That's not entirely correct. Learn up on the differences between invariant mass and relativistic mass. Considering the masses involved, you would not see this gravitional impact that they have alledgedly observed at the velocities they've seen. Additionally even if it did work that way (which it doesn't, invariant mass and all), the energy required to move a gravitionally insignificant mass to a velocity in which it would become gravitionally significant... well to put it simply, would be bloody ridiculous.
I wish the article had more technical information on why they think it was a gravitational field and not a electrical magnetic field. I'm not questioning it without additional information, although the physicist (albeit amateur) in me wants to.
Questions I'd like to see explained:
It states that the acceleration is 100 millionths that of Earth's gravity. How was that measured? Against what constant? What was the effect on nearby matter placed in the field?
If the type of matter was capable of it, was the matter polarized (possible indication that it's a electromagnetic field).
And most importantly, what happens to radio waves as you fire them across the gravitational field? Cassini-Hyugen's experiment demonstrated that waves propagating at C will behave according to GR (spacetime bending) when shot across gravity fields. This behavior is different from electromagnetic influences, so it seems like a great validation test.
This is fantastic news and I hope it turns out to be a valid gravitational effect. Studying this phenomenon could open up new doors in physics.
For the most part, students don't tell the professors how to teach, so why should the professors tell the students how to take notes?
I'm not in a classroom environment so maybe I don't have the right perspective. I do however work in an office environment where everyone has a laptop. When this first started, the general consensus was that it was rude and distracting to use laptops during meetings. As the years have passed this mentality has come and gone. After all, it's just a perception that this is "rude". People now realize you can do a whole lot more with a laptop than pen and paper. After all, that is the point of technology.
So while it might be distracting for some, if everyone had a laptop, the culture of the classroom would change. It would no longer be rude or distracting and it would change everything for the better.
I know if I was in a classroom environment that required note taking I would be lost without a laptop. I seldom use handwriting, and have all but lost good technique. I can type much much faster than I can write, and with much less hand fatigue. And text you take in a classroom is searchable, cognizable, ect. Pen and paper is stuck in the exact format in which you take it down.
Some people are applauding this professor for taking her classroom back. I say she's impeding progress.
So two different CDS with two different audiences, with two different marketing strategies, had two different outcomes? DUH?
This fails so many statistical tests for process control and would never even be eligible for something like an Annova (test for statistical difference) tukey-kramer test. They find one demographic of people, internet buyers. Split them in two. Offer the download to 33% of the group, deny the download to 33% of the group, and let the other 33% have the choice to steal/buy online/buy the cd ect. All the while exposing them to the exact same marketing, radio singles, and ensuring their purchasing habbits are the same. Only then can you even begin to test which group is statistically more likely to alter their purchasing habbits.
In other words, doing all of the above is hard and takes time and just coming up with bogus conclusions is so much easier.
I can't wait until the RIAA gets so much control over the music industry that they legally charge each user every time they listen to the song. Hell, they'll charge the user 1 cent per second the song is played. It wouldn't be fair to pay the same price for a 2 minute song and a 4 minute song would it?
When that day happens, and it looks like it might, the RIAA will finally implode and independant music will return in a blaze of glory. Or be outlawed as a potential communication medium for terrorists. One of the two anyway.
Lots of complaints in this thread about this article. Calling Slashdot the Weekly World News ect. Yet in the "Games: Gold Buying - Time Saver or Cheating?", people are taking it as seriously as possible. And let's not forget the "George Lucas Predicts Death of Big Budget Movies". Honestly... this is probably the best news story of the day. Sad.
If anyone thinks laws and morality are mutuality exclusive, you might want to re-examine your thought process. Never saying something like "the law is the law and should never be broken" is what seperates a real citizen of a society from the sheep who are merely content to exist.
Remember, slavery was once legal, but I don't think any human with a shred of decency would ever call it moral. The door swings both ways. Laws are there to keep the mob in line, not to outline a set of morals for which we should conduct our lives.
In the case of Cherekov radiation the particles aren't traveling faster than C. The single particles phase velocity is traveling faster than the group velocity of the rest of the light. This causes the blue glow which is similar to an object breaking the sound barrier. But group velocity never exceeded C. Remember, light can slow down too.
As of "now" it is accepted that nothing travels faster than C.
Even this experiment did not conclude that the particle traveled faster than light. Only that the shift in quantum state
of the observing electron happened before the particle entered the chamber. There's still no proof that the particle itself exceeded the speed of C.
