The people who do such things to prisoners aren't cops, or soldiers, or any kind of public servant. They're criminals, and because of their abuse of power, should be treated even more harshly than we treat serial killers, pedophiles, and other such scum.
They're also human, and as such experience the same emotion, anger and confusion that other humans experience. You would think that your USAF experience would have included some study of the "fog of war" or effects of high stress situations on rational thought. Wouldn't it be interesting if the cops/soldiers in question were convinced that they too were dealing with criminals, and that those criminals "should be treated even more harshly than we treat serial killers, pedophiles, and other such scum." Would you, as a human, abuse your power if you had the ability to "reach out and touch" these partcular soldiers and police who obviously disgust you? I think you would, based on your pre-trial/pre-conviction suggestion of severe punishment.... Can't say I haven't thought those thoughts though...
Narrow minded people like yourself need to remember that a taser can be much more harmful or even deadly than a club to someone with specific medical conditions (some of which may be unknown even to the person being tased).
Yeah, so can peanut dust and shellfish. What's your point? Any force in any form can be dangerous to a small percentage of the people it is applied to. Batons and intense physical force will be harmful to a high percentage of people. I've never heard of a "light beating" or "mild flogging" by the police. Tazers? Like you said, it might have a more negative effect on people with *specific* medical conditions, which kind of implies that the risk of severe injury is limited to fewer people....
Someone who is lying MOTIONLESS on the ground does not need to be subdued, period!
How about a sniper? Sure, it's not within the scope of the discussion, but it certainly invalidates your statement, period!:-)
WTF? Tasing him is *better* than handcuffing him and carrying him out? You're insane.
Believe it or not: Yes--but only if the person is actively resisting. A person who is resisting is more likely to injure him/herself (pulling muscles, etc.) or be injured by the police, who may be applying significant forces/torques to joints/pressure points in order to control him/her. Think of it this way: It is easy to sue a police department for dislocating a shoulder or inflicting similar injuries. What are the long-lasting measurable effects of being tazed? And how (if there are any) would they hold up in court compared to, say, an x-ray? I'm no expert, of course....
I'm assuming that they mean 100 times as much linear force per unit mass.
If I remember correclty, SMA force capabilities are often posted as "block force," which is the peak force (Newtons) that can be exterted by the SMA. There is typically no (very little) displacement of the ends of the SMA wire during this test (no strain of the SMA wire). Another parameter of interest is the maximum strain or throw of the SMA with no load (called the "free displacement"). I think a few percent of the total SMA length is typical, but I'd have to burn calories to check that....
Obviously a huge block force exerted over a very small distance is not as useful as a skeletal muscle-like replacement (think piezo-ceramics). The SMA actuators have a much larger free strain, and typically smaller block force and MUCH lower bandwidth capability (order of about ~1-Hz with just passive convection cooling) than piezos (kHz). Heating them up is as simple as passing current through them. Cooling them down just as quickly, as you mentioned, is not possible by simple convection cooling to the ambient air.
I suppose that there is always the possiblity of using a more active temperature regulation system. Or, as another poster suggested, using the actuators in opposing pairs would help stretch out the "relaxed" SMA.
how can REALLY low noise impair your hearing? Be specific, make sure you talk about the decibel level at which that REALLY low noise can impair your hearing.
I am not an acoustics expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. So I'll give it a try. Let's assume that by "low" the poster means low amplitude, and not low frequency. With ordinary headphones (and speakers) there is usually a passage between the driven surface of the "actuator" of the speaker (cone, piezo, film, whatever) and "the world" outside the ear canal. As the surface moves, it causes pressure waves which are free to pass to the ear of the listener, but also to the rest of the world through holes, foam, whatever. It is an "escape route" for really high pressure air-- an alternate path for energy to travel.
Think of it this way: Assume air is incompressible (which it isn't, but bear with me.) If you sent a REEEAAALLYYY slow sine wave (below hearing threshold) to a speaker, the motion of the actuating surface would displace the air near it according to its amplitude. If you have an air permeable membrane or a hole or just empty atmophere, the displaced/replaced air would simply spill in the atmosphere. You would not detect any noise becuse there would be a very small pressure difference over time at your ear drum.
