people that tow-the-line on sustainability are often the first to fool themselves that taking from the rich isn't subject to the laws of sustainability either.
Would you be happy to subsist as a peasant on the land of a King who owns everything? That was the norm throughout human history until the populace got uppity and took the kings' land away.
In modern society, obviously, who is taking more from whom is the whole question at issue. Are the billionaire bankers more like farmers or locusts?
The more we neglect government-funded scientific research and allow wealth to consolidate into just a few hands, the more science will revert to the patronage model in which the few ultra-powerful people make all the decisions, including what research should (not) be conducted.
In a word, No. they did not study Hispanic kids in California. The first sentence of the link is:
A study of primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian- half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian- found that the bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them. The Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.
Without knowing anything about the demographics of Scotland and Sardinia I couldn't even guess about what other factors might correlate with bilingually there... it might be very different than how many bilingual Americans are recent immigrants, and thus at a disadvantage due to poverty in addition to whatever language barrier exists.
This is the stupidest made up bullshit I've ever heard.
And yet you haven't even heard it, because you haven't read the article. Same with the people who ignorantly modded you up. The idea is not that there will be a bump in a graph every 50 years and therefore we are due in 10 more.
In a nutshell, to me the theory sounds basically like marxism. It is the view that history is driven by a recurring cycle of inequality and revolution:
In their analysis of long-term social trends, advocates of cliodynamics focus on four main variables: population numbers, social structure, state strength and political instability. Each variable is measured in several ways. Social structure, for example, relies on factors such as health inequality â" measured using proxies including quantitative data on life expectancies â" and wealth inequality, measured by the ratio of the largest fortune to the median wage....
the researchers found that two trends dominate the data on political instability. The first, which they call the secular cycle, extends over two to three centuries. It starts with a relatively egalitarian society, in which supply and demand for labour roughly balance out. In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again.
Superimposed on that secular trend, the researchers observe a shorter cycle that spans 50 years â" roughly two generations. Turchin calls this the fathers-and-sons cycle: the father responds violently to a perceived social injustice; the son lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict and abstains; the third generation begins again...
Elites have been known to give power back to the majority, he says, but only under duress, to help restore order after a period of turmoil. âoeI'm not afraid of uprisings,â he says. âoeThat's why we are where we are.â
If you want to make a distinction between Organizations vs. Governments, the US is clearly more of a Government than the UN, so it's not clear why moving ICANN under the UN would make it more government-controlled than it is now under the US.
The internet is intended to be a network of networks. There's no reason why that wouldn't include a network of national networks of networks, and lots of reasons why not. Unless, of course, you've got one world government.
Actually, a sort of One World Government is precisely what makes it possible to reach the same resource when you type http://google.com/ from anywhere in the world. A flat address space and flat naming space are only possible if everybody coordinates at some level, and the global Internet would be awfully convoluded without those things.
Right now the One World Government of the Internet is the United States, which is fine with me because I think we do a better job than the global average. But I can see why benevolent dictatorship is less attractive to those outside of it.
I have no idea why Windows released a version this bad.
Microsoft only really cares about Windows. MS Office is in some sense available for OSX, but it sucks hard. A pale imitation of the real thing, if it warrants any comparison at all.
Perhaps more to the point, the Obama administration immediately corrected Bolden and a NASA spokesman confirmed that Bolden had misspoke:
"NASA's core mission remains one of space exploration, science and aeronautics," Michael Cabbage told SPACE.com. "Administrator Bolden regrets that a statement he made during a recent interview mischaracterized that core mission."
Anybody who still recites this incident as actual policy rather than a gaffe induced by peer pressure, which was immediately retracted, is just trolling. Furthermore I defy you to identify any actual funds that Nasa has spent on Muslim outreach instead of space exploration in the two years since Bolden said that.
I apologize for not having the time to watch the video, but I have a question for whoever does: did Bolden really say the US wouldn't lead a mission to mars? That sounds fishy. Or did he instead say we wouldn't "go it alone" to Mars, and then separately say that the US won't be the leader on every single space initiative (which is very reasonable - perhaps obvious)?
To me this summary and most of the slashdot responses so far sound either biased or trolling, but I'll admit if I'm wrong.
