The term "dwarf planet" is actually starting to grow on me. It still keeps Pluto as a planet, for those who absolutely need it to be a planet, but really it IS a demotion to a status equal to the larger asteroids & KBOs. The way I see it, the Solar System has 8 Major Planets (4 terrestrial, 4 gas giants), at least 50 Dwarf Planets (Pluto, Ceres, 2003 UB313, etc) that are round due to self-gravitation, and the non-round objects can still be called Minor Planets. It just adds an intermediate classification between "planet" and "asteroid/minor planet".
How would you classify Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa? They're not completely rock and not completely ice. And for that matter, if there's no difference between a pebble and a boulder, then there's really no difference between a sub-stellar ball of gas and a stellar ball of gas (the composition is the same) or between an O class star and an M class star. Scale DOES matter to an astronomer. Granted, there is a continuum of scale and the boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, which is why the community is having this argument.
I mean, seriously, I know some people really hate the caps lock key (despite its usefulness to other people), but this is one guy who started a group on Google and acts like it's some massive grassroots campaign. I think Slashdot got punk'd on this one.
And really, if you don't like a key, remap it or remove it. I myself have removed the "Windows" key (it always interfered with my Doom playing) and the letter Q (because who the hell needs to use that one?).
"A "suicide bomber" can hit a closet, bathroom, kitchen, wherever a man (or child) can stand, they can hit."
Not true. How often do people get into the White House and try to shoot the President? Zero. By that same token, an Israeli military base would be difficult to damage because they've got it surrounded by guys on the look-out for speeding cars or people wearing bulky clothing. Suicide bombers hit buses and restaurants because those are the targets they CAN hit. You CAN restrict people from accessing important areas. The problem with suicide bombers is that you can't guard everything.
On the other hand, Hezbollah has access to rockets with ranges of nearly 100 km. If they wanted to, they could probably hit Israeli military bases (assuming the guidance on the missiles was accurate). Instead, they hit the large, civilian population centers. So, you have a point about mindset, I just had an issue with the idea that a suicide bomber can hit anywhere.
Actually, use of the word "insurgent" is about as neutral as you can get. An insurgent is defined as one who is rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government. By this definition, many of the fighters in Iraq are insurgents, since the currrent government is recognized by nearly all nations as legitimate. The definition makes not judgement or mention of methods and reasons for the fighting. Also, in scanning a few recent articles, I've seen the terms "fighters", "guerrillas", and in the case of Iraq, "militia", which are all pretty neutral. I don't recall any instances where I've seen someone referred as a "freedom fighter" or "patriot". I often see "terrorist" used, but it's almost always in reference to groups that are widely recognized as groups that use terrorist tactics.
"they also need to stop playing with the timeline that is established as cannon, and just add on to it rather than confuse it "
WTF? Star Trek has never had an un-confused timeline as canon. TOS was inconsistent at times, TNG added to that and it got worse with each new series/movie. Hell, a lot of the books (non-canon) were more consistent (with each other and with the series that had alread been aired) and often more enjoyable because they added to the universe without altering the shabby canon that had already been "established".
You could celebrate 27/1/8 or 27/1/81 in Europe, or you could celebrate 2/7/18 in the US (for the non-math geeks, that refers to e). Again, in Europe, you could celebrate 31/4/15 and in the US you could celebrate 3/14/15. Quite frankly, except for dates like 6/6/6 or 7/7/7, you could have different celebrations for the same number on different continents and in many different combinations.
The concept of "doomsday" is so outmoded, I don't even know where to begin. IIRC, the concept comes from the Book of Revelations, and honestly, how many rational people actually believe in that? Granted, a nuclear war can be over in hours, an asteroid strike could wipe out all life in a few hours, a nearby supernova could fry us all within a day, so yeah, a "Doomsday" could occur, but it has such a low probability. More likely are plagues, famines, wars, a general collapse of civilization due to resource shortage, global warming, etc. And you know what? Life will keep on keepin' on, even if it's radically changed. As long as there are people, there will be some urge to create and something new will rise from the ashes. And if our species does die out, it will probably be over millennia, not days.
I'm a little skeptical of their method. TFA mentions that the quasar was lensed by a foreground galaxy and they measured the flickering as individual stars lensed the quasar. It just doesn't work that way. When a galaxy gravitationally lenses a background object, the image will appear as an arc or multiple points around the lensing galaxy. This configuration doesn't allow for flickering due to individual stars because you are using the combined masses of all those stars to do the lensing. Given that a typical galaxy has 100 billion stars, any individual effects are.000000001%, in other words, not measurable.