Now, with an air-tight ear-bud, there is no escape route from the ear canal and the atmosphere. It is a sealed system, with an actuator on one end, and your flexible ear drum on the other end. If you again consider air as incompressible (or better, approximately incompressible with respect to the flexibility of your ear drum and the driving forces), as you actuate the speaker in the ear bud, your ear drum will have to deflect by an amount that (appoximately) conserves the volume between the speaker and your ear drum. Consider that your ear drum likes to "hear" pressure waves traveling through the air. It does not like to be driven directly, which is closer to what the really tightly fitting sealed ear-buds look like they do.
Yeah, it's a gross simplification of the problem, and the assumptions will make engineers/scientists cringe. If you want to "see" what I am talking about, stretch latex glove or flexible membrane over the opening of a plastic bottle. Now squeeze the bottle (low amplitude). You are the actuator, actuating the bottle (speaker), causing the latex "ear-drum" to deflect slightly. Now, poke a few pinholes in the bottle and repeat. Now a few more holes. And a few more. Note the dependence on frequency and amplitude (pressure). Compare and contrast your results with your pre-lab calculations. Repeat the experiment using water instead of air in the bottle. Lab reports are due in my office by Friday....
As for realistic quantitative estimates of what would cause damage, I have none. However, if as in my explanation you consider air as incompressible, and assume no dissipative losses, then the power output from the ear-bud would be the same as the power received by the ear-drum. The power attenuation would be 0-dB. If you have a "leak" somewhere, and the system is capable of bleeding pressure to the atmosphere (for compressible or incompressible air), the attenuation would be >0-db. Watt for watt, sealed air buds will deliver more power to you eardrums than regular non-form-fitting ear-phones or a speaker, regardless of the frequency or amplitude.
I have received all of my BBuy rebate checks. But I almost screwed myself once. A lot of the computer product rebate offers are actually the sum of TWO rebates: One from Best Buy and one from the manufacturer. Well, when they only give you one rebate form, it isn't intuitive that you have to hunt for a second one to get the full rebate. (They are usually on the wall near the exit, or near the product on the shelf.) They have improved recently (I guess); now they give you multiple receipts and both rebate forms at the checkout. Still, if you don't read carefully, it can appear that they gave you two copies of the same form, when in fact they have to be mailed to two different addresses (which are usually printed near the bottom.)
If you walked into a class you needed to have to graduate, and the professor turns out to be a radical right-wing nutcase (or a left-wing moonbat, take your pick) that you disagree with, what do you do?
Drop the class and hope that there is a different section with a different professor. My BS required a technical writing class (or public speaking) to graduate. So I enrolled in the writing class, which was offered through the english department. I wasn't too thrilled that the technical writing topics were pre-selected and included writing about the ethical implications of non-lethal weapons. Since I was already enrolled in an ethics class (philosophy), I switched to a different section of the tech writing class, where we did in fact practice the preparation of objective, technical engineering reports, briefings, and research results. It still pissed me off that a professor could bend the generic course description so far over that it was not longer an scientific technical writing class, but a semester long ethical debate. (It would have been a fine class under a different name/number.)
I suspect that folks that are on the Right tend to get jobs at political think tanks, in campaigns, and in business instead of going for a career as lacking in financial reward and respect as being a Community College or University Professor.
Don't forget science and engineering. Can't beat being well respected, well compensated, and well educated in objective decision making and applied creativity! Plus you never have to worry about professors' politics. I know many engineers who lie to the right on the compass, and many more who are slightly bitter that folks lump them to the right because they are employed by large corporations or the government. Pretty good mix of directions on the compass, scientists.
Now, I visit people living in McMansions in various parts of the US, and I find many of them have no library, even though there is far more room for one if they so chose. Not surprisingly, their kids have little interest in reading, because their parents don't read, yet are "successful" - i.e. they have the McMansion and stuff to fill it. What conclusion do you think most kids today will come to?
If I was still a kid, I might come to the conclusion that the information and stories that were in the books of of my parents are available on-line or on digital media. But that's not my point.