ThePhilips -- I agree with your post with one small exception. I've taken the liberty and modified one of your statements:
I always tried to explain (unsuccessfully) you Americans what really at stake and what is the true problem of the RI/MP Ass of America. But they have already won your minds over - and you hardly hear the words.
But they have already won your politician's & court's minds over - and you hardly pay attention to the officials you elect.
"It's a heck of a lot cheaper to fund a crime syndicate than, say, a record label."
Whoa, so which is the crime syndicate?
Last I checked allofmp3 was actually legal via some loophole in an international broadcasting agreement.
Then on the other hand you have the RIAA which is composed of lawbreaking entities such as Sony who "accidently" write rootkits they distribute on their product. Or BMG and the myriad of other publishers and their price gouging. Which is illegal.
Even if allofmp3 is illegal I'd rather use their services, from a moral perspective, than to purchase music from the RIAA. Sadly, I'm some what of a self admitted hypocrite in this regard because I prefer to own the redbook format than to trust someone else to digitize my music. As luck would have it, what the RIAA publishes these days no longer interests me and I don't think I've bought a new CD for 3 years. I've bought only used cds so no new profits. I've also become somewhat of a vinyl addict lately and the most of my music purchases have been independent electronica.
On an off-topic note, even if the Russian Mafia is not connected with allofmp3, I would still consider the Russian Mafia morally superior to anyone having anything to do with the RIAA.:)
Internet = Little to no advertising dollars for ABC.
Addiction = Bad sounding word... oohhhhh
News Story = biased and one-sided
Conclusion = The internet is evil and you should watch more of our quality programming, brought to you by...
You're missing the point. The byproduct of this reaction is heat, not the other way around. Previous fusion devices use heat and/or pressure from magnetic fields, or lasers, or other methods to cause fusion. This does not.
From the article: 'Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is drafting a bill that would force Internet companies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to keep vital computer servers out of China and other nations the State Department deems repressive to human rights.'"
Yea right. More like keeping vital servers and technology out of China and other nations the State Department deems competitive to US economy. The last thing the US wants is for China have access to free information. If China ever got their act together and started emulating the US economy of our industrial age, they would take over the world economy in a heartbeat.
If this was about human rights, we would have stopped trading with China decades ago. No, this is about working with the Chinese Government to help keep its people down. It's what China wants, and it is what the US wants.
Just because you say it doesn't mean it's true. While I think Google is probably one of the "better" huge companies out there, they still scare the daylights out of me.
They collect so much data it doesn't matter if everyone working there suscribes to the same motto. The data will eventually be used for purposes you probably aren't comfortable with. Even if it's not Google who abuses it. But no one seems to care because Google has a warm comfy sunshine filled do no evil FAQ page. Well, George W. Bush also swears he upholds a certain ideal that is outlined in the constitution. Do I really have to continue the point?
Everyone needs to take a step back and re-examine Google. Everyone is singing their praises, and it seems like their fan-boy base is so large, they are exempt from criticism. Just think about it for a second... what if Google was sold to Timewarner tomorrow. Or Microsoft. Just because they aren't "evil" now doesn't mean they can't easily go that way. And no one will have seen it coming because they were too busy talking about how "totally awesome" Google was.
Criticism of Google is important. Keep them in check.
Would a woman's "come-hither-glance" work with Chimpanzees? (Rhetorical question.)
If that woman was an accepted member of their social structure, it's quite possible. Jane Goodall even wrote about this, as well as the trust they instilled on her to be around the young.
Additionally it is well recorded that swimming with Dolphins can sometimes lead to undesired effects. Dolphins will try and mate with humans. It isn't known wether they are doing it for pleasure or procreation, but it is still a well known fact that Dolphins have attempted to mate with humans. There are also stories of certain sects of people who say they mate with dolphins on a regular basis. Me being at work right now prevents me from searching for the articles online about people being arrested for "Dolphin sex rings" but feel free to do your own research.
The point is that just because peacocks are stuck up, doesn't mean other species don't have a more promiscuous streak to them. You keep offering specific examples to attempt to disprove an entire theory. You need to look at both sides of the evidence before making assumptions.
Who knows, perhaps it's the mating of different species that is responsible to macro evolution. Clearly it is possible for two similar but different species (in chromosome count) to produce offspring. Maybe this breeding selection is responsible for drastic mutation that leads to macro evolution.
