seek to prevent people from straying down the path of destruction (as they see it)? Isn't it the right thing for them to warn other people not to take a path that they believe to be dangerous, as long as they stick to persuasion and argument (as opposed violence or the force of law). Is it now "evil" to openly question other people's beliefs and engage them in peaceful debate? If it is, then that is all the more reason for me to move to a less crowded planet (and one without delusions of divinity). Or by "accepting of other religions" do you mean just a few other fruitcake, feel-good, new age superstitions that don't challenge your world view?
I can't believe this is 2001, I don't have a flying car... and people in the industrialized world are still shelling out good money for witch doctors to read Tarot cards and chicken bones for them. That was not what the sci-fi novels promised me!
Yes, I have Karma to burn why do you ask?
This is actually a problem that the real Army has complained about. In his book The Art of Manuever, Richard Leonhard complains that because military simulations don't accurately depict troop morale, it distorts the predicted effectiveness of various weapons and tactics. For example, in the simulations you want to "open up" with a weapon as soon as the enemy is in range to maximize the amount of time you have to shoot at him. In real life you want to wait until the enemy gets closer and then open fire suddenly with a lot of different weapon systems in a very short period of time, to cause shock and confusion amoung the troops that don't get killed.
The Close Combat series of games includes troop morale. It was supposedly designed with the help of a military psychologist. The "shock and confusion" of an ambush that Leonhard was complaining was absent in military sims is a factor in Close Combat. National Defense magazine reported several months ago that some Army units had begun using Close Combat to suppliment their officer training courses, giving a new meaning to "armchair General."
"You seem to make out that it's almost a matter of fact that someone is going to rampage with a gun."
No, but it IS a matter of fact that a business must take "reasonable care" to prevent security problems that could injure it's employees, customers, or visitors. Workplace violence is one of those problems. If a business does not take these steps, and something does happen then they are very likely to be sued for negligence. Even if they do take those steps, they can still be sued; but if the business can demonstrate that they exersized "due dilligence" then they have a chance of winning the case.
I don't think it is a "matter of fact" that every house will burn down or have a flood, but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't have insurance. Is the underlying mentality of flood insurance scary, too?
BTWIINAL.
If the attacker does get into the office with a gun, though then he only has unarmed opponents to worry about.
In some cases it makes more sense to allow many trusted employees to carry on premises, that way if any one person goes on a shooting spree, he is outnumbered by other armed employees. If a facility has its own armed response team, then this policy could cause a problem where the response team doesn't know who to shoot at; in which case the "nobody carries guns at work except security" policy is the way to go. If the facility does NOT have the resources to spend on an armed resonse team, then allowing (or even encouraging) certain employees to "pack heat" makes more sense. I know of a law firm in Memphis that does that (though they are more worried about a disgruntled client than they are about one of the partners going Postal... I don't know what that says about the quality of their work).
Whether to allow employees to carry firearms on the premises is actually a complex trade off that should be made by someone aware of the security and legal pros and cons, not something that should be quickly decided by someone in the HR dept.
Let me see if I can summarize your points in 2 statements:
Statement 1: The state of the art in military technology has advanced to the point that a militia unit equipped only with rifles cannot stand against a normal military unit.
Statement 2: The purpose of the "right to keep and bear arms" is to keep the gov't in check.
Well, then it seems to me that the logical solution to the problem you describe in your post would be to start considering anti-tank and anti-aircraft assets as "arms" covered under the 2nd Amendment.
Actually, now that I think about it, that is not so crazy. A TOW 2 or a Bofors AAA cannon are WAY too big to be useful in 99.9999% of all crimes. It is not like you could carjack somebody with a Stinger or walk into a liquer store with a AT-4 rocket hidden in your coat. Heck one round would be worth more than you could get in the robbery anyway. It would make things like wipping out the Branch Davidians in Waco more difficult; but isn't that the idea, to make the gov't think twice before using military force against civilians (even if they evenutally decide that the answer is still "yes")? I still doubt it would ever become law. Hopefully if it such a thing ever happened, enough military units would defect to give the rebels a chance (assuming they deserve one). Still, isn't that the situation we wanted to avoid in the 1st place, where the whim of those in the military is more important in determining the outcome of a rebellion than the "will of the people."
I know a guy who has a different version of that story. He was carrying a Heckler and Koch MP5 in his check in baggage. For those who don't know what an MP5 is, it is not an even better way to swap sound files than an MP3... a very scary looking submachine gun ( http://www.mp5.net/home.htm ). Anyway, this guy trains SWAT teams on submachinegun use; everything is properly licensed and permitted. He was flying across the country to teach a marksmanship class. He takes the luggage up to the counter like he is supposed to and delcares to the person at the counter that he is transporting a firearm in his luggage and needs the proper forms. The airline clerk hands him the forms and says that he needs to visually inspect the firearm to make sure it is unloaded. "Certainly," my friend replies but he suggests they step into the airline office to do it privately. The clerk replies that they can't do that, and he needs to see the firearm right there. "I think that is a bad idea" my friend warned, but the airline clerk was insistant. So, right in the middle of a crowded airport he unzips the bag, pulls out a full-auto MP5 and loudly racks the slide back to show the clerk the empty chamber. Of course EVERYONE within sight freaks out and dives for cover as my friend and the clerk are standing there checking the gun in. After a few seconds everyone realized that it was not some sort of attack and started to carefully get up off the floor. Well, airline regulations do say the clerks have to inspect the firearms to see that they are unloaded... but he really should have taken my friends advice and done it in a more private place.
Fortunately this took place before Sept. 11. Now, I would be worried that nervous security guards would mistakenly open fire.
"And why should it be considered acceptable for me to relinquish my Fourth Ammendment rights so I can go work on in my lab?"
If it was "your lab" then you would have a point, but it isn't. Good grief, you work at N.I.H. in Bethesda, MD; you should be upset if they DIDN'T search you!
If it really bothers you, then quit and start your own lab, then you can take whatever stupid risks you want.
As for some of the "have fun with it" suggestions for putting gross things in your briefcase; I would be careful about that. I'm sure most of these people have never worked in a secure facility and have no idea how little of a sense of humor a good security force is supposed to have. If you still want to "make it fun" that is fine, just be careful how you do it. Putting that creative mind to some positive use and doing a little "cross functional teaming" with the security manager could make it more tolerable and also improve security. For example, get together with some of the folks you work with, and the supervisor of the security guards and suggest ongoing "tests" of the searchers. A good security force needs to be audited at irregular intervals anyway; and if the supervisor has the co-operation of some non-security employees, that can make it easier. What I recommend for audits is to use dice. If I need to audit a dept. about once a week, I roll a 10 sided dice (you do have some of those left over from D&D, don't you) and if it comes up 9 or 10, then I do an audit that day. That way, the audits occur about the right frequency but are not predictable. The supervisor could even add a carrot along with the stick and offer some small prize (a "quality" pen or a gift certificate for a box of donuts) to whoever finds the employee trying to smuggle the test item through. Of course, there would have to be more employees in on the audits than just you, or else they would soon figure out to just search you thoroughly, and the whole point is lost.
You mean this:
http://www.mitsi.com/Projects/alp.htm
I heard a story (I have no idea how true it is) that a bunch of engineers for a TV mfg. company built a giant laser projection TV to demonstrate at the company picnic one year. Supposedly it worked great at first, but after watching it for a few minutes it would give people headaches. They didn't know why, so they never made one again.