I think that a large percentage of "kids" today expect or even believe that they deserve to be very successful when they are adults... book reading parents or not. And while I agree that many kids might see a weaker correlation between education and success, I also think that too many kids correlate a diploma with success. And what a strange observation, given the level of cynicism of today's young-folk.
I found this out the hard way, most academics hate Wikipedia, I had a professor wax lyrical at me over this...
Yeah, your professor needs to be reminded that EVERYTHING in print needs to be read with a critical eye. Don't take crap from your professors; ask to see the data supporting his/her argument against Wikipedia. A Ph.D. does not make you "right," just more credible in certain areas.
Anyone choosing to record their music from XM or sirius instead of buying the CD to rip or getting a torrent of the whole album recorded as 256kbps VBR mp3's is a nutjob with lots of time to waste as it has to go in realtime.
I don't have internet access at home, so I can't download music conveniently. But I do have a mini-disc player that I rarely had use for. It was a gift. Now I have XM radio--also a gift. So now, before I leave for work, I hit record on the mini-disc player to record a disc worth of XM programming. Then, when I hit the treadmill later, I have commercial-free music. And it is different every day! No, it is not CD quality, but it doesn't matter at the gym. Yeah, I also have am MP3 player, but I find it inconvenient to swap the music frequently, and I don't have many CDs.
Tremendous damage, maybe not. But how many public schools do you know of that can spare the money or manpower to un-constipate their network? IT attention costs money.
But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
Half the people in the USA are below average in intelligence. (Shit, that's US average intelligence, too.) And, not to be rude, a person of average intelligence probably isn't as intelligent as a trained scientist.
But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
Who the hell cares what most people believe? Science isn't about believing. It is about reproducible quantifiable observation. If it doesn't belong in a science curriculum, as indicated BY scientists, then it shouldn't be part of the science curriculum. By the way, as far as science is concerned, 2000 years ago, I bet most people were wrong in their understanding of almost all things science.
I must have missed something in graduate school. When was it proved that there is no God?
The existence of god is still up for debate; nothing has been proven. It's a gross simplification, but I am going to lump all of the posters into two groups: The first is trying to define what "god" is. The other group is trying to define what "god" is not. Feel free to draw a Venn diagram. So there is a boundary that separates what god is and is not. Some folks (first group) have faith that god is defined to be consistent with their beliefs. So from their perspective, religion being what it is (slow), the boundary of what god is (or religion, or whatever) does not change much with time.
However, much of the other group sees the same boundary change rapidly-- they have learned what god is not, through science, experimentation, experience, etc. For example: Lightning and thunder are not really god bowling in heaven, though not too long ago, it could easily "correctly" interpreted as a sign from god. So, yeah. God is not lightning. (Or rather, lightning is not god.)
The problem here is that many people (from one perspective or from both-- the religions scientist, maybe?) see a contradiction, and it agitates them.
Personally, I think the hard-core ID side needs to get a grip, and quit thinking that science is chipping away at the rigid walls of religion. Think of it this way: The more often we can show something to NOT be supernatural or devine, the more incredible the unexplainable becomes. With science, your god is not getting smaller, but bigger, and much more complex.
Maybe he hides his hair-brush or a comb in there. Is having perfectly parted hair one of his super-powers? I always figured the pomade just held it in place while he was airborne.
Google SBIR, which is an acronym for Small Business Innovative Research. Pretty standard $$$ amounts, I think. The idea is that the govt has to allocate so much money to SBIR/STTR research, and that "big" companies cannot be the primary investigator. The difference here (though I have not read the article) is that SBIR topics are usually pre-selected, whereas NASA just wants some new ideas.
I've spent time with various first editions and hand-written manuscripts, and to the best of my knowledge have never identified with the contents of the texts in question at all.