I'm sorry but these tools are greatly at a loss for explaining much of what is required to explaining how people behave, how they think and how they should live. Science does not have the answers for any of these and unfortunately is not even close.
I believe this realm of science is referred to as "psychology". Not even close? Hrm that might be going to far. While I agree that it isn't always 100% right, I would say that it is right more often than not!
Just because presently 100% of human behavoir isn't explained by science and psychology doesn't mean that it can't be. Furthermore much of human behavoir can be explained by simple survival traits that are present in all life forms. Ours are just more complex and more difficult to understand. Additionally, as humans evolves, societies rise and fall, these traits can evolve and change making the previous generations pyschology text books useless. But that still doesn't mean it can't be explained with science.
Remember, just because you choose to ignore it, does not undo it. Faith swings both ways my friends.
Well, actually, science tells us that time is relative and it is in fact based on the amount of mass and energy around its space. So mathmatically, it's not that time doesn't exist before the big bang, it's that it didn't "matter" (relative to the universe). But then again, the math also breaks down and we currently need 2 different forms of it to make sense of the idea that all the matter and energy in the universe were so densely packed into the same space that it exploded outwards creating the universe and space time.
Be that as it may, I don't see how an incomplete theory means the entire idea is wrong. I can come up with a hundred reasons why ID, theory creationism, and Christianity could be considered "incomplete". Yet the creationist answer to this is "have faith". Why isn't science sometimes afforded the same luxary while we find the answers? Why do these things HAVE to be mutually exclusive?
Honestly, that is one of my main beefs with ID, creationism, and specifically Christianity. They all assume we have the answers and we should stop looking. Given our history of great discovery, how arrogant is that? How often has that been proved wrong?
We should all be willing and ready to say "We don't know squat about squat", and work together to figure it out. You can be religious and scientific too! Einsten, as well as other great physicists, accomplished what they did becuase they thought physics and math were God's langauge.
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"I want to know all Gods thoughts... all the rest are just details."
And one of my personal favorites:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex,
and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage,
to move in the opposite direction."
- Albert Einstein
search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index."
Sure this might be partially true. But I would wager most of the web traffic that the "victim" sites get is from search engines. I have done a fair bit of traffic analysis for my company's web page (F50 company, sells computers, take a guess....) and I know even though we have a fairly decent interface, a good percentage of traffic still comes from google.
On top of that, if you can't design a site that captures the user once they are linked in from a search engine, it is your own fault if you ask me.
Can you elaborate on why dark energy changing would suddenly change string theory? My understanding of string theory is in depth, but I am by no means an expert. I can't think of any reasons of how dark energy expansion rate or any other would interupt anything to do with super string or m theory.
In fact, to keep it simple, I'd say that some of these findings actually support the membrane theory. Additionally, part of the string theory equations that actually hold water support dark matter and dark energy are actually mass and energy from other membranes (other universes, or other dimensions if you will) interacting with ours.
Though I'm rather late to the discussion, and I doubt no one will read this:
It's not just the slashdot community. Dark Matter is an idea that was come up with to explain events that our math theories, based on observations, could not explain. Large non spherical bodies of mass were needed to explain certain problems with red shift, universe expansion rate not being constant, and other oddities. It's a lot like Aether. Aether was someone's idea to come up with how light travels in wave form. Since our understanding of sound waves was based on matter transmitting energy from one point to another via a wave, someone thought light would behave similary. It wasn't that it was a bad idea, but it just didn't jive with other models that had math to back them up.
Dark matter was conceived in much the same way and certain people have problems with theories being thought up and subsequent math being formed around that idea. Some people just like to have the chicken before the egg. Others don't want to waste time with having to come up with math before they can formulate an idea.
Personally, I'm glad we have both sides of the fence. If not for the idea of Aether, we may have not derived the cosmic observation experiments we did to disprove it. Those experiments were key to the forming of modern GR and SR theories.
So Dark Matter may be real, or it might some other unexplainable energy source with funky mass properties. Either way, there is a lot of explaining to do at the large mass scale and the small mass scale. We've only begun to scratch the surface of what we know. Those who dismiss dark matter simply because it was thought up before the math was there to solidify it are selling themselves short.
