It's dangerous to tear down someone who is vastly smarter than you, especially when they're right about something. The danger of doing it may temper some of the sillier political games.
Contrary to popular rumour, Nobel Prize winners aren't necessarily "vastly smarter than you". Nor does knowledge of physics transfer necessarily to, say, energy policy.
Far better to pick someone who knows how to make decisions and let him/her/it ask experts for advice on the details.
Can you smoke a joint legally? The people in Holland can.
No, but then I can smoke them illegally if I really want to with minimal risk. And I don't consider the ability to use marijiuana legally to be a sine qua non of a free society.
Could my grandpa legally drink a beer in 1925? Nope, but people the world over could.
Well, actually he could. He couldn't BUY one, but he could legally drink any he had on hand. Even if he made it himself.
Why is it that they needed a Costitutional amendment to outlaw the drug alcohol, but not to outlaw the drug marijuana?
You really want to know? It's because marijiuana was the drug of choice of Blacks back in the day. Just like gun control laws were mostly put in place to keep guns out of the hands of Blacks (and Italians, and other "undesirables").
Why is gambling illegal?
Considering that there are five or six casinos with a hundred miles of my house, I don't really see gambling as illegal.
Why is prostitution illegal?
In Nevada, it's not. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it doesn't get legalized in more places in coming decades.
You have the "right to bear arms" and yet you can't shoot a squirrel or rabbit in your back yard to feed your family.
Depends on where you live. I can't in New Orleans, but my dad can in his house in the country.
So, you brought up one specific example. Holland. Perhaps you meant the Netherlands, which includes Holland, or perhaps not. Oddly enough, when I look at the Constitution of the Netherlands, I see a lot of "Rights" that exist "as long as we don't write a law limiting that Right". For instance, Freedom of religion and speech seem to be limitable by law, rather than by a Constitutional Amendment. Plus there's that whole bit where it's assumed that the police have the right to enter your home without your permission (as prescribed by law, of course), rather than the situation here, where it is assumed that the police do NOT have that right, though it may be granted by a court order. A subtle difference, perhaps, but significant, since it's a lot easier to expand a Right than to limit it.
Damn near all of them. Americans live in a police state, get used to it.
I'd not noticed, possibly because I live outside Washington DC.
But could you be more specific? You say "damn near all of them", but I can think of only a dozen or so (out of what? 200 countries or so) that are even in the running, and none of them seem to be freer, though some do allow things we don't allow (and disallow things we allow).
Considering that we killed more people firebombing Tokyo than we did with both atom bombs, and the firebombing of Tokyo didn't convince Japan to surrender, I doubt that using the atom bomb in the desert would have accomplished much.
Especially given that we had only the two bombs. Blow one off in a nice, symbolic way, and we only have one left. If the Japanese look at our nice symbolic gesture and ignore it (the way they did the firebombing of Tokyo), then we're left with popping our last bomb on a single city, and hoping that that convinces them (while doing less damage than the firebombing of Tokyo did).
After that, of course, we invade. Which results in hundreds of thousands of American dead, and millions of Japanese dead. Lose, lose, if you ask me.
Step one: trial to decide if there's probably been a crime.
Step two: If the first trial decided there was something serious enough to answer for the persons identity is found.
In criminal cases, a Grand Jury fills these two functions. After watching the SCO debacle all these years, I've often found myself wishing that we used some equivalent in Civil Law to filter out the crap lawsuits.
The conventional bombs we have to detonate to kill a couple of people are peanuts compared to MIRV missiles with 10 warheads each having 0.5 MT yield. And we have thousands of these.
Who is "we" in this case? Certainly not the USA, since we use rather smaller warheads on our Minuteman missiles. We've produced around 3000 warheads available for the Minuteman missile, ranging from 170kt to ~450kt. More than half of them are the 170kt warhead.
Note also that the Minuteman does not support 10 warheads per missile.