Yes. But DHS would not know that you have/have not "identified with the contents" until they have talked to you. As you mention, your interest in the text would be an appreciation of the work as a creative product, not as a "cookbook for life." But there *are* books that people live-and-die by. And there are people who (by mental defect or fanaticism or whatever) will interpret and value the book in ways that defy common sense and logic. I am inclined to think that monitoring books is a long-shot, a waste of time, and unethical. But the people that they really want to catch are well outside of a few sigma of the "standard" person, which makes them easy to isolate in the event that they cross some threshold. So to answer your question, there is no correlation between fanatical behavior and interlibrary exchange of texts. For the book in question, people like you, who have a historic interest or appreciation are probably the most interested in checking it out. (There is your strong correlation.) It's the people who are NOT like you that DHS is interested in...the people who "defy the model." The outliers. So maybe instead of a honey-pot to attract only fanatics, it is possible to attract a group of people who are easily isolated from the few fanatical people who roll in? Example: Where would you start looking for child molesters? Now, obviously, most people are NOT child molesters. But consider the drastic difference in thought processes of a molester and a non-molester when it comes to children and values. Probably pretty easy for a pro to pick out the child molester... but that person has to be in the pool of contestants first!
I think most people that engage in violent, destructive behavior are probably the least likely to care about a text, least of all one that wasn't even written by Mao by hand with the blood of the bourgeoise. They're much more pragmatic, and interested in acquiring the raw information necessary for causing destruction. Details about making bombs from materials that are easily-obtainable in such a manner as to not raise any flags with the government, for example.
I agree. But it's motive that counts. Learning how to build a bomb from the "Poor Man's James Bond" series is one thing. Searching for justification to kill infidels or to lead a rebellion is another. But who knows what DHS was looking for.... Like I mentioned, I bet this person was on DHS radar BEFORE requesting the book.
If I wanted to snoop on fanatics, I would consider monitoring an original copy of whatever book they were fanatical about. Certainly most people with an interest in this particular book would NOT be fanatical. But wouldn't you be a little bit curious why someone took an interest in an original copy of one of a widely published and easiliy available book?
It's a honey pot. In much the same way that an original copy of the Declaration of Independence (or Constitution/BoR) would be a good place to start looking for people who appreciate what it is.
I would be surprised if requesting this book was the action that sparked DHS's initial interest.
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The people who do such things to prisoners aren't cops, or soldiers, or any kind of public servant. They're criminals, and because of their abuse of power, should be treated even more harshly than we treat serial killers, pedophiles, and other such scum.
They're also human, and as such experience the same emotion, anger and confusion that other humans experience. You would think that your USAF experience would have included some study of the "fog of war" or effects of high stress situations on rational thought. Wouldn't it be interesting if the cops/soldiers in question were convinced that they too were dealing with criminals, and that those criminals "should be treated even more harshly than we treat serial killers, pedophiles, and other such scum." Would you, as a human, abuse your power if you had the ability to "reach out and touch" these partcular soldiers and police who obviously disgust you? I think you would, based on your pre-trial/pre-conviction suggestion of severe punishment.... Can't say I haven't thought those thoughts though...
Narrow minded people like yourself need to remember that a taser can be much more harmful or even deadly than a club to someone with specific medical conditions (some of which may be unknown even to the person being tased).
Yeah, so can peanut dust and shellfish. What's your point? Any force in any form can be dangerous to a small percentage of the people it is applied to. Batons and intense physical force will be harmful to a high percentage of people. I've never heard of a "light beating" or "mild flogging" by the police. Tazers? Like you said, it might have a more negative effect on people with *specific* medical conditions, which kind of implies that the risk of severe injury is limited to fewer people....
Someone who is lying MOTIONLESS on the ground does not need to be subdued, period!How about a sniper? Sure, it's not within the scope of the discussion, but it certainly invalidates your statement, period! :-)
Believe it or not: Yes--but only if the person is actively resisting. A person who is resisting is more likely to injure him/herself (pulling muscles, etc.) or be injured by the police, who may be applying significant forces/torques to joints/pressure points in order to control him/her. Think of it this way: It is easy to sue a police department for dislocating a shoulder or inflicting similar injuries. What are the long-lasting measurable effects of being tazed? And how (if there are any) would they hold up in court compared to, say, an x-ray? I'm no expert, of course....
No, no, silly. We're talking about Venus, not Uranus.