I wonder though... do you suppose these companies patch their software regularly? If they do, shorting them the day before patch days might be an excellent investment.
I'm no expert but it seems like they're very secretive, which is a generalized defense against being targeted in any way like that.
Also it seems to me you have to have a huge amount of capital to spread your bets to profit from rare, unpredictable events, much like an insurance company in reverse.
Take a look at the charts, how we went from an average of 20% GDP in the market for over a century to over 400% GDP in the market in the last 30 years.
Is that bad? (Not a rhetorical question). The shift away from unfunded future liabilities like pensions and social security towards savings/investment plans like 401k's continues so this will only accelerate. Some people think it would be a good idea to replace Social Security with investment plans, in which case the market would be loaded up with decades of GDP (assuming we ever actually got far enough ahead of ourselves to implement the plan, such that most people had huge 401k's). Could that ever work?
I can see where this is a huge loss to the company involved, but it seems like a zero-sum game, in which case there would be no loss to the economy overall... other parties got some stocks on sale. Same goes for JP Morgan losing almost $6 BN (by letting the "London Whale" run amok).
Contrast this to a very similar sized loss suffered by the Navy (or a shipyard insurance company?) when a guy got depressed and set a nuclear sub on fire the other day to get out of work... it is much easier for me to see a real loss in that case.
"Cybersecurity" 101, don't have critical infrastructure facing the internet.
OK, let's start with our most critical information infrastructure. I guess that would be the banking system and the stock market. So, I guess we will just go back to mailing checks around and good old authentication techniques like writing your name on a piece of paper or calling your broker and sounding like yourself.
I didn't mean to claim Armstrong was innocent; only that, at the time, the foreign press was much quicker to spread the allegations. Now that the tables are turned, we are the same. Maybe I implied Americans are biased, but my real point was how biased all of us human beings are.
My comparison with the alleged hidden deaths of "cosmonauts" wasn't a very good example because those never happend, whereas I know doping DID happen and still does. It just seems like we are much quicker to rush to judgement on foreigners, or perhaps I should say, turning a blind eye to our own home-grown cheaters.
Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics.
So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance? In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious? It just didn't occur to her to use the drug during qualifiers?
...the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.
Its just like the Cold War again, when every Games was full of rumors about those cheatin' commies, and their doping and all the supposed unreported fatalities in their 'highly secretive' space program. And it's still the same now, even after Major League Baseball was blown wide open and proven to have been awash with drugs for a decade.
And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
Any testing of that sort shouldn't even be permitted until kids are at least 10 as that's about the time when those things start to settle a bit and there's some reliability
[T]he correlation between [an IQ] score obtained at 5 and the eventual adult score is probably no more than.5 or so. However, the main limitation seems to be unreliability of any single administration of the test to a child that young. Scores averaged over several administrations are a very good predictor already at a fairly young age. The average of three scores obtained at age 5, 6 and 7 correlates about.85 with adult score. This suggests that while it is difficult to measure a child's IQ in any single sitting, the IQ itself is relatively fixed already by age 7 or so.
While not consistent with your personal family experience, this does highlight the risk of using a single test administration on a young child. (Although a correlation of 0.5 is still not weak).
86km^2 = 7,400 square kilometers. Is that supposed to be a lot? The US already has 112,610 square kilometers of roads, buildings, and parking lots. Obviously you would start by using rooftops, but covered parking lots and roadways would be nice, too, and allow the energy to be used near where it is produced.
Would it cost money? Sure. Then again, one tank of gas for a pickup truck costs $100 right now.
Are you implying potential is more desirable than actual attainment? I feel it's the opposite. It's fine to define intelligence as potential rather than attainment, so long as you keep in mind that (thusly defined) intelligence alone is not that important. An IQ test is a good way to place second graders for gifted programs, but by the time somebody is in their mid-20's it is better to judge them by past accomplishments (which reflects many factors including intelligence but also motivation, conscientiousness, etc).
