Ummm... but that doesn't mean that the US images are any better or worse than the russian images.
Take, for example, what appears to be a Cal Tech prank that seems to have made it into NASA's photo-of-the-day, back when CASSINI was sending pics of Titan.
Now, the author may be right -- it wouldn't seem that Titan could have an atmospheric-style plume, with strong wind shears at 10000 feet, now, would it? But right or wrong, my point will still hold.
Point being, that unless you are somebody who knows what they are looking at, all the photos are simply a pretty picture, nothing more.
Now, I'm not. In fact, I can't even understand the abstract.
Well, maybe I could if I tried hard enough. But right now, I can't.
Maybe there are others like me out there, who still think we can hang out at slashdot, and....... oh darn.... [MickLinux, still not ready for time.com, heads to CNN.com to see Clark Howard. Keeping razorblades sharp is about as nerdy as he can handle anymore]
It's about time that instead of just clicking thru, people start thinking:
(1) Typically, when evil corporations make evil agreements, their subsequent actions are ______ evil, as compared to the agreement.
(a) MORE (b) LESS (c) ABOUT AS
(2) I know I _____ the service (a) WANT (b) NEED (c) JUST GOTTA GOTTA HAVE
(3) The "service" is actually _______ (a) a service (b) an bilateral transaction (c) a unilateral action masquerading as a bilateral transaction (d) a waste of resources (e) a con.
(4) Now I will ______ (a) click "I agree", the above notwithstanding. (b) Walk away while I still can walk. (c) wonder what I was thinking, that I wanted to deal with these people.
Just as an aside, that's sortof related, I'm unemployed. I worked on a team of 20 that was producing about $10Million of profit a year for our company. The company acted in *really* *really* bad faith. (Think brakeless trucks and repetitive OSHA violations. Think Company Code of Conduct. Think Honeypot). They hired their own lawyer to investigate, who took statements, but didn't even check the sources I give, waited for the OSHA statute of limitations to expire, and then announced the honeypot, concluding that there was no evidence.
They fired me; now they are making about 1/6th that profit (think 1 production run of $75000 profit a week, as opposed to 3, and with many massive errors, as opposed to almost none.) So the company fired me, having profited heavily before, and I having made a max of $17/hr. But they did hurt themselves badly.
Point being, I was about to apply for a job at a certain Language Translation CDr company, and in order to even apply and maybe interview, they wanted me to sign a click-thru agreement of confidentiality that included damages beyond limitless, and payment of all the lawyer fees they chose to assign, should they choose to hire a lawyer.
Umm... I've already been there. Thank you, but rather than work for such an employer (or click through), I'd rather be unemployed. Arguably, I'd rather starve.
I chose to walk away. If an employer would give an honest wage for an honest day's labor, they'd get a ton out of me. Language Translation Company is showing that there's no trust, so they aren't going to get the goodies.
I'd respectfully disagree about "constitutional", notwithstanding that yes, we do have a constitution.
But considering that we are, as you say, a Socialist Federal Republic Democratic, then members of the national party (the Socialist-Fed Dem Publicans) should have no problem if we taught that in the schools.
There. Got that out.
Maybe you could wait until you really *do* need some hauling, and then pay him double for the gas, his labor being "in the family (free)". Paying double for the gas should help cover maintenance, I figure.
The buildings are *very* high profit, and at least in my hometown, it appears that the university president was on the board of directors of the construction firm that got all the contracts, regardless of price and regardless of cost overruns.
Oh, he did have to report the [huge] side income, which is how we know.
Corruption lives large in our state. But I don't think that our state is unusual.
Actually, it looks to me like that chart shows that schools like DeVry perform close to a University; Community colleges' associate degrees far outperform them.
Let's take a look at the cost of a university: $13000/yr for four years. For a moderately-skilled student, that's going to be at 8% per year, for a total of $58000 when he graduates. A 2-year Devry degree will cost you $40000 when you graduate. But if you live at home, and get a 2-year degree at your local community college, you owe $5000 when you graduate.
Now, although your BLS chart doesn't show underemployment, consider your chances of getting a job in your field. Currently, underemployment is at 20% in many parts of the country. It's going to be worse for new graduates. Then throw in unemployment.
Then consider that among 4-year institution graduates, there is a very *low* unemployment and underemployment rate among those who graduate with a degree in education. So for everyone else, that unemployment rate is much higher. But then consider that with places like Wisconsin and Iowa, that situation is about to change.
So I'd say that Devry and the 4-year institution are not all that good a bet. Indeed, I'd say go to a local vo-tech or community college for a 2-year degree. Going for anything more, at least initially, is likely to give you a massive pay cut.
If I were trying to design a car to get a more efficient mileage, I would begin by designing a single wheel module with an electric motor behind it. That eliminates the heavy axle in favor of a fixed frame, with a much lighter and smaller pivot/suspension system. I'd control the thing based on tadpole-trike style ackerman steering methods.