On an unrelated note, I'm in the "dark matter doesn't exist camp". Though bodies of mass appear to react to some unexplained non-spherical wacky gravity sources, it doesn't react in the same way other matter in the universe would. I think it's better explained that these "filaments" are not matter at all, but leftover pockets of energy from events past. Energy so great that it can mimick the properties of mass (afterall, mass can also be considered "frozen energy" and large amounts of energy applied to mass [IE Velocity] can increase relativistic energy and therefore relativistic mass). This might explain why it doesn't coalesce and behave the way regular matter would be expected to. The dark matter camp doesn't like this theory because we haven't come up with a way to view the expected radiation or other physical proof (EM Fields, ect ect) that would be evident if large amounts of energy where just sitting around space. My personal thoughts on that subject would be that it's not the same type of decaying energy that we are familar with. But more along the lines of energy that is a by-product of all the mass that pulls and tears on eachother within these spinning galaxies. When you think about it, galaxies don't just rotate around a black hole, or supermassive black hole. The inner parts rotate and those parts grab a hold of the middle parts and move them in a spiral fashion. The outer parts may not even be in the main bodies spehere of influence, but since they are captured in the spheres of the outer arms, they behave in the same rotation. Albiet in a spiral fashion. All this mass and energy creates relativistic energy which is left over in these so called filaments. In a catch 22 like behavoir, this left over energy may not be in the same relative frame of reference as the mass it was generated by, and therefore can end up affecting the galaxy. The energy isn't traveling back in time, but affecting different frames of reference compared to the reference of the mass we can detect. Viola, dark matter.
Because being an excellent driver means you have complete control of your vehicle no matter what the speed or situation. IE racing. Racing is not safe. Which is why no one should race on public roads.
But I know very many safe drivers, because like you, all they do is pay attention and never let them get into a situation where more than average driving skills would be required to get them out of it.
Having no moving violations at 15 doesn't make you an excellent driver. Especially considering you haven't been on the road long enough to actually accumulate any. Though, I do agree with your assessment that paying attention is the key to good driving on regular roads. Or any situation for that matter.
I am a an excellent driver (see the post below this one) with the qualifications to back that up. I do have moving violations. So there is no correlation with not having tickets and being a good driver. Just a safe driver.
Which brings me to my next point. I wish people would stop qualifying themselves as an excellent driver when they really mean "safe driver".
I could be classifed as an excellent high speed, high maneuverability driver. When compared to the average public. I autocross often and I have the autocross timeslips and best of days to prove that I know how to pilot my vehicle well. I can control my car at it's limits because I know almost exactly (you never know 100%) what it will do and what inputs are required to make it do what I want.
That said, I still only consider myself and average driver on the highway. What I do out there on the track doesn't translate to the highway. Just like everyone I get bored in my car. I zone out to music. I don't pay enough attention. I get frusterated in traffic and probably make less than safe passes. I don't qualify that I'm allowed to do these things because I race cars on Sunday. No, I'm just kind of an inpatient asshole with a fast car. I'm not saying I'm a bad driver out there causing wrecks left and right. I'm just saying that I'm your average driver who doesn't think enough when out and about driving on the regular roads.
Granted, if I got into a situation where braking or maneuvering skills came into play, that would obviously help me avoid a collision. However, that assumes I was paying enough attention to react and plan your maneuver properly. Given the amount of concentration I apply at the track and the amount of concentration I have zombiedriving down the interstate, my skills probably wouldn't help the least bit.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not entirely correct. Learn up on the differences between invariant mass and relativistic mass. Considering the masses involved, you would not see this gravitional impact that they have alledgedly observed at the velocities they've seen. Additionally even if it did work that way (which it doesn't, invariant mass and all), the energy required to move a gravitionally insignificant mass to a velocity in which it would become gravitionally significant... well to put it simply, would be bloody ridiculous.
Questions I'd like to see explained:
It states that the acceleration is 100 millionths that of Earth's gravity. How was that measured? Against what constant?
What was the effect on nearby matter placed in the field?
If the type of matter was capable of it, was the matter polarized (possible indication that it's a electromagnetic field).
And most importantly, what happens to radio waves as you fire them across the gravitational field? Cassini-Hyugen's experiment demonstrated that waves propagating at C will behave according to GR (spacetime bending) when shot across gravity fields. This behavior is different from electromagnetic influences, so it seems like a great validation test.
This is fantastic news and I hope it turns out to be a valid gravitational effect. Studying this phenomenon could open up new doors in physics.
Give us more details! I'm curious!