I'm assuming that they mean 100 times as much linear force per unit mass.
If I remember correclty, SMA force capabilities are often posted as "block force," which is the peak force (Newtons) that can be exterted by the SMA. There is typically no (very little) displacement of the ends of the SMA wire during this test (no strain of the SMA wire). Another parameter of interest is the maximum strain or throw of the SMA with no load (called the "free displacement"). I think a few percent of the total SMA length is typical, but I'd have to burn calories to check that....
Obviously a huge block force exerted over a very small distance is not as useful as a skeletal muscle-like replacement (think piezo-ceramics). The SMA actuators have a much larger free strain, and typically smaller block force and MUCH lower bandwidth capability (order of about ~1-Hz with just passive convection cooling) than piezos (kHz). Heating them up is as simple as passing current through them. Cooling them down just as quickly, as you mentioned, is not possible by simple convection cooling to the ambient air.
I suppose that there is always the possiblity of using a more active temperature regulation system. Or, as another poster suggested, using the actuators in opposing pairs would help stretch out the "relaxed" SMA.
Aren't the hairs on the other side of the ear-drums?
how can REALLY low noise impair your hearing? Be specific, make sure you talk about the decibel level at which that REALLY low noise can impair your hearing.
I am not an acoustics expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. So I'll give it a try. Let's assume that by "low" the poster means low amplitude, and not low frequency. With ordinary headphones (and speakers) there is usually a passage between the driven surface of the "actuator" of the speaker (cone, piezo, film, whatever) and "the world" outside the ear canal. As the surface moves, it causes pressure waves which are free to pass to the ear of the listener, but also to the rest of the world through holes, foam, whatever. It is an "escape route" for really high pressure air-- an alternate path for energy to travel.
Think of it this way: Assume air is incompressible (which it isn't, but bear with me.) If you sent a REEEAAALLYYY slow sine wave (below hearing threshold) to a speaker, the motion of the actuating surface would displace the air near it according to its amplitude. If you have an air permeable membrane or a hole or just empty atmophere, the displaced/replaced air would simply spill in the atmosphere. You would not detect any noise becuse there would be a very small pressure difference over time at your ear drum.
Now, with an air-tight ear-bud, there is no escape route from the ear canal and the atmosphere. It is a sealed system, with an actuator on one end, and your flexible ear drum on the other end. If you again consider air as incompressible (or better, approximately incompressible with respect to the flexibility of your ear drum and the driving forces), as you actuate the speaker in the ear bud, your ear drum will have to deflect by an amount that (appoximately) conserves the volume between the speaker and your ear drum. Consider that your ear drum likes to "hear" pressure waves traveling through the air. It does not like to be driven directly, which is closer to what the really tightly fitting sealed ear-buds look like they do.
Yeah, it's a gross simplification of the problem, and the assumptions will make engineers/scientists cringe. If you want to "see" what I am talking about, stretch latex glove or flexible membrane over the opening of a plastic bottle. Now squeeze the bottle (low amplitude). You are the actuator, actuating the bottle (speaker), causing the latex "ear-drum" to deflect slightly. Now, poke a few pinholes in the bottle and repeat. Now a few more holes. And a few more. Note the dependence on frequency and amplitude (pressure). Compare and contrast your results with your pre-lab calculations. Repeat the experiment using water instead of air in the bottle. Lab reports are due in my office by Friday....
As for realistic quantitative estimates of what would cause damage, I have none. However, if as in my explanation you consider air as incompressible, and assume no dissipative losses, then the power output from the ear-bud would be the same as the power received by the ear-drum. The power attenuation would be 0-dB. If you have a "leak" somewhere, and the system is capable of bleeding pressure to the atmosphere (for compressible or incompressible air), the attenuation would be >0-db. Watt for watt, sealed air buds will deliver more power to you eardrums than regular non-form-fitting ear-phones or a speaker, regardless of the frequency or amplitude.