Then I'd mount each of the 4 motorized wheels on a more narrow frame, with each able to turn. No nonsense about changing the turning configuration (like the Lull forklift). That's been tried, and the confusion is worse than anything. But you get maximum effectiveness by turning all four, for minimum effort and angle.
Now, I'd minimize the effective cross-sectional area, by staggering the seats. No two persons' shoulders need conflict, if one person's shoulders are next to the feet of the next person. Space savings can then go to either additional safety (side air bags, foam padding) or reduced drag. That said, I'd make up to 4 rows of 2 seats, allowing it to be a full family size vehicle. Make them heavily reclined (as for a sports car), and you will again minimize drag. That would make the car 12' long.
Although I'd probably use an underframe similar to a Ford F150 of C-bars, the main body I would build out of bicycle-helmet style styrofoam, with kevlar and Nomex applied to the outside of the body to make it strong.
After this, I'd swap out the luggage area for batteries. Sell the car with SLAs as standard, with the replacements always being Lithium Ion Phosphate. That way, as the SLAs wear out, they will be replaced with longer-life, non-explosive, higher-range batteries. As the owner saved money on his gas, he'd be able to increase the range of the car. The front, I would swap out for a low-power gasoline generator. If the owner knows that he'll be driving farther than his range, he fires up the generator as his first option.
Now, the undercarriage: since all the exhaust systems are no longer needed, we can make that smooth. In fact, with a little care, you can put a 4.25' x 10' x 3" storage area down there, so that the owner can transport sheet rock, plywood, or whatnot.
Do all that, and I think I'd have a car that was moderately useful to me, a real gas saver (but, as you say, apples and oranges... just as with the Prius, you can't really tell what the mileage is), and quite safe.
Jury nullification has to do with judging the law as well as the actions. Now, I'm not sure if jury nullification is legal, but if and when it happens, then it applies. After that, a judge may invalidate the jury's findings, I suppose, and reverse the ruling or order a retrial. I really don't know how many legal, half-legal, and illegal things go on in actual courtrooms.
Now, for civil cases -- it might be harder to make a case for jury nullification, because you would have to show that you weren't just "creating a new law" as opposed to nullifying a law that was at least in that case unjust. But that said, I suspect juries all the time create new laws. Case in point, a previous poster who said that in a medical malpractice suit, people were judging their own doctors and ignoring the evidence. Sounds like they were creating new laws to me.
I agree that Nasa can't afford what it has now. That said, NASA may be better off spending its money on contests.
But this is an opportunity for any teams of graduate researchers who *want* to take their research into the market.
All they have to do is:
1. Design a contest that they are likely to win. 2. Submit contest (or have a friend submit the contest, to avoid the apparant conflict of interest). 3. Wait for similar contest to come out 4. Enter similar contest and publicize heavily. 5. Encourage donations 6. Win, or come close 7. Sell product under heavy publication 8. Profit!
Whether you win or not determines the initial profitability -- but not the long term profitability. The free publicity of being on the news helps determine long-term profitability.
Umm... that may be what the wiki said. But I remember sitting in a bar at Va Tech, watching his case addressed on the (?I think it was) Phil Donohue show. And I remember that the main point was that the DNA evidence had been tested and exonerated him, but his lawyer had sat on the evidence and submitted it two days late, after the last possible deadline.
So his conviction was upheld by default, as if there never had been any evidence.
Then Wilder turned down clemency, claiming that he was "tough on crime".
So, Wiki aside, *I* was aware of evidence that exonerated him, available and ignored, while he was still living and breathing.
Well, here in Virginia we occasionally execute those whom the evidence exonerates, because "they had their day in court, and their lawyer didn't get the evidence in on time." Just to show we're tough on crime, or something.
Shoot, in Germany they'd put people who were "too retarded to serve the state" up before 3-judge panels (that were themselves pressured to give a thumbs-down, at risk of not seeming loyal to the state.) 3 thumbs down, and the person was executed. Of course, I suppose that raised the average intelligence of the entire German nation, thus raising the intelligence necessary to be above 85% of average. As Hayak pointed out, under such a focus, failure to be useful to the state is viewed as high treason.
Which does apply nowadays, because that is the result of making a person's "usefulness to the state" overly important. I've seen that mentioned in the transcript of Obama's speech.. Not that he was wrong in what he said... but such a focus is terribly dangerous and shortsighted.
No. We don't need warp drive if we colonize Mars. We'll just catch the Mars orbit around Jupiter, and ride the next longshot out to the Andromeda sector.
Please do inform me -- when you say the authors used "powerful new techniques", did they use the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration ? You can find a description of the PS-P here.
I mean, looking at a previous post about using the "SABA4 symplectic integrator15", I'm inclined to think not -- and therefore, I question the validity of the results.