Just remember that IQ doesn't include all of what people conventionally regard as "intelligence" - for example, knowledge. Even if your IQ isn't as high as another person's, you might be more motivated and work harder at obtaining knowledge, and wind up knowing more and being more productive than they are. (Of course in a large population people with higher IQ will have more knowledge on average since it is easier for them to attain, but averages are not deterministic for individuals - through effort you may become an outlier within your cohort).
How's the streaming picture quality? I've been recording the NBC feed on my homebrew DVR, which allows me to skip whatever I like, and there are far more hours of coverage than we could ever watch. The picture looks great - the ATSC stream is 6 GB / hr - so I wonder if streaming would look anywhere near as good. Is it about like Netflix HD shows? (They look pretty good IMHO).
Also, is the BBC site organized so you can pick a specific sport and watch the prelims and final? I find the Olympics a bit overwhelming to follow with so many events unfolding concurrently over several days.
I have scoured the web for a good recording of the Beijing Opening Ceremonies (amazing, IMHO) that is not marred by unwelcome commentary, and have not found it. The US, UK, French, and Japanese versions are all similar - all of them are full of blabbing commentators.
I don't mind commentary but it has its place... and this is like trying to watch a movie while a reviewer sits next to you and critiques the director and the movie in real-time. I would like to have the commentary in a separate audio track, or subtitles, so I can control it.
The fact is that gun shop owners are not the unscrupulous enablers or pathetic imbeciles you make them out to be.
The fact is that some aren't, and some are.
The parent said the guns "are being sent there by our very own ATF" and that is not true.
At most, the ATF delayed intervening possible mules in order to get higher up the gun smuggling chain. This is not uncommon in law enforcement; it's the only way to get past the lowest-level goons. The larger issue is that it's perfectly legal for an individual to buy any number of guns, until it is proven they tried to do something bad with them, even though their is no conceivable legitimate reason for a person (who is not a dealer) to buy so many. It's incredibly ironic to see the NRA going after the ATF for not hassling people sooner on the basis of buying too many guns.
Slashdot Mirror
The great plains on which those 25-30 million bison lived no longer exist.
Would you be happy to subsist as a peasant on the land of a King who owns everything? That was the norm throughout human history until the populace got uppity and took the kings' land away.
In modern society, obviously, who is taking more from whom is the whole question at issue. Are the billionaire bankers more like farmers or locusts?
The more we neglect government-funded scientific research and allow wealth to consolidate into just a few hands, the more science will revert to the patronage model in which the few ultra-powerful people make all the decisions, including what research should (not) be conducted.
Without knowing anything about the demographics of Scotland and Sardinia I couldn't even guess about what other factors might correlate with bilingually there... it might be very different than how many bilingual Americans are recent immigrants, and thus at a disadvantage due to poverty in addition to whatever language barrier exists.
And yet you haven't even heard it, because you haven't read the article. Same with the people who ignorantly modded you up. The idea is not that there will be a bump in a graph every 50 years and therefore we are due in 10 more.
In a nutshell, to me the theory sounds basically like marxism. It is the view that history is driven by a recurring cycle of inequality and revolution:
If you want to make a distinction between Organizations vs. Governments, the US is clearly more of a Government than the UN, so it's not clear why moving ICANN under the UN would make it more government-controlled than it is now under the US.
Actually, a sort of One World Government is precisely what makes it possible to reach the same resource when you type http://google.com/ from anywhere in the world. A flat address space and flat naming space are only possible if everybody coordinates at some level, and the global Internet would be awfully convoluded without those things.
Right now the One World Government of the Internet is the United States, which is fine with me because I think we do a better job than the global average. But I can see why benevolent dictatorship is less attractive to those outside of it.
Microsoft only really cares about Windows. MS Office is in some sense available for OSX, but it sucks hard. A pale imitation of the real thing, if it warrants any comparison at all.
Anybody who still recites this incident as actual policy rather than a gaffe induced by peer pressure, which was immediately retracted, is just trolling. Furthermore I defy you to identify any actual funds that Nasa has spent on Muslim outreach instead of space exploration in the two years since Bolden said that.
PS I am really looking forward to the most ambitious Mars landing yet, this Sunday.
To me this summary and most of the slashdot responses so far sound either biased or trolling, but I'll admit if I'm wrong.