I'm not in a classroom environment so maybe I don't have the right perspective. I do however work in an office environment where everyone has a laptop. When this first started, the general consensus was that it was rude and distracting to use laptops during meetings. As the years have passed this mentality has come and gone. After all, it's just a perception that this is "rude". People now realize you can do a whole lot more with a laptop than pen and paper. After all, that is the point of technology.
So while it might be distracting for some, if everyone had a laptop, the culture of the classroom would change. It would no longer be rude or distracting and it would change everything for the better.
I know if I was in a classroom environment that required note taking I would be lost without a laptop. I seldom use handwriting, and have all but lost good technique. I can type much much faster than I can write, and with much less hand fatigue. And text you take in a classroom is searchable, cognizable, ect. Pen and paper is stuck in the exact format in which you take it down.
Some people are applauding this professor for taking her classroom back. I say she's impeding progress.
Well, until it appears on Slashdot at least twice, anyway. And you'll know it's really the next big thing if it appears twice in the same day!
This fails so many statistical tests for process control and would never even be eligible for something like an Annova (test for statistical difference) tukey-kramer test. They find one demographic of people, internet buyers. Split them in two. Offer the download to 33% of the group, deny the download to 33% of the group, and let the other 33% have the choice to steal/buy online/buy the cd ect. All the while exposing them to the exact same marketing, radio singles, and ensuring their purchasing habbits are the same. Only then can you even begin to test which group is statistically more likely to alter their purchasing habbits.
In other words, doing all of the above is hard and takes time and just coming up with bogus conclusions is so much easier.
I can't wait until the RIAA gets so much control over the music industry that they legally charge each user every time they listen to the song. Hell, they'll charge the user 1 cent per second the song is played. It wouldn't be fair to pay the same price for a 2 minute song and a 4 minute song would it?
When that day happens, and it looks like it might, the RIAA will finally implode and independant music will return in a blaze of glory. Or be outlawed as a potential communication medium for terrorists. One of the two anyway.
Lots of complaints in this thread about this article. Calling Slashdot the Weekly World News ect. Yet in the "Games: Gold Buying - Time Saver or Cheating?", people are taking it as seriously as possible. And let's not forget the "George Lucas Predicts Death of Big Budget Movies". Honestly... this is probably the best news story of the day. Sad.
Remember, slavery was once legal, but I don't think any human with a shred of decency would ever call it moral. The door swings both ways. Laws are there to keep the mob in line, not to outline a set of morals for which we should conduct our lives.
In the case of Cherekov radiation the particles aren't traveling faster than C. The single particles phase velocity is traveling faster than the group velocity of the rest of the light. This causes the blue glow which is similar to an object breaking the sound barrier. But group velocity never exceeded C. Remember, light can slow down too.
As of "now" it is accepted that nothing travels faster than C.
Even this experiment did not conclude that the particle traveled faster than light. Only that the shift in quantum state of the observing electron happened before the particle entered the chamber. There's still no proof that the particle itself exceeded the speed of C.
I always tried to explain (unsuccessfully) you Americans what really at stake and what is the true problem of the RI/MP Ass of America. But they have already won your minds over - and you hardly hear the words.
But they have already won your politician's & court's minds over - and you hardly pay attention to the officials you elect.
Whoa, so which is the crime syndicate?
Last I checked allofmp3 was actually legal via some loophole in an international broadcasting agreement.
Then on the other hand you have the RIAA which is composed of lawbreaking entities such as Sony who "accidently" write rootkits they distribute on their product. Or BMG and the myriad of other publishers and their price gouging. Which is illegal.
Even if allofmp3 is illegal I'd rather use their services, from a moral perspective, than to purchase music from the RIAA. Sadly, I'm some what of a self admitted hypocrite in this regard because I prefer to own the redbook format than to trust someone else to digitize my music. As luck would have it, what the RIAA publishes these days no longer interests me and I don't think I've bought a new CD for 3 years. I've bought only used cds so no new profits. I've also become somewhat of a vinyl addict lately and the most of my music purchases have been independent electronica.
On an off-topic note, even if the Russian Mafia is not connected with allofmp3, I would still consider the Russian Mafia morally superior to anyone having anything to do with the RIAA. :)
Internet = Little to no advertising dollars for ABC. Addiction = Bad sounding word... oohhhhh News Story = biased and one-sided Conclusion = The internet is evil and you should watch more of our quality programming, brought to you by...
You're missing the point. The byproduct of this reaction is heat, not the other way around. Previous fusion devices use heat and/or pressure from magnetic fields, or lasers, or other methods to cause fusion. This does not.