The reason I ask, is that I have little faith in the standard numerical models not to mess up the calculations after billions of iterations, and cause numerical precision error to appear to be instability. The PS-P, on the other hand, is not subject to such problems; if a series does not converge, it becomes obvious. If it does converge, it becomes obvious just to how many places you have to take it, in order to get the accuracy you want.
I will note that the author is *not* me, but I am quite aware of the situation.
Actually, I didn't want to cite it, because the author is the target of JPL. At a different conference, another JMU employee had a reasonable question, and JPL started harranguing them "oh, you're from that conspiracy nut university..." and so on. So after enough targeting, the JMU professor asked his boss what to do, and his boss said "I'd prefer if you just let this die."
In other words, academic freedom and the search for truth is snuffed. *Very* related to Hayak's book, if you ask me. According to Hayak, typically, when socialism goes to complete control, all truth goes out the window, and the only judgement to be made is "how does this support loyalty to the government plan?". So if it is against communism, or not specifically shown to be in support of communism [or the myths that determine current communist thought], then it needs to be silenced. Likewise, if it doesn't serve the interests of National Socialism [Nazi], then it is to be silenced.
Anyhow, all that also came after the author found a 1% error in JPLs predicted orbits of venus, causing NASA to cancel their contract the JPL to provide the predictions, until JPL fixed it. Again, the author represents a threat to JPL, and so must be silenced. And since JPL is much closer to the seat of power than the university, the silencing works. In other words, the author is academically reasonable, and should not be subject to silencing (were academia performing properly).
It seems to me that your school's policy is well thought out, and appropriate. Not because cheating is okay, but because going over and above justice makes the justice highly subjective, and subject to abuse. Positive abuse, by someone finding a paper that is 3% plagiarized, and failing the student. Negative abuse, by *not* failing another student who plagiarized very badly.
Once you go past justice, then you have to go into the rule of personality.
If you've read Hayak's Road-to-serfdom, you'll have an idea of what I'm describing: it's the loss of the rule of law (where the law sets down specific procedures for use in all cases) to the rule of personality (where the law empowers individuals to be as subjective as they want).
That said, there is one other thing you can do. You can inform the student -- in writing -- that you consider his work to be plagiarized, naming the work and the source. Further, you can inform him in writing that if he is in the future to ask you for a recommendation, it will be a bad one, and will include a copy of this assignment, with specifics. That, also, is straight justice, and is not without effect.
That said, plagiarism is nowadays standard in physics. So is bullying that silences academic freedom (Take, for instance, JPLs bullying to prevent the publication of the fact that its Titan lander photos -- which contain smoke plumes, amazingly enough -- actually are left-right reversed photos of Pearl Harbor, taken from a Japanese plane.). So is the misawarding of degrees (such as PhDs, awarded on a first-come first-serve basis, rather than to the person who did all the work). So is the misawarding of awards (such as the Nobel Prize... for example, the story of the discovery of superconductivity).
Quite frankly, I don't have a lot of respect for academia in general. But insofar as a particular school or professor tries to do the best they can, I have respect for *them*.
I thought professors had legions of grad students to ferret this sort of thing out
Well, theoretically, yes. However, in my experience, the grad students would assign 10 times too much work, then not grade it all semester, and at the end of the semester call them all "90", minus 10x number of days late. So those who did the work get Ds, while the 80% who don't even bother get Bs. Then the faculty support them, because they weren't paying attention, and it would look bad for 80% of their class to fail the course.
In my opinion, plagiarism is indeed a heinous crime in an academic setting because it goes against everything the pursuit of academics is supposed to be about.
I'm sorry, you completely lost me there. What is academics supposed to be about? I once thought I knew, but by now I'm sure I don't.
Actually, I think a full-blown sign-language would be great, especially for use with cell phone cameras. There are a few obvious benefits, and some not-so-obvious ones:
(1) people learn international sign language, and it assists in international communication. (2) The speed of data entry would be increased greatly. (3) It seems to me probable that there would be decreased cost and possibly (if it was done by a designed/dedicated chip) decreased battery usage by using sign lanugage instead of other means (4) Logon would be simplified, with simply flashing a thumbprint.
How to do it? I suspect that the way to do it might be as follows:
(1) take an image, and subtract one image's RGB map from the previous image.
(2) Run an FFT on the result, to get a motion map.
(3) Track the motion of the various blocks of pixels.
(4) From the motion of the various blocks, and moreover from what remains invariant and what adds on on one side (or disappears from the other), obtain a 3-D map of various objects. From the 3-D map, and how it morphs, obtain approximate rotation vectors.
(5) Recognize hands by the digit lengths and connection combinations.
(6) Plot the hand digit rotational and bending angles into a real-time motion map.