This goes into how measuring the time delay between the flickering images of the quasar can give an estimate on the age of the universe (correlation between geometric distance and redshift). Also, he seems to have a persecution complex....
Again, the same author suggests a minute fluctuation in one lensed image and not the other is consistent with a microlensing event by a planet in the foreground galaxy. I still don't see how you can say that since the paper in the first link talks about how years of observations and statistical correlations were needed to make the discovery of the MECO. One fluctuation out of many observations is like spitting in the ocean...
This link gives an alternate explanation for the planet microlensing event:
One thing I noticed is that most of sites I found are either from the author himself or use his papers as the primary source. He also appears to have his fingers in everything from determining the age of the universe (his estimate was 12 billion years as opposed to 13.7 billion, but still pretty good), detecting extrasolar planets, and now debunking black holes. Dr. Schild has done some good work, but I'm skeptical of his recent "discoveries".
Keep the Electoral College, but do away with the system where the states give all their electoral votes to one candidate, much as it was in the early days of the country. That way, you break up large blue states like California and large red states like the South. Florida would not have been such a big problem since it would be a fight over one electoral vote, rather than 25 (or whatever they have now). Have each representative district count as a vote for whichever candidate won there and give the 2 senate votes to the winner in that state. You get both granularity, which will reduce the Florida problem and you don't have to amend the Constitution. Of course, like the system proposed in TFA, it's up to the states to decide which system they want. The problem I see with the system in TFA is that you could end up with a situation where California becomes a red state, or Texas becomes a blue state. That's just too fucked up to comprehend.....
That's all well and good for you, but for the rest of us plebians, we don't have much choice. We can order items on the Internet, but that tax loophole is being closed. If I wanted to smoke in a bar or restaurant, I would not be able to, as I cannot afford a $50 meal at a private club. I am restricted to less expensive venues, and being in a community that bans smoking in public establishments (even private clubs), I would not be able to do so.
There lies the crux of the matter. Government restrictions hardly affect the upper classes while the lower classes continue to be bound by them. Regulations can be circumvented by the free market, but only at a price. None of this will change because the people in power are the ones who can exploit those circumventions.
For shame! Suggesting that record company executives are greedy just because they want to license the lyrics to songs? They're just trying to make an honest buck. After all, they've got wives and children and mistresses and butlers and horses and maids and gardeners to feed just like everyone else.
This is a win-win situation for big companies. Not only do they get higher productivity from their employees, they also get to save thousands of dollars on chairs. Of course, if they implemented that at my job, it would backfire because instead of working, my co-workers would bitch all day about having to stand. (Seriously, for one co-worker, the mere act of standing up to go to the bathroom causes him to fill the office with a chorus of grunts and groans).
You know, your attitude is the same attitude showcased in "Fahrenheit 451", where anything that's the least bit upsetting to anyone MUST be "squashed". It's also the same kind of attitude that led thousands to riot over a dozen images of a prophet and led many others to protest over a crucifix in a jar of urine. I consider that attitude almost as bad as the attitude that one person is "better" than another person based upon their skin color.
Sure, the PSP ads are provocative. That's why they're so effective. Now EVERYONE knows about the PSP. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't about black vs. white racial tension. Maybe it really WAS just about a dark-skinned person and a light-skinned person representing two colors for a product that was being marketed and people read into it too far.
There's a sometimes a fine line between advertisement and art, and a fine line between art and offensive, and everyone has their own idea of where those lines should fall. If we start banning things based on an arbitrary definition of acceptable vs. unacceptable, we'll soon find that line creeping up on us until we really do get the society depicted in "Fahrenheit 451".
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we want to live in a society with freedom of expression and take the chance of being offended once in a while, or whether we want to live in a society where expression must be "approved" so as not to tread on anyone's delicate sensibilities.
Reading TFA, it strikes me as being similar to something posted on/. a month or two ago promising the same thing. TFA is light on details, but if I remember the previous article correctly and they're a similar principle (that's a lot of ifs), then this is only useful for objects about the size of the wavelength of light being used. In other words, objects smaller than 3cm for microwaves, objects about a meter for radio, and about 500 nanometers for visible. That being said, it's useless for military applications since most military vehicles are larger than 1 meter. It's also useless for people since you'd have to be about a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair in order to hide.