The Trident is known to support eight warheads per missile (though treaty limitations limt us to four per missile), of course. Including 475kt warheads. But how many 475 kt warheads are available to be deployed on Tridents is uncertain of course (I certainly don't believe any published accounts, having served on a boomer many years ago, and knowing that the published accounts at that time were pretty much all wrong), but it can't be more than 1400 warheads, and probably is a considerably smaller number (the about 1400 number assumes all Tridents carry all 475kt bombs - since the Trident is capable of carrying another warhead type (100kt), I can safely assume that some of the Tridents carry the smaller warhead).
Wind energy is already cost effective and in use in many places. Denmark, for example, uses wind energy extensively. In my own home state a new wind farm seems to pop up every year.
Is that with or without the usual subsidies? Last I checked, wind power was heavily subsidized by the various governments.
But seriously, if something is 20 billion times fainter it's going to be barely visible, regardless of how bright the original is.
Our sun is ~20 billion times fainter than it will be when it supernovas. And seems to be bright enough to light up the world nicely. OP is right, it would be nice to know how bright the original was.
Real journalists have integrity. Real journalists present data in an unbiased fashion, without spin. Real journalist check their sources, don't manufacture news, and don't commit plagiarism, all of which is rampant on blogs.
And can you provide an example? Off the top of my head, I can't think of one.
And hell, down here in NOLA, I've heard tales of a homeowner shooting a burglar....the perp made it outside the door before collapsing...well, to make things neat, the cops helped drag the body back into the doorway for pictures, etc.
My grandmother once told me that her local sheriff told her one afternoon (in response to a question about a local burglar) to "shoot him, call the sheriff, and he'd have some deputies come over to carry the body into the house before the sheriff's office "responded" to the call about a shooting."
In case nobody's told you, your savior was born in April or May.
Of course, the real meaning has never been "Christmas was the Christ's birthday". Christmas is a celebration of His birth, but was never intended to celebrate the anniversary of His birth. Any more than any other Saint's Day is meant to be the Saint's birthday.
The whole idea of the Efficient Market Theory is that the market integrates all the facts and arrives at a rationally optimal price. It should not be possible to affect prices without introducing new facts.
There IS a new fact - that a large number of people will react blindly to a pronouncement by authority. In this case, the authority is the NBER, and the pronouncement is that we've been in a recession for a year. Oddly enough, noone noticed until the housing bubble burst (which happened less than a year ago).
The problem is that they'll stop bringing in that surplus and start spending from savings in a couple of years
This is a myth. There are no "savings" to spend from, since the Social Security tax revenues are dumped into the general fund just like all other tax revenues, to be spent in the year received.
Once the Social Security taxes no longer cover the expenses of the Social Security program (2018, or thereabouts), the Social Security tax rates will be raised to cover the shortfall, and we'll all just have to get used to higher taxes.
Germany was OK with the peace terms imposed on it after WWII but not with the peace terms imposed after WWI: hence, dramatically different results.
And here I thought the partition of Germany into two countries and the occupation of the two countries for two generations had something to do with the different outcome.
SSTO vehicles are not practical with our current level of material science and engine technology.
I Once saw an article discussing the feasibility of SSTO which pointed out that the third stage of a Saturn V, taken by itself (no payload, no first two stages) was capable of reaching orbit.
If we could build something that could reach orbit without staging in the 1960's, we can probably manage to do it now, if we were willing to spend the money.
You do realize that if you have two craft have the delta-v to lift 250,000 lbs into LEO, they will put the same amount into a lunar orbit right?
Well, no. Whatever you can put into GEO is about the same as what you can send to the moon. What you put into LEO is what you can send to the moon PLUS the fuel to send it to the moon.
I suspect this language is really a hangover from English law, where a peer of the realm (ie. someone with a seat in the House of Lords) was entitled to be tried by other peers of the realm, whilst commoners (ie, the rest of the population) were only entitled to be tried by other commoners.