(7) Translate #6 into specific signs, which in turn can be programmed to be equivalent to international sign language.
The above method would also allow very high levels of compression of video.
To meet God on His terms, you have to read what His terms are, in the Bible. Then you have to meet those terms. Then, when you pray, your prayers will be answered.
Your concept of increasing our spectrum of visibility would only work for communicating with a superpowerful being, not with One who created all, and maintains all. Such a one would exist over and above any spectrums, and would communicate only as He desired. But on the other hand, such a one would have no trouble communicating with *any* part of His creation.
Thus, there is no real need for evolution of religion, for the humans back then are essentially the same as the humans now. No further technology is needed.
Religion isn't fantasy. Those two are very separate. Religion is the application of reason to the experienced world (this part is no different than, say, chemistry) based on the given that the fulfilled prophecy is an indication of a better connection with reality. Physics, on the other hand, uses the repeatable experiment as its indicator. Soft sciences such as sociology use the statistical experiment as their indicator, because working with humans is too complex to design a repeatable experiment. If you are working with a single being, then even that doesn't work -- thus the indicator used by religion. All three use the assumption that there is a single reality, though Physics does question even that, but loses its grounding in reason as it does so.
Don't forget that the local governments also raised the valuation of any land near rails to high enough levels that the railroads had to subsidy the governments.
So it was worse than you imagine.
That said, there was a time when the government *did* subsidy the rails. Remember the Transcontinental Railroad (subsequently known as TransAmerican RR, then TransAmerican airline, then Pan Am, then nothing).
What goes around comes around.
Watch out, when it comes around this time, there's going to be an awful lot of people made into pancakes. I mourn for our country in its wickedness.
On the contrary. I find many of Yahoo's ads extremely offensive. As I remember, I asked them to eliminate the ads, and they showed me how to block certain classes of ads. It was half effective, but not very.
Then they took that back.
Now, this last year, the ads got bad enough that I found myself dreading the normal task of checking my email.
So I tried out google mail... the interface is new to me, but not bad at all. Definitely not as evil as Yahoo.
I think that your definition of God might need work. I don't mean "gods", because for that you are just referring to some superpowerful being. Arguably, any wicked person might qualify, especially when they run into an anthill and start stomping ants. Compared to the ants, they are a superpowerful being.
But for a being to be God, the God would have to have all power. Because the God had to have all power, the God would also have to keep that power for all eternity. In fact, because of quantum mechanical interference, that God would have to keep that power for all eternity in both directions. So, de-facto, that God would have to be the creator and system maintainer of the universe.
Now, you said that you have not had any sharable evidence of God. Okay, based on everything else you said, I believe that. But that would be because you have not met that God on His terms. I have, and I have. I can definitely say that that God matches the God of the Christian Bible. Whether any one group of Christians has a masterlock on truth, I couldn't say. Considering that people are so limited, I'd be inclined towards doubt on that one. But in my experience plus in basic Christian theology (indeed, it is in the Bible), this God is a God that actively holds all the universe in existance, and therefore has a very intimate relationship with *everything*, whether it has a relationship with Him or not. In other words, this God who created the stars and the galaxies is not to big to notice the butterfly and the ant and the louse. Nor is He to big to take notice of me -- or of you.
Quite simply, if enough Americans at once buy into the housing market with wishful thinking (yeah, I can make housing payments that are 80% of my income), then when things fail, they use group think to take the wealth of others and recoup their losses.
In other words, the wishful thinking may pay off in gang-type situations.
I had this happen to me in college, when a 2-credit-hour class was demanding reports that took 25 hrs per week. I did it, and most of the others didn't, but mine were all 2 days late. So when the end of the class came, and not one had been cracked by the GTA, he simply assigned grades of 90 - 10 * (# days late). This was supported by the faculty, on the basis that if they graded them appropriately, most of the students would fail, while if they accepted the GTA's decision, most of the students would have a B, while I had a D.
The key, though, is that your wishful thinking has to allow you to hide out in a crowd, and more specificially the biggest crowd around.
Of course, that's what 94% of all lemmings say when polled by American Research Corporation (translations applied by Google Translation).
About your sig, "science controls nature / religion controls humans"... may I ask what school of thought you are from?
Science interprets nature. Religion interprets interactions between God and humans.
God controls nature. Wickedness controls human hearts, which in turn control humans.
(For the purposes here, I define wickedness as the desire of every human to be functionally a little god, to have all the benefits of godhood, and all the powers thereof; a terribly disordered attempt to fulfill their creation in the image of god).
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm... but that doesn't mean that the US images are any better or worse than the russian images.
Take, for example, what appears to be a Cal Tech prank that seems to have made it into NASA's photo-of-the-day, back when CASSINI was sending pics of Titan.
http://csma31.csm.jmu.edu/physics/rudmin/titan/titan.htm
Now, the author may be right -- it wouldn't seem that Titan could have an atmospheric-style plume, with strong wind shears at 10000 feet, now, would it? But right or wrong, my point will still hold.