How long until they decide ALL seats are the best seats and begin to auction them off? And will they still charge for "convenience"? Doesn't seem all that convenient to wait and see if my ticket bid won. I'm beginning to think I'll go back to the waiting in line model. I bought a $30 ticket to see Ministry that cost me $45 ($9 convenience charge + taxes and fees). I've never been able to determine how they calculate "convenience", as it changes even if it's at the same venue or at the same ticket price.
...The RIAA sues Apple (because the RIAA has been suing left & right and because Apple seems to be a target lately). They don't even need a reason, they could probably say "Just because...". Then Apple counter-sues the RIAA "because they're doodieheads".
They've gone from suing other companies, to suing people who share a lot of mp3s to suing people who have shared a few mp3s to suing people who don't even own a computer to suing other companies again....
What's so bad about the optical scanners and the ballots where you fill in a circle? I remember a study that showed they were the most secure, you have a paper trail, and any idiot can figure it out after 13 years of standardized testing. Electronic voting, on the other hand, smacks of boodoggle, fraud & overall shoddiness.
"In a span of just ten years between 1990 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 41.5 million hectares to 58.7 million hectares - an area twice the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle."
I hate to sound like a tree-hugger because usually they piss me off. I realize most of this comes from an increased demand for beef in the developing world, and where there's demand, supply must grow. But you'd think we could come up with a better way to do it.
But where do you think the Brazilians get the land to produce that sugarcane? The same place they get the land to produce the beef that goes into McDonalds hamburgers. I'm surprised the "save the rainforest" people aren't up in arms yet. I'm against protectionism and tariffs, but Brazilian farmers do need to change the way they do agriculture. I'm not sure increasing demand for sugarcane is going to encourage them to change anything.
Slashdot Mirror
The term "dwarf planet" is actually starting to grow on me. It still keeps Pluto as a planet, for those who absolutely need it to be a planet, but really it IS a demotion to a status equal to the larger asteroids & KBOs. The way I see it, the Solar System has 8 Major Planets (4 terrestrial, 4 gas giants), at least 50 Dwarf Planets (Pluto, Ceres, 2003 UB313, etc) that are round due to self-gravitation, and the non-round objects can still be called Minor Planets. It just adds an intermediate classification between "planet" and "asteroid/minor planet".
How would you classify Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa? They're not completely rock and not completely ice. And for that matter, if there's no difference between a pebble and a boulder, then there's really no difference between a sub-stellar ball of gas and a stellar ball of gas (the composition is the same) or between an O class star and an M class star. Scale DOES matter to an astronomer. Granted, there is a continuum of scale and the boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, which is why the community is having this argument.
I mean, seriously, I know some people really hate the caps lock key (despite its usefulness to other people), but this is one guy who started a group on Google and acts like it's some massive grassroots campaign. I think Slashdot got punk'd on this one.
And really, if you don't like a key, remap it or remove it. I myself have removed the "Windows" key (it always interfered with my Doom playing) and the letter Q (because who the hell needs to use that one?).
"A "suicide bomber" can hit a closet, bathroom, kitchen, wherever a man (or child) can stand, they can hit."
Not true. How often do people get into the White House and try to shoot the President? Zero. By that same token, an Israeli military base would be difficult to damage because they've got it surrounded by guys on the look-out for speeding cars or people wearing bulky clothing. Suicide bombers hit buses and restaurants because those are the targets they CAN hit. You CAN restrict people from accessing important areas. The problem with suicide bombers is that you can't guard everything.
On the other hand, Hezbollah has access to rockets with ranges of nearly 100 km. If they wanted to, they could probably hit Israeli military bases (assuming the guidance on the missiles was accurate). Instead, they hit the large, civilian population centers. So, you have a point about mindset, I just had an issue with the idea that a suicide bomber can hit anywhere.
Actually, use of the word "insurgent" is about as neutral as you can get. An insurgent is defined as one who is rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government. By this definition, many of the fighters in Iraq are insurgents, since the currrent government is recognized by nearly all nations as legitimate. The definition makes not judgement or mention of methods and reasons for the fighting.
Also, in scanning a few recent articles, I've seen the terms "fighters", "guerrillas", and in the case of Iraq, "militia", which are all pretty neutral. I don't recall any instances where I've seen someone referred as a "freedom fighter" or "patriot". I often see "terrorist" used, but it's almost always in reference to groups that are widely recognized as groups that use terrorist tactics.