Yea right. More like keeping vital servers and technology out of China and other nations the State Department deems competitive to US economy. The last thing the US wants is for China have access to free information. If China ever got their act together and started emulating the US economy of our industrial age, they would take over the world economy in a heartbeat.
If this was about human rights, we would have stopped trading with China decades ago. No, this is about working with the Chinese Government to help keep its people down. It's what China wants, and it is what the US wants.
Spin spin spin spin, spin spin spin spin....
They collect so much data it doesn't matter if everyone working there suscribes to the same motto. The data will eventually be used for purposes you probably aren't comfortable with. Even if it's not Google who abuses it. But no one seems to care because Google has a warm comfy sunshine filled do no evil FAQ page. Well, George W. Bush also swears he upholds a certain ideal that is outlined in the constitution. Do I really have to continue the point?
Everyone needs to take a step back and re-examine Google. Everyone is singing their praises, and it seems like their fan-boy base is so large, they are exempt from criticism. Just think about it for a second... what if Google was sold to Timewarner tomorrow. Or Microsoft. Just because they aren't "evil" now doesn't mean they can't easily go that way. And no one will have seen it coming because they were too busy talking about how "totally awesome" Google was.
Criticism of Google is important. Keep them in check.
If that woman was an accepted member of their social structure, it's quite possible. Jane Goodall even wrote about this, as well as the trust they instilled on her to be around the young.
Additionally it is well recorded that swimming with Dolphins can sometimes lead to undesired effects. Dolphins will try and mate with humans. It isn't known wether they are doing it for pleasure or procreation, but it is still a well known fact that Dolphins have attempted to mate with humans. There are also stories of certain sects of people who say they mate with dolphins on a regular basis. Me being at work right now prevents me from searching for the articles online about people being arrested for "Dolphin sex rings" but feel free to do your own research.
The point is that just because peacocks are stuck up, doesn't mean other species don't have a more promiscuous streak to them. You keep offering specific examples to attempt to disprove an entire theory. You need to look at both sides of the evidence before making assumptions.
Who knows, perhaps it's the mating of different species that is responsible to macro evolution. Clearly it is possible for two similar but different species (in chromosome count) to produce offspring. Maybe this breeding selection is responsible for drastic mutation that leads to macro evolution.
I believe this realm of science is referred to as "psychology". Not even close? Hrm that might be going to far. While I agree that it isn't always 100% right, I would say that it is right more often than not!
Just because presently 100% of human behavoir isn't explained by science and psychology doesn't mean that it can't be. Furthermore much of human behavoir can be explained by simple survival traits that are present in all life forms. Ours are just more complex and more difficult to understand. Additionally, as humans evolves, societies rise and fall, these traits can evolve and change making the previous generations pyschology text books useless. But that still doesn't mean it can't be explained with science.
Remember, just because you choose to ignore it, does not undo it. Faith swings both ways my friends.
So you still make a good point.
Be that as it may, I don't see how an incomplete theory means the entire idea is wrong. I can come up with a hundred reasons why ID, theory creationism, and Christianity could be considered "incomplete". Yet the creationist answer to this is "have faith". Why isn't science sometimes afforded the same luxary while we find the answers? Why do these things HAVE to be mutually exclusive?
Honestly, that is one of my main beefs with ID, creationism, and specifically Christianity. They all assume we have the answers and we should stop looking. Given our history of great discovery, how arrogant is that? How often has that been proved wrong?
We should all be willing and ready to say "We don't know squat about squat", and work together to figure it out. You can be religious and scientific too! Einsten, as well as other great physicists, accomplished what they did becuase they thought physics and math were God's langauge.
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"I want to know all Gods thoughts... all the rest are just details."
And one of my personal favorites:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction."
- Albert Einstein
Sure this might be partially true. But I would wager most of the web traffic that the "victim" sites get is from search engines. I have done a fair bit of traffic analysis for my company's web page (F50 company, sells computers, take a guess....) and I know even though we have a fairly decent interface, a good percentage of traffic still comes from google.
On top of that, if you can't design a site that captures the user once they are linked in from a search engine, it is your own fault if you ask me.
Dumb user should have been running nosmoke.exe -a -s anyway. Serves him right.