Point being, that unless you are somebody who knows what they are looking at, all the photos are simply a pretty picture, nothing more.
Yeah, I once was a nerd.
But then life happened.
Now, I'm not. In fact, I can't even understand the abstract.
Well, maybe I could if I tried hard enough. But right now, I can't.
Maybe there are others like me out there, who still think we can hang out at slashdot, and.... ... oh darn.... [MickLinux, still not ready for time.com, heads to CNN.com to see Clark Howard. Keeping razorblades sharp is about as nerdy as he can handle anymore]
It's about time that instead of just clicking thru, people start thinking:
(1) Typically, when evil corporations make evil agreements, their subsequent actions are ______ evil, as compared to the agreement.
(a) MORE (b) LESS (c) ABOUT AS
(2) I know I _____ the service (a) WANT (b) NEED (c) JUST GOTTA GOTTA HAVE
(3) The "service" is actually _______ (a) a service (b) an bilateral transaction (c) a unilateral action masquerading as a bilateral transaction (d) a waste of resources (e) a con.
(4) Now I will ______ (a) click "I agree", the above notwithstanding. (b) Walk away while I still can walk. (c) wonder what I was thinking, that I wanted to deal with these people.
Just as an aside, that's sortof related, I'm unemployed. I worked on a team of 20 that was producing about $10Million of profit a year for our company. The company acted in *really* *really* bad faith. (Think brakeless trucks and repetitive OSHA violations. Think Company Code of Conduct. Think Honeypot). They hired their own lawyer to investigate, who took statements, but didn't even check the sources I give, waited for the OSHA statute of limitations to expire, and then announced the honeypot, concluding that there was no evidence.
They fired me; now they are making about 1/6th that profit (think 1 production run of $75000 profit a week, as opposed to 3, and with many massive errors, as opposed to almost none.) So the company fired me, having profited heavily before, and I having made a max of $17/hr. But they did hurt themselves badly.
Point being, I was about to apply for a job at a certain Language Translation CDr company, and in order to even apply and maybe interview, they wanted me to sign a click-thru agreement of confidentiality that included damages beyond limitless, and payment of all the lawyer fees they chose to assign, should they choose to hire a lawyer.
Umm... I've already been there. Thank you, but rather than work for such an employer (or click through), I'd rather be unemployed. Arguably, I'd rather starve.
I chose to walk away. If an employer would give an honest wage for an honest day's labor, they'd get a ton out of me. Language Translation Company is showing that there's no trust, so they aren't going to get the goodies.
I'd respectfully disagree about "constitutional", notwithstanding that yes, we do have a constitution. But considering that we are, as you say, a Socialist Federal Republic Democratic, then members of the national party (the Socialist-Fed Dem Publicans) should have no problem if we taught that in the schools. There. Got that out.
Maybe you could wait until you really *do* need some hauling, and then pay him double for the gas, his labor being "in the family (free)". Paying double for the gas should help cover maintenance, I figure.
Maybe there shouldn't be a point being made.
Key word, being, "Buildings".
The buildings are *very* high profit, and at least in my hometown, it appears that the university president was on the board of directors of the construction firm that got all the contracts, regardless of price and regardless of cost overruns.
Oh, he did have to report the [huge] side income, which is how we know.
Corruption lives large in our state. But I don't think that our state is unusual.
Actually, it looks to me like that chart shows that schools like DeVry perform close to a University; Community colleges' associate degrees far outperform them.
Let's take a look at the cost of a university: $13000/yr for four years. For a moderately-skilled student, that's going to be at 8% per year, for a total of $58000 when he graduates. A 2-year Devry degree will cost you $40000 when you graduate. But if you live at home, and get a 2-year degree at your local community college, you owe $5000 when you graduate.
Now, although your BLS chart doesn't show underemployment, consider your chances of getting a job in your field. Currently, underemployment is at 20% in many parts of the country. It's going to be worse for new graduates. Then throw in unemployment.
Then consider that among 4-year institution graduates, there is a very *low* unemployment and underemployment rate among those who graduate with a degree in education. So for everyone else, that unemployment rate is much higher. But then consider that with places like Wisconsin and Iowa, that situation is about to change.
So I'd say that Devry and the 4-year institution are not all that good a bet. Indeed, I'd say go to a local vo-tech or community college for a 2-year degree. Going for anything more, at least initially, is likely to give you a massive pay cut.
Well, in Google Van, Aliens abduct you. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Harrisonburg,+VA&aq=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=46.495626,67.763672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Harrisonburg,+Virginia&ll=38.407894,-78.900323&spn=0.001421,0.002068&z=19&layer=c&cbll=38.407894,-78.900323&panoid=ruQjeIA46xTLhu6UG8YFMA&cbp=12,234.51,,0,0 Take a look -- everything goes dark, except for a beam of light coming straight down... you look up, and there's a flying saucer with its tractor beam above you... I don't know what's going on here, but until I do, I'm staying out of Google cars.