"they also need to stop playing with the timeline that is established as cannon, and just add on to it rather than confuse it "
WTF? Star Trek has never had an un-confused timeline as canon. TOS was inconsistent at times, TNG added to that and it got worse with each new series/movie. Hell, a lot of the books (non-canon) were more consistent (with each other and with the series that had alread been aired) and often more enjoyable because they added to the universe without altering the shabby canon that had already been "established".
You could celebrate 27/1/8 or 27/1/81 in Europe, or you could celebrate 2/7/18 in the US (for the non-math geeks, that refers to e). Again, in Europe, you could celebrate 31/4/15 and in the US you could celebrate 3/14/15. Quite frankly, except for dates like 6/6/6 or 7/7/7, you could have different celebrations for the same number on different continents and in many different combinations.
The concept of "doomsday" is so outmoded, I don't even know where to begin. IIRC, the concept comes from the Book of Revelations, and honestly, how many rational people actually believe in that? Granted, a nuclear war can be over in hours, an asteroid strike could wipe out all life in a few hours, a nearby supernova could fry us all within a day, so yeah, a "Doomsday" could occur, but it has such a low probability. More likely are plagues, famines, wars, a general collapse of civilization due to resource shortage, global warming, etc. And you know what? Life will keep on keepin' on, even if it's radically changed. As long as there are people, there will be some urge to create and something new will rise from the ashes. And if our species does die out, it will probably be over millennia, not days.
I'm a little skeptical of their method. TFA mentions that the quasar was lensed by a foreground galaxy and they measured the flickering as individual stars lensed the quasar. It just doesn't work that way. When a galaxy gravitationally lenses a background object, the image will appear as an arc or multiple points around the lensing galaxy. This configuration doesn't allow for flickering due to individual stars because you are using the combined masses of all those stars to do the lensing. Given that a typical galaxy has 100 billion stars, any individual effects are .000000001%, in other words, not measurable.
1 8.pdf
+ 561.html
Reading some more into it, I found the paper:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0505/05055
Lots of math and theory, but no data to be had, which I find suspicious... I did some googling on the quasar Q0957+561 and found several links.
This site, by the author:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~rschild/qgl.html
This goes into how measuring the time delay between the flickering images of the quasar can give an estimate on the age of the universe (correlation between geometric distance and redshift). Also, he seems to have a persecution complex....
Also:
http://www.extrasolar.net/planet.asp?PlanetID=74
Again, the same author suggests a minute fluctuation in one lensed image and not the other is consistent with a microlensing event by a planet in the foreground galaxy. I still don't see how you can say that since the paper in the first link talks about how years of observations and statistical correlations were needed to make the discovery of the MECO. One fluctuation out of many observations is like spitting in the ocean...
This link gives an alternate explanation for the planet microlensing event:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/Q/Q0957
And the obligatory Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Quasar
One thing I noticed is that most of sites I found are either from the author himself or use his papers as the primary source. He also appears to have his fingers in everything from determining the age of the universe (his estimate was 12 billion years as opposed to 13.7 billion, but still pretty good), detecting extrasolar planets, and now debunking black holes. Dr. Schild has done some good work, but I'm skeptical of his recent "discoveries".
Keep the Electoral College, but do away with the system where the states give all their electoral votes to one candidate, much as it was in the early days of the country. That way, you break up large blue states like California and large red states like the South. Florida would not have been such a big problem since it would be a fight over one electoral vote, rather than 25 (or whatever they have now). Have each representative district count as a vote for whichever candidate won there and give the 2 senate votes to the winner in that state. You get both granularity, which will reduce the Florida problem and you don't have to amend the Constitution. Of course, like the system proposed in TFA, it's up to the states to decide which system they want. The problem I see with the system in TFA is that you could end up with a situation where California becomes a red state, or Texas becomes a blue state. That's just too fucked up to comprehend.....
It's kind of like blaming a rape victim for wearing a low-cut blouse....
I just don't see any of these names becoming verbs.
That's all well and good for you, but for the rest of us plebians, we don't have much choice. We can order items on the Internet, but that tax loophole is being closed. If I wanted to smoke in a bar or restaurant, I would not be able to, as I cannot afford a $50 meal at a private club. I am restricted to less expensive venues, and being in a community that bans smoking in public establishments (even private clubs), I would not be able to do so.