In fact, to keep it simple, I'd say that some of these findings actually support the membrane theory. Additionally, part of the string theory equations that actually hold water support dark matter and dark energy are actually mass and energy from other membranes (other universes, or other dimensions if you will) interacting with ours.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
It's not just the slashdot community. Dark Matter is an idea that was come up with to explain events that our math theories, based on observations, could not explain. Large non spherical bodies of mass were needed to explain certain problems with red shift, universe expansion rate not being constant, and other oddities. It's a lot like Aether. Aether was someone's idea to come up with how light travels in wave form. Since our understanding of sound waves was based on matter transmitting energy from one point to another via a wave, someone thought light would behave similary. It wasn't that it was a bad idea, but it just didn't jive with other models that had math to back them up.
Dark matter was conceived in much the same way and certain people have problems with theories being thought up and subsequent math being formed around that idea. Some people just like to have the chicken before the egg. Others don't want to waste time with having to come up with math before they can formulate an idea.
Personally, I'm glad we have both sides of the fence. If not for the idea of Aether, we may have not derived the cosmic observation experiments we did to disprove it. Those experiments were key to the forming of modern GR and SR theories.
So Dark Matter may be real, or it might some other unexplainable energy source with funky mass properties. Either way, there is a lot of explaining to do at the large mass scale and the small mass scale. We've only begun to scratch the surface of what we know. Those who dismiss dark matter simply because it was thought up before the math was there to solidify it are selling themselves short.
On an unrelated note, I'm in the "dark matter doesn't exist camp". Though bodies of mass appear to react to some unexplained non-spherical wacky gravity sources, it doesn't react in the same way other matter in the universe would. I think it's better explained that these "filaments" are not matter at all, but leftover pockets of energy from events past. Energy so great that it can mimick the properties of mass (afterall, mass can also be considered "frozen energy" and large amounts of energy applied to mass [IE Velocity] can increase relativistic energy and therefore relativistic mass). This might explain why it doesn't coalesce and behave the way regular matter would be expected to. The dark matter camp doesn't like this theory because we haven't come up with a way to view the expected radiation or other physical proof (EM Fields, ect ect) that would be evident if large amounts of energy where just sitting around space. My personal thoughts on that subject would be that it's not the same type of decaying energy that we are familar with. But more along the lines of energy that is a by-product of all the mass that pulls and tears on eachother within these spinning galaxies. When you think about it, galaxies don't just rotate around a black hole, or supermassive black hole. The inner parts rotate and those parts grab a hold of the middle parts and move them in a spiral fashion. The outer parts may not even be in the main bodies spehere of influence, but since they are captured in the spheres of the outer arms, they behave in the same rotation. Albiet in a spiral fashion. All this mass and energy creates relativistic energy which is left over in these so called filaments. In a catch 22 like behavoir, this left over energy may not be in the same relative frame of reference as the mass it was generated by, and therefore can end up affecting the galaxy. The energy isn't traveling back in time, but affecting different frames of reference compared to the reference of the mass we can detect. Viola, dark matter.
Dream big.
But I know very many safe drivers, because like you, all they do is pay attention and never let them get into a situation where more than average driving skills would be required to get them out of it.
I agree with your points.
I am a an excellent driver (see the post below this one) with the qualifications to back that up. I do have moving violations. So there is no correlation with not having tickets and being a good driver. Just a safe driver.
Which brings me to my next point. I wish people would stop qualifying themselves as an excellent driver when they really mean "safe driver".
I could be classifed as an excellent high speed, high maneuverability driver. When compared to the average public. I autocross often and I have the autocross timeslips and best of days to prove that I know how to pilot my vehicle well. I can control my car at it's limits because I know almost exactly (you never know 100%) what it will do and what inputs are required to make it do what I want.
That said, I still only consider myself and average driver on the highway. What I do out there on the track doesn't translate to the highway. Just like everyone I get bored in my car. I zone out to music. I don't pay enough attention. I get frusterated in traffic and probably make less than safe passes. I don't qualify that I'm allowed to do these things because I race cars on Sunday. No, I'm just kind of an inpatient asshole with a fast car. I'm not saying I'm a bad driver out there causing wrecks left and right. I'm just saying that I'm your average driver who doesn't think enough when out and about driving on the regular roads.
Granted, if I got into a situation where braking or maneuvering skills came into play, that would obviously help me avoid a collision. However, that assumes I was paying enough attention to react and plan your maneuver properly. Given the amount of concentration I apply at the track and the amount of concentration I have zombiedriving down the interstate, my skills probably wouldn't help the least bit.