Then I'd mount each of the 4 motorized wheels on a more narrow frame, with each able to turn. No nonsense about changing the turning configuration (like the Lull forklift). That's been tried, and the confusion is worse than anything. But you get maximum effectiveness by turning all four, for minimum effort and angle.
Now, I'd minimize the effective cross-sectional area, by staggering the seats. No two persons' shoulders need conflict, if one person's shoulders are next to the feet of the next person. Space savings can then go to either additional safety (side air bags, foam padding) or reduced drag. That said, I'd make up to 4 rows of 2 seats, allowing it to be a full family size vehicle. Make them heavily reclined (as for a sports car), and you will again minimize drag. That would make the car 12' long.
Although I'd probably use an underframe similar to a Ford F150 of C-bars, the main body I would build out of bicycle-helmet style styrofoam, with kevlar and Nomex applied to the outside of the body to make it strong.
After this, I'd swap out the luggage area for batteries. Sell the car with SLAs as standard, with the replacements always being Lithium Ion Phosphate. That way, as the SLAs wear out, they will be replaced with longer-life, non-explosive, higher-range batteries. As the owner saved money on his gas, he'd be able to increase the range of the car. The front, I would swap out for a low-power gasoline generator. If the owner knows that he'll be driving farther than his range, he fires up the generator as his first option.
Now, the undercarriage: since all the exhaust systems are no longer needed, we can make that smooth. In fact, with a little care, you can put a 4.25' x 10' x 3" storage area down there, so that the owner can transport sheet rock, plywood, or whatnot.
Do all that, and I think I'd have a car that was moderately useful to me, a real gas saver (but, as you say, apples and oranges... just as with the Prius, you can't really tell what the mileage is), and quite safe.
Jury nullification has to do with judging the law as well as the actions. Now, I'm not sure if jury nullification is legal, but if and when it happens, then it applies. After that, a judge may invalidate the jury's findings, I suppose, and reverse the ruling or order a retrial. I really don't know how many legal, half-legal, and illegal things go on in actual courtrooms.
Now, for civil cases -- it might be harder to make a case for jury nullification, because you would have to show that you weren't just "creating a new law" as opposed to nullifying a law that was at least in that case unjust. But that said, I suspect juries all the time create new laws. Case in point, a previous poster who said that in a medical malpractice suit, people were judging their own doctors and ignoring the evidence. Sounds like they were creating new laws to me.
I agree that Nasa can't afford what it has now. That said, NASA may be better off spending its money on contests.
But this is an opportunity for any teams of graduate researchers who *want* to take their research into the market.
All they have to do is:
1. Design a contest that they are likely to win.
2. Submit contest (or have a friend submit the contest, to avoid the apparant conflict of interest).
3. Wait for similar contest to come out
4. Enter similar contest and publicize heavily.
5. Encourage donations
6. Win, or come close
7. Sell product under heavy publication
8. Profit!
Whether you win or not determines the initial profitability -- but not the long term profitability.
The free publicity of being on the news helps determine long-term profitability.
Umm... that may be what the wiki said. But I remember sitting in a bar at Va Tech, watching his case addressed on the (?I think it was) Phil Donohue show. And I remember that the main point was that the DNA evidence had been tested and exonerated him, but his lawyer had sat on the evidence and submitted it two days late, after the last possible deadline.
So his conviction was upheld by default, as if there never had been any evidence.
Then Wilder turned down clemency, claiming that he was "tough on crime".
So, Wiki aside, *I* was aware of evidence that exonerated him, available and ignored, while he was still living and breathing.
Well, here in Virginia we occasionally execute those whom the evidence exonerates, because "they had their day in court, and their lawyer didn't get the evidence in on time." Just to show we're tough on crime, or something.
I'm thinking of Roger Keith Coleman.
Of course, Virginia and Texas are brother states.
Shoot, in Germany they'd put people who were "too retarded to serve the state" up before 3-judge panels (that were themselves pressured to give a thumbs-down, at risk of not seeming loyal to the state.) 3 thumbs down, and the person was executed. Of course, I suppose that raised the average intelligence of the entire German nation, thus raising the intelligence necessary to be above 85% of average. As Hayak pointed out, under such a focus, failure to be useful to the state is viewed as high treason.
Which does apply nowadays, because that is the result of making a person's "usefulness to the state" overly important. I've seen that mentioned in the transcript of Obama's speech.. Not that he was wrong in what he said... but such a focus is terribly dangerous and shortsighted.