Actually, it was a holdover from English law in that a commoner was entitled to be tried by other commoners, rather than be tried by the nobility (who, one might suspect, is less likely to give fair judgement to one of the riff-raff).
I wish someone had told my oak tree it wasn't producing any acorns this year. Might have saved me the annoyance of sweeping my driveway weekly to get rid of the acorns crunched under my cars' tires every time one is parked.
Bet my parents would like to know this too - they say they've never seen so many acorns in their yard - a sure sign of a hard winter coming, my mother assures me.
As for brain size Neanderthal only produced simple tools
I take it that what you really meant to say is that "As for brain size, Neandertal had a larger one than Homo Sapiens"?
As to tool use, on the other hand, recent evidence is that they produced pretty much the same tools as Homo Sapiens while they were around. Some of the later sites we've found show Neandertal was using tools every bit as sophisticated as contemporary Homo Sapiens.
Most prisoners in the US are in for victimless crimes, false accusations, or failure to pay child support.
Citation?
The only statistics I can find suggest that most prisoners are in for violent crimes. And I've never heard of anyone being imprisoned for failure to pay child support.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to popular rumour, Nobel Prize winners aren't necessarily "vastly smarter than you". Nor does knowledge of physics transfer necessarily to, say, energy policy.
Far better to pick someone who knows how to make decisions and let him/her/it ask experts for advice on the details.
No, but then I can smoke them illegally if I really want to with minimal risk. And I don't consider the ability to use marijiuana legally to be a sine qua non of a free society.
Well, actually he could. He couldn't BUY one, but he could legally drink any he had on hand. Even if he made it himself.
You really want to know? It's because marijiuana was the drug of choice of Blacks back in the day. Just like gun control laws were mostly put in place to keep guns out of the hands of Blacks (and Italians, and other "undesirables").
Considering that there are five or six casinos with a hundred miles of my house, I don't really see gambling as illegal.
In Nevada, it's not. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it doesn't get legalized in more places in coming decades.
Depends on where you live. I can't in New Orleans, but my dad can in his house in the country.
So, you brought up one specific example. Holland. Perhaps you meant the Netherlands, which includes Holland, or perhaps not. Oddly enough, when I look at the Constitution of the Netherlands, I see a lot of "Rights" that exist "as long as we don't write a law limiting that Right". For instance, Freedom of religion and speech seem to be limitable by law, rather than by a Constitutional Amendment. Plus there's that whole bit where it's assumed that the police have the right to enter your home without your permission (as prescribed by law, of course), rather than the situation here, where it is assumed that the police do NOT have that right, though it may be granted by a court order. A subtle difference, perhaps, but significant, since it's a lot easier to expand a Right than to limit it.
Even more horrifying, every time you step outdoors, the Sun bathes you in EM waves!
I'd not noticed, possibly because I live outside Washington DC.
But could you be more specific? You say "damn near all of them", but I can think of only a dozen or so (out of what? 200 countries or so) that are even in the running, and none of them seem to be freer, though some do allow things we don't allow (and disallow things we allow).
Which ones?
Considering that we killed more people firebombing Tokyo than we did with both atom bombs, and the firebombing of Tokyo didn't convince Japan to surrender, I doubt that using the atom bomb in the desert would have accomplished much.
Especially given that we had only the two bombs. Blow one off in a nice, symbolic way, and we only have one left. If the Japanese look at our nice symbolic gesture and ignore it (the way they did the firebombing of Tokyo), then we're left with popping our last bomb on a single city, and hoping that that convinces them (while doing less damage than the firebombing of Tokyo did).
After that, of course, we invade. Which results in hundreds of thousands of American dead, and millions of Japanese dead. Lose, lose, if you ask me.
In criminal cases, a Grand Jury fills these two functions. After watching the SCO debacle all these years, I've often found myself wishing that we used some equivalent in Civil Law to filter out the crap lawsuits.
Who is "we" in this case? Certainly not the USA, since we use rather smaller warheads on our Minuteman missiles. We've produced around 3000 warheads available for the Minuteman missile, ranging from 170kt to ~450kt. More than half of them are the 170kt warhead.