I have received all of my BBuy rebate checks. But I almost screwed myself once. A lot of the computer product rebate offers are actually the sum of TWO rebates: One from Best Buy and one from the manufacturer. Well, when they only give you one rebate form, it isn't intuitive that you have to hunt for a second one to get the full rebate. (They are usually on the wall near the exit, or near the product on the shelf.) They have improved recently (I guess); now they give you multiple receipts and both rebate forms at the checkout. Still, if you don't read carefully, it can appear that they gave you two copies of the same form, when in fact they have to be mailed to two different addresses (which are usually printed near the bottom.)
Many of them would enjoy nothing more than for students to stick their hands in the air and say "no, I don't agree." Many of them will ENCOURAGE it.
The people who damage you grade-wise for disagreeing are a small minority.
Take many math-based classes?
If you walked into a class you needed to have to graduate, and the professor turns out to be a radical right-wing nutcase (or a left-wing moonbat, take your pick) that you disagree with, what do you do?
Drop the class and hope that there is a different section with a different professor. My BS required a technical writing class (or public speaking) to graduate. So I enrolled in the writing class, which was offered through the english department. I wasn't too thrilled that the technical writing topics were pre-selected and included writing about the ethical implications of non-lethal weapons. Since I was already enrolled in an ethics class (philosophy), I switched to a different section of the tech writing class, where we did in fact practice the preparation of objective, technical engineering reports, briefings, and research results. It still pissed me off that a professor could bend the generic course description so far over that it was not longer an scientific technical writing class, but a semester long ethical debate. (It would have been a fine class under a different name/number.)
I suspect that folks that are on the Right tend to get jobs at political think tanks, in campaigns, and in business instead of going for a career as lacking in financial reward and respect as being a Community College or University Professor.
Don't forget science and engineering. Can't beat being well respected, well compensated, and well educated in objective decision making and applied creativity! Plus you never have to worry about professors' politics. I know many engineers who lie to the right on the compass, and many more who are slightly bitter that folks lump them to the right because they are employed by large corporations or the government. Pretty good mix of directions on the compass, scientists.
If I was still a kid, I might come to the conclusion that the information and stories that were in the books of of my parents are available on-line or on digital media. But that's not my point.
I think that a large percentage of "kids" today expect or even believe that they deserve to be very successful when they are adults... book reading parents or not. And while I agree that many kids might see a weaker correlation between education and success, I also think that too many kids correlate a diploma with success. And what a strange observation, given the level of cynicism of today's young-folk.
I found this out the hard way, most academics hate Wikipedia, I had a professor wax lyrical at me over this ...
Yeah, your professor needs to be reminded that EVERYTHING in print needs to be read with a critical eye. Don't take crap from your professors; ask to see the data supporting his/her argument against Wikipedia. A Ph.D. does not make you "right," just more credible in certain areas.
Anyone choosing to record their music from XM or sirius instead of buying the CD to rip or getting a torrent of the whole album recorded as 256kbps VBR mp3's is a nutjob with lots of time to waste as it has to go in realtime.
I don't have internet access at home, so I can't download music conveniently. But I do have a mini-disc player that I rarely had use for. It was a gift. Now I have XM radio--also a gift. So now, before I leave for work, I hit record on the mini-disc player to record a disc worth of XM programming. Then, when I hit the treadmill later, I have commercial-free music. And it is different every day! No, it is not CD quality, but it doesn't matter at the gym. Yeah, I also have am MP3 player, but I find it inconvenient to swap the music frequently, and I don't have many CDs.
Tremendous damage, maybe not. But how many public schools do you know of that can spare the money or manpower to un-constipate their network? IT attention costs money.
Half the people in the USA are below average in intelligence. (Shit, that's US average intelligence, too.) And, not to be rude, a person of average intelligence probably isn't as intelligent as a trained scientist.
But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.Who the hell cares what most people believe? Science isn't about believing. It is about reproducible quantifiable observation. If it doesn't belong in a science curriculum, as indicated BY scientists, then it shouldn't be part of the science curriculum. By the way, as far as science is concerned, 2000 years ago, I bet most people were wrong in their understanding of almost all things science.
I must have missed something in graduate school. When was it proved that there is no God?