There lies the crux of the matter. Government restrictions hardly affect the upper classes while the lower classes continue to be bound by them. Regulations can be circumvented by the free market, but only at a price. None of this will change because the people in power are the ones who can exploit those circumventions.
For shame! Suggesting that record company executives are greedy just because they want to license the lyrics to songs? They're just trying to make an honest buck. After all, they've got wives and children and mistresses and butlers and horses and maids and gardeners to feed just like everyone else.
This is a win-win situation for big companies. Not only do they get higher productivity from their employees, they also get to save thousands of dollars on chairs. Of course, if they implemented that at my job, it would backfire because instead of working, my co-workers would bitch all day about having to stand. (Seriously, for one co-worker, the mere act of standing up to go to the bathroom causes him to fill the office with a chorus of grunts and groans).
You know, your attitude is the same attitude showcased in "Fahrenheit 451", where anything that's the least bit upsetting to anyone MUST be "squashed". It's also the same kind of attitude that led thousands to riot over a dozen images of a prophet and led many others to protest over a crucifix in a jar of urine. I consider that attitude almost as bad as the attitude that one person is "better" than another person based upon their skin color.
Sure, the PSP ads are provocative. That's why they're so effective. Now EVERYONE knows about the PSP. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't about black vs. white racial tension. Maybe it really WAS just about a dark-skinned person and a light-skinned person representing two colors for a product that was being marketed and people read into it too far.
There's a sometimes a fine line between advertisement and art, and a fine line between art and offensive, and everyone has their own idea of where those lines should fall. If we start banning things based on an arbitrary definition of acceptable vs. unacceptable, we'll soon find that line creeping up on us until we really do get the society depicted in "Fahrenheit 451".
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we want to live in a society with freedom of expression and take the chance of being offended once in a while, or whether we want to live in a society where expression must be "approved" so as not to tread on anyone's delicate sensibilities.
Reading TFA, it strikes me as being similar to something posted on /. a month or two ago promising the same thing. TFA is light on details, but if I remember the previous article correctly and they're a similar principle (that's a lot of ifs), then this is only useful for objects about the size of the wavelength of light being used. In other words, objects smaller than 3cm for microwaves, objects about a meter for radio, and about 500 nanometers for visible. That being said, it's useless for military applications since most military vehicles are larger than 1 meter. It's also useless for people since you'd have to be about a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair in order to hide.
How long until they decide ALL seats are the best seats and begin to auction them off? And will they still charge for "convenience"? Doesn't seem all that convenient to wait and see if my ticket bid won. I'm beginning to think I'll go back to the waiting in line model. I bought a $30 ticket to see Ministry that cost me $45 ($9 convenience charge + taxes and fees). I've never been able to determine how they calculate "convenience", as it changes even if it's at the same venue or at the same ticket price.
I'm 28 and I still haven't picked up Moby Dick. Yet, I read 20 or more books in any given year, not all of it "fluff".
...The RIAA sues Apple (because the RIAA has been suing left & right and because Apple seems to be a target lately). They don't even need a reason, they could probably say "Just because...". Then Apple counter-sues the RIAA "because they're doodieheads".
That's so 20th Century....
They've gone from suing other companies, to suing people who share a lot of mp3s to suing people who have shared a few mp3s to suing people who don't even own a computer to suing other companies again....
What's so bad about the optical scanners and the ballots where you fill in a circle? I remember a study that showed they were the most secure, you have a paper trail, and any idiot can figure it out after 13 years of standardized testing. Electronic voting, on the other hand, smacks of boodoggle, fraud & overall shoddiness.
There may be more trees on the planet than 10 years ago, but most of those are in temperate and boreal climates. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Rainforest
"In a span of just ten years between 1990 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 41.5 million hectares to 58.7 million hectares - an area twice the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle."
I hate to sound like a tree-hugger because usually they piss me off. I realize most of this comes from an increased demand for beef in the developing world, and where there's demand, supply must grow. But you'd think we could come up with a better way to do it.
But where do you think the Brazilians get the land to produce that sugarcane? The same place they get the land to produce the beef that goes into McDonalds hamburgers. I'm surprised the "save the rainforest" people aren't up in arms yet. I'm against protectionism and tariffs, but Brazilian farmers do need to change the way they do agriculture. I'm not sure increasing demand for sugarcane is going to encourage them to change anything.