No. We don't need warp drive if we colonize Mars. We'll just catch the Mars orbit around Jupiter, and ride the next longshot out to the Andromeda sector.
I mean, looking at a previous post about using the "SABA4 symplectic integrator15", I'm inclined to think not -- and therefore, I question the validity of the results.
The reason I ask, is that I have little faith in the standard numerical models not to mess up the calculations after billions of iterations, and cause numerical precision error to appear to be instability. The PS-P, on the other hand, is not subject to such problems; if a series does not converge, it becomes obvious. If it does converge, it becomes obvious just to how many places you have to take it, in order to get the accuracy you want.
http://csma31.csm.jmu.edu/physics/rudmin/titan/titan.htm [jmu.edu]
I will note that the author is *not* me, but I am quite aware of the situation.
Actually, I didn't want to cite it, because the author is the target of JPL. At a different conference, another JMU employee had a reasonable question, and JPL started harranguing them "oh, you're from that conspiracy nut university..." and so on. So after enough targeting, the JMU professor asked his boss what to do, and his boss said "I'd prefer if you just let this die."
In other words, academic freedom and the search for truth is snuffed. *Very* related to Hayak's book, if you ask me. According to Hayak, typically, when socialism goes to complete control, all truth goes out the window, and the only judgement to be made is "how does this support loyalty to the government plan?". So if it is against communism, or not specifically shown to be in support of communism [or the myths that determine current communist thought], then it needs to be silenced. Likewise, if it doesn't serve the interests of National Socialism [Nazi], then it is to be silenced.
Anyhow, all that also came after the author found a 1% error in JPLs predicted orbits of venus, causing NASA to cancel their contract the JPL to provide the predictions, until JPL fixed it. Again, the author represents a threat to JPL, and so must be silenced. And since JPL is much closer to the seat of power than the university, the silencing works. In other words, the author is academically reasonable, and should not be subject to silencing (were academia performing properly).
It seems to me that your school's policy is well thought out, and appropriate. Not because cheating is okay, but because going over and above justice makes the justice highly subjective, and subject to abuse. Positive abuse, by someone finding a paper that is 3% plagiarized, and failing the student. Negative abuse, by *not* failing another student who plagiarized very badly.
Once you go past justice, then you have to go into the rule of personality.
If you've read Hayak's Road-to-serfdom, you'll have an idea of what I'm describing: it's the loss of the rule of law (where the law sets down specific procedures for use in all cases) to the rule of personality (where the law empowers individuals to be as subjective as they want).
That said, there is one other thing you can do. You can inform the student -- in writing -- that you consider his work to be plagiarized, naming the work and the source. Further, you can inform him in writing that if he is in the future to ask you for a recommendation, it will be a bad one, and will include a copy of this assignment, with specifics. That, also, is straight justice, and is not without effect.
That said, plagiarism is nowadays standard in physics. So is bullying that silences academic freedom (Take, for instance, JPLs bullying to prevent the publication of the fact that its Titan lander photos -- which contain smoke plumes, amazingly enough -- actually are left-right reversed photos of Pearl Harbor, taken from a Japanese plane.). So is the misawarding of degrees (such as PhDs, awarded on a first-come first-serve basis, rather than to the person who did all the work). So is the misawarding of awards (such as the Nobel Prize... for example, the story of the discovery of superconductivity).
Quite frankly, I don't have a lot of respect for academia in general. But insofar as a particular school or professor tries to do the best they can, I have respect for *them*.
I thought professors had legions of grad students to ferret this sort of thing out
Well, theoretically, yes. However, in my experience, the grad students would assign 10 times too much work, then not grade it all semester, and at the end of the semester call them all "90", minus 10x number of days late. So those who did the work get Ds, while the 80% who don't even bother get Bs. Then the faculty support them, because they weren't paying attention, and it would look bad for 80% of their class to fail the course.
In my opinion, plagiarism is indeed a heinous crime in an academic setting because it goes against everything the pursuit of academics is supposed to be about.
I'm sorry, you completely lost me there. What is academics supposed to be about? I once thought I knew, but by now I'm sure I don't.
Actually, I think a full-blown sign-language would be great, especially for use with cell phone cameras. There are a few obvious benefits, and some not-so-obvious ones:
(1) people learn international sign language, and it assists in international communication.
(2) The speed of data entry would be increased greatly.
(3) It seems to me probable that there would be decreased cost and possibly (if it was done by a designed/dedicated chip) decreased battery usage by using sign lanugage instead of other means
(4) Logon would be simplified, with simply flashing a thumbprint.
How to do it? I suspect that the way to do it might be as follows:
(1) take an image, and subtract one image's RGB map from the previous image.
(2) Run an FFT on the result, to get a motion map.
(3) Track the motion of the various blocks of pixels.
(4) From the motion of the various blocks, and moreover from what remains invariant and what adds on on one side (or disappears from the other), obtain a 3-D map of various objects. From the 3-D map, and how it morphs, obtain approximate rotation vectors.