The existence of god is still up for debate; nothing has been proven. It's a gross simplification, but I am going to lump all of the posters into two groups: The first is trying to define what "god" is. The other group is trying to define what "god" is not. Feel free to draw a Venn diagram. So there is a boundary that separates what god is and is not. Some folks (first group) have faith that god is defined to be consistent with their beliefs. So from their perspective, religion being what it is (slow), the boundary of what god is (or religion, or whatever) does not change much with time.
However, much of the other group sees the same boundary change rapidly-- they have learned what god is not, through science, experimentation, experience, etc. For example: Lightning and thunder are not really god bowling in heaven, though not too long ago, it could easily "correctly" interpreted as a sign from god. So, yeah. God is not lightning. (Or rather, lightning is not god.)
The problem here is that many people (from one perspective or from both-- the religions scientist, maybe?) see a contradiction, and it agitates them.
Personally, I think the hard-core ID side needs to get a grip, and quit thinking that science is chipping away at the rigid walls of religion. Think of it this way: The more often we can show something to NOT be supernatural or devine, the more incredible the unexplainable becomes. With science, your god is not getting smaller, but bigger, and much more complex.
Maybe he hides his hair-brush or a comb in there. Is having perfectly parted hair one of his super-powers? I always figured the pomade just held it in place while he was airborne.
Or, if you are an analog person, and recognize "digitally" as something that is done with the fingers... eew.
Yeah! Damn GW for passing that law way back in the 1930s!
Tool.
Google SBIR, which is an acronym for Small Business Innovative Research. Pretty standard $$$ amounts, I think. The idea is that the govt has to allocate so much money to SBIR/STTR research, and that "big" companies cannot be the primary investigator. The difference here (though I have not read the article) is that SBIR topics are usually pre-selected, whereas NASA just wants some new ideas.
Isn't that what SBIR's are for?
Pretty much any organization that strongly values tradition.
Yes. But DHS would not know that you have/have not "identified with the contents" until they have talked to you. As you mention, your interest in the text would be an appreciation of the work as a creative product, not as a "cookbook for life." But there *are* books that people live-and-die by. And there are people who (by mental defect or fanaticism or whatever) will interpret and value the book in ways that defy common sense and logic. I am inclined to think that monitoring books is a long-shot, a waste of time, and unethical. But the people that they really want to catch are well outside of a few sigma of the "standard" person, which makes them easy to isolate in the event that they cross some threshold. So to answer your question, there is no correlation between fanatical behavior and interlibrary exchange of texts. For the book in question, people like you, who have a historic interest or appreciation are probably the most interested in checking it out. (There is your strong correlation.) It's the people who are NOT like you that DHS is interested in...the people who "defy the model." The outliers. So maybe instead of a honey-pot to attract only fanatics, it is possible to attract a group of people who are easily isolated from the few fanatical people who roll in? Example: Where would you start looking for child molesters? Now, obviously, most people are NOT child molesters. But consider the drastic difference in thought processes of a molester and a non-molester when it comes to children and values. Probably pretty easy for a pro to pick out the child molester... but that person has to be in the pool of contestants first!
I think most people that engage in violent, destructive behavior are probably the least likely to care about a text, least of all one that wasn't even written by Mao by hand with the blood of the bourgeoise. They're much more pragmatic, and interested in acquiring the raw information necessary for causing destruction. Details about making bombs from materials that are easily-obtainable in such a manner as to not raise any flags with the government, for example.I agree. But it's motive that counts. Learning how to build a bomb from the "Poor Man's James Bond" series is one thing. Searching for justification to kill infidels or to lead a rebellion is another. But who knows what DHS was looking for.... Like I mentioned, I bet this person was on DHS radar BEFORE requesting the book.
If I wanted to snoop on fanatics, I would consider monitoring an original copy of whatever book they were fanatical about. Certainly most people with an interest in this particular book would NOT be fanatical. But wouldn't you be a little bit curious why someone took an interest in an original copy of one of a widely published and easiliy available book?
It's a honey pot. In much the same way that an original copy of the Declaration of Independence (or Constitution/BoR) would be a good place to start looking for people who appreciate what it is.
I would be surprised if requesting this book was the action that sparked DHS's initial interest.