I'm no expert but it seems like they're very secretive, which is a generalized defense against being targeted in any way like that. Also it seems to me you have to have a huge amount of capital to spread your bets to profit from rare, unpredictable events, much like an insurance company in reverse.
Is that bad? (Not a rhetorical question). The shift away from unfunded future liabilities like pensions and social security towards savings/investment plans like 401k's continues so this will only accelerate. Some people think it would be a good idea to replace Social Security with investment plans, in which case the market would be loaded up with decades of GDP (assuming we ever actually got far enough ahead of ourselves to implement the plan, such that most people had huge 401k's). Could that ever work?
Contrast this to a very similar sized loss suffered by the Navy (or a shipyard insurance company?) when a guy got depressed and set a nuclear sub on fire the other day to get out of work... it is much easier for me to see a real loss in that case.
OK, let's start with our most critical information infrastructure. I guess that would be the banking system and the stock market. So, I guess we will just go back to mailing checks around and good old authentication techniques like writing your name on a piece of paper or calling your broker and sounding like yourself.
Feel better yet?
I didn't mean to claim Armstrong was innocent; only that, at the time, the foreign press was much quicker to spread the allegations. Now that the tables are turned, we are the same. Maybe I implied Americans are biased, but my real point was how biased all of us human beings are.
My comparison with the alleged hidden deaths of "cosmonauts" wasn't a very good example because those never happend, whereas I know doping DID happen and still does. It just seems like we are much quicker to rush to judgement on foreigners, or perhaps I should say, turning a blind eye to our own home-grown cheaters.
So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance? In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious? It just didn't occur to her to use the drug during qualifiers?
Its just like the Cold War again, when every Games was full of rumors about those cheatin' commies, and their doping and all the supposed unreported fatalities in their 'highly secretive' space program. And it's still the same now, even after Major League Baseball was blown wide open and proven to have been awash with drugs for a decade.
And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
I will simply quote what has been written elsewhere:
While not consistent with your personal family experience, this does highlight the risk of using a single test administration on a young child. (Although a correlation of 0.5 is still not weak).
Would it cost money? Sure. Then again, one tank of gas for a pickup truck costs $100 right now.
Hmm, I am only getting 1/3 of that.
1GW=10^9W
100W=10^2W
10^9W/10^2W=10^7
3sf*10^7 / 5280^2 sf/sm = 1.1 sm
In any case, total US energy consumption is 3,300 GW, not 200,000 GW.
Are you implying potential is more desirable than actual attainment? I feel it's the opposite. It's fine to define intelligence as potential rather than attainment, so long as you keep in mind that (thusly defined) intelligence alone is not that important. An IQ test is a good way to place second graders for gifted programs, but by the time somebody is in their mid-20's it is better to judge them by past accomplishments (which reflects many factors including intelligence but also motivation, conscientiousness, etc).
Just remember that IQ doesn't include all of what people conventionally regard as "intelligence" - for example, knowledge. Even if your IQ isn't as high as another person's, you might be more motivated and work harder at obtaining knowledge, and wind up knowing more and being more productive than they are. (Of course in a large population people with higher IQ will have more knowledge on average since it is easier for them to attain, but averages are not deterministic for individuals - through effort you may become an outlier within your cohort).
Also, is the BBC site organized so you can pick a specific sport and watch the prelims and final? I find the Olympics a bit overwhelming to follow with so many events unfolding concurrently over several days.
I don't mind commentary but it has its place... and this is like trying to watch a movie while a reviewer sits next to you and critiques the director and the movie in real-time. I would like to have the commentary in a separate audio track, or subtitles, so I can control it.
The fact is that some aren't, and some are.
The parent said the guns "are being sent there by our very own ATF" and that is not true.
At most, the ATF delayed intervening possible mules in order to get higher up the gun smuggling chain. This is not uncommon in law enforcement; it's the only way to get past the lowest-level goons. The larger issue is that it's perfectly legal for an individual to buy any number of guns, until it is proven they tried to do something bad with them, even though their is no conceivable legitimate reason for a person (who is not a dealer) to buy so many. It's incredibly ironic to see the NRA going after the ATF for not hassling people sooner on the basis of buying too many guns.