Note also that the Minuteman does not support 10 warheads per missile.
The Trident is known to support eight warheads per missile (though treaty limitations limt us to four per missile), of course. Including 475kt warheads. But how many 475 kt warheads are available to be deployed on Tridents is uncertain of course (I certainly don't believe any published accounts, having served on a boomer many years ago, and knowing that the published accounts at that time were pretty much all wrong), but it can't be more than 1400 warheads, and probably is a considerably smaller number (the about 1400 number assumes all Tridents carry all 475kt bombs - since the Trident is capable of carrying another warhead type (100kt), I can safely assume that some of the Tridents carry the smaller warhead).
Is that with or without the usual subsidies? Last I checked, wind power was heavily subsidized by the various governments.
Our sun is ~20 billion times fainter than it will be when it supernovas. And seems to be bright enough to light up the world nicely. OP is right, it would be nice to know how bright the original was.
And can you provide an example? Off the top of my head, I can't think of one.
My grandmother once told me that her local sheriff told her one afternoon (in response to a question about a local burglar) to "shoot him, call the sheriff, and he'd have some deputies come over to carry the body into the house before the sheriff's office "responded" to the call about a shooting."
Of course, the real meaning has never been "Christmas was the Christ's birthday". Christmas is a celebration of His birth, but was never intended to celebrate the anniversary of His birth. Any more than any other Saint's Day is meant to be the Saint's birthday.
There IS a new fact - that a large number of people will react blindly to a pronouncement by authority. In this case, the authority is the NBER, and the pronouncement is that we've been in a recession for a year. Oddly enough, noone noticed until the housing bubble burst (which happened less than a year ago).
This is a myth. There are no "savings" to spend from, since the Social Security tax revenues are dumped into the general fund just like all other tax revenues, to be spent in the year received.
Once the Social Security taxes no longer cover the expenses of the Social Security program (2018, or thereabouts), the Social Security tax rates will be raised to cover the shortfall, and we'll all just have to get used to higher taxes.
And here I thought the partition of Germany into two countries and the occupation of the two countries for two generations had something to do with the different outcome.
I Once saw an article discussing the feasibility of SSTO which pointed out that the third stage of a Saturn V, taken by itself (no payload, no first two stages) was capable of reaching orbit.
If we could build something that could reach orbit without staging in the 1960's, we can probably manage to do it now, if we were willing to spend the money.
Well, no. Whatever you can put into GEO is about the same as what you can send to the moon. What you put into LEO is what you can send to the moon PLUS the fuel to send it to the moon.
Actually, it was a holdover from English law in that a commoner was entitled to be tried by other commoners, rather than be tried by the nobility (who, one might suspect, is less likely to give fair judgement to one of the riff-raff).
Really?
I wish someone had told my oak tree it wasn't producing any acorns this year. Might have saved me the annoyance of sweeping my driveway weekly to get rid of the acorns crunched under my cars' tires every time one is parked.
Bet my parents would like to know this too - they say they've never seen so many acorns in their yard - a sure sign of a hard winter coming, my mother assures me.
Doesn't centi- signify 1/100th? Why would we care about people with $10000?
Or did the submitter really mean hectomillionaires?
I take it that what you really meant to say is that "As for brain size, Neandertal had a larger one than Homo Sapiens"?
As to tool use, on the other hand, recent evidence is that they produced pretty much the same tools as Homo Sapiens while they were around. Some of the later sites we've found show Neandertal was using tools every bit as sophisticated as contemporary Homo Sapiens.
Which you think proves the assertion that "most" of them are in for "victimless crimes"?
Try again.
To be more precise, the kerfluffle was about not lowering allowable arsenic levels, not about raising them.
Citation?
The only statistics I can find suggest that most prisoners are in for violent crimes. And I've never heard of anyone being imprisoned for failure to pay child support.