(5) Recognize hands by the digit lengths and connection combinations.
(6) Plot the hand digit rotational and bending angles into a real-time motion map.
(7) Translate #6 into specific signs, which in turn can be programmed to be equivalent to international sign language.
The above method would also allow very high levels of compression of video.
To meet God on His terms, you have to read what His terms are, in the Bible. Then you have to meet those terms. Then, when you pray, your prayers will be answered. Your concept of increasing our spectrum of visibility would only work for communicating with a superpowerful being, not with One who created all, and maintains all. Such a one would exist over and above any spectrums, and would communicate only as He desired. But on the other hand, such a one would have no trouble communicating with *any* part of His creation. Thus, there is no real need for evolution of religion, for the humans back then are essentially the same as the humans now. No further technology is needed. Religion isn't fantasy. Those two are very separate. Religion is the application of reason to the experienced world (this part is no different than, say, chemistry) based on the given that the fulfilled prophecy is an indication of a better connection with reality. Physics, on the other hand, uses the repeatable experiment as its indicator. Soft sciences such as sociology use the statistical experiment as their indicator, because working with humans is too complex to design a repeatable experiment. If you are working with a single being, then even that doesn't work -- thus the indicator used by religion. All three use the assumption that there is a single reality, though Physics does question even that, but loses its grounding in reason as it does so.
Don't forget that the local governments also raised the valuation of any land near rails to high enough levels that the railroads had to subsidy the governments.
So it was worse than you imagine.
That said, there was a time when the government *did* subsidy the rails. Remember the Transcontinental Railroad (subsequently known as TransAmerican RR, then TransAmerican airline, then Pan Am, then nothing).
What goes around comes around.
Watch out, when it comes around this time, there's going to be an awful lot of people made into pancakes. I mourn for our country in its wickedness.
On the contrary. I find many of Yahoo's ads extremely offensive. As I remember, I asked them to eliminate the ads, and they showed me how to block certain classes of ads. It was half effective, but not very.
Then they took that back.
Now, this last year, the ads got bad enough that I found myself dreading the normal task of checking my email.
So I tried out google mail... the interface is new to me, but not bad at all. Definitely not as evil as Yahoo.
Perhaps Google is evil. IMO, Yahoo is eviler.
I think that your definition of God might need work. I don't mean "gods", because for that you are just referring to some superpowerful being. Arguably, any wicked person might qualify, especially when they run into an anthill and start stomping ants. Compared to the ants, they are a superpowerful being.
But for a being to be God, the God would have to have all power. Because the God had to have all power, the God would also have to keep that power for all eternity. In fact, because of quantum mechanical interference, that God would have to keep that power for all eternity in both directions. So, de-facto, that God would have to be the creator and system maintainer of the universe.
Now, you said that you have not had any sharable evidence of God. Okay, based on everything else you said, I believe that. But that would be because you have not met that God on His terms. I have, and I have. I can definitely say that that God matches the God of the Christian Bible. Whether any one group of Christians has a masterlock on truth, I couldn't say. Considering that people are so limited, I'd be inclined towards doubt on that one. But in my experience plus in basic Christian theology (indeed, it is in the Bible), this God is a God that actively holds all the universe in existance, and therefore has a very intimate relationship with *everything*, whether it has a relationship with Him or not. In other words, this God who created the stars and the galaxies is not to big to notice the butterfly and the ant and the louse. Nor is He to big to take notice of me -- or of you.
Quite simply, if enough Americans at once buy into the housing market with wishful thinking (yeah, I can make housing payments that are 80% of my income), then when things fail, they use group think to take the wealth of others and recoup their losses.
In other words, the wishful thinking may pay off in gang-type situations.
I had this happen to me in college, when a 2-credit-hour class was demanding reports that took 25 hrs per week. I did it, and most of the others didn't, but mine were all 2 days late. So when the end of the class came, and not one had been cracked by the GTA, he simply assigned grades of 90 - 10 * (# days late). This was supported by the faculty, on the basis that if they graded them appropriately, most of the students would fail, while if they accepted the GTA's decision, most of the students would have a B, while I had a D.
The key, though, is that your wishful thinking has to allow you to hide out in a crowd, and more specificially the biggest crowd around.
Of course, that's what 94% of all lemmings say when polled by American Research Corporation (translations applied by Google Translation).
About your sig, "science controls nature / religion controls humans"... may I ask what school of thought you are from?
Science interprets nature. Religion interprets interactions between God and humans.
God controls nature. Wickedness controls human hearts, which in turn control humans.
(For the purposes here, I define wickedness as the desire of every human to be functionally a little god, to have all the benefits of godhood, and all the powers thereof; a terribly disordered attempt to fulfill their creation in the image of god).