If you get five more weeks with 10% more vacation, I'll bid 89% of your current salary to do your job, because fifty weeks holiday a year still sounds pretty sweet to me.
I would first ask about what his current salary is. Maybe it's a dollar per year.
Yes, but unfortunately you'll never get around to do it, because there are so many other things to do, like buying food, or reading Slashdot and answering to comments there. And what would be the point in buying it anyway if you never get around to actually read it?
Indeed, you probably wanted to create a Slashdot account for years, but always you went on Slashdot, you found a story you wanted to read, and then you had to comment, to answer comments, and finally you didn't have any time to create an account because you had to get to your next appointment, right?
The easy way to confront that reality is to try to name one Etruscan or one Babylonian. Chances are that you can not. What then does it matter if an Etruscan committed a robbery, a theft, a rape, or a murder?
Today? Nothing. Back then? A lot. Don't make the basic mistake to dismiss the short term relevance. A lot of the things I do don't have any long term relevance (at least individually; another aspect which is easily overlooked is that the sum of individually irrelevant things can be together very relevant). But my life would be poor without them.
Indeed, nearly all religions who recognise gods believe (at least one of them) created the earth/universe.
And actually it's not hard to believe in God creating the universe while being in line with science: After all, the big bang theory is scientific consensus at this point.
"Since before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World, the Zoque people of southern Mexico would venture each year during the Easter season deep into the sulfuric cave Cueva del Azufre to implore their deities for a bountiful rain season."
And later:
"Ironically, it was the last ceremony ever held, as the Zoques ended the practice that year due to political pressure from the government, which sought to preserve the cave as a hotbed for tourism and potential revenue."
So they stopped doing ceremonies for the weather gods. This is surely not the only case. So people stop worshipping weather gods, and the climate goes wild. Coincidence? Unlikely! So now we have proof: Global warming is man-made, by neglecting weather ceremonies!
Indeed, if you increase the current in the better-learning direction too much, the result will not be much better learning, but permanent damage. That's a very non-linear effect.
Not protecting your identity on the net is more like a woman going alone in the dark through a park where it's known that there's an active rapist. Is it a stupid idea to do this? Hell yes! Does that mean the rapist is less guilty? Of course not.
Well, perhaps they would care more about protecting their identity. For example, if I post anything negative about, say, Microsoft here on Slashdot, then all they can tell is that someone who's using the nick "maxwell demon" on Slashdot has said something negative about them on Slashdot. While with a lot of research they could probably infer who I am, it's hard enough that it won't be worth for them for just a negative comment. I don't let Slashdot show my email address publicly (and I trust Slashdot not to reveal it behind the scenes either). I don't give any other personal details (name, homepage,...). And I don't use the same nick on any other page.
Keep saving for the Holodeck. It's good for the economy (I guess).
No, it's better for the economy if he buys a 3D TV now. Followed by a "Real 3D" TV tomorrow, and a "Full 3D" after that. Or however they'll call the next few standards for 3D TV.
Technically... neither is IE9. This article seems to fail in pointing out that it just compared a browser still in the preview phase to other browsers that are released.
The "released" browsers are:
Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 beta Firefox 4 Beta 6 Opera 11.00 alpha (build 1029) Safari Version 5.0.2 (6533.18.5)
The only one which doesn't have "beta" or even "alpha" in its name is Safari. So probably that one is actually released.
May I direct your attention to the three characters at the end of my post? Those letters are: U+003A COLON U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS U+0029 RIGHT PARENTHESIS
You can learn more about the meaning of this character combination at Wikipedia.
You're right in that a right-handed neutrino would interact only gravitationally. But if they exist, how did they get created in the first place? That creation process had to involve some combination of the other 3 forces -- gravity doesn't allow for particle creation or decay.
Isn't Hawking radiation a process where gravitation creates particles?
Also, since Neutrons have nonzero mass, wouldn't they also interact with the Higgs boson? Could the Higgs boson allow creation paths? Maybe a Higgs particle decays into a right-handed neutrino and something else?
Another thing is that if it were massive (and it would have to be), it would have to have a left and right-handed component, and be invariant under Lorentz transformations. (One way to think about it is this: If it's moving in a certain direction, you could look at it from a reference frame moving even faster in that direction, and it would appear to be going the other way. This would change it from a right-handed to a left-handed particle, which would mean it could interact with the weak force, etc. etc. So it would have to be a mixture of both left- and right-handed components - you can't have a purely right-handed neutrino with a non-zero mass).
Are you sure? IIUC, if left-handedness depended on the frame of reference, then whether an electron (which very clearly has mass) can interact weakly would also depend on the frame of reference, and that doesn't make sense to me: Either the electron interacts, or it doesn't.
It also turns out (mathematically) that you can construct a (sterile) neutrino by using only left-handed fields, and still make it behave as if it had a right-handed component. This is the so-called "Majorana spinor". So you don't really need to invoke right-handed neutrinos, you can get the same result using just the left-handed fields.
Well, the point is not that it's needed, the point is that to me it seems unnatural to assume it doesn't exist. Therefore given that AFAIK particle physicists generally do so, I expect there to be good reasons for that which I don't know.
Since you are a/former) particle physicist, maybe you can explain me why it's not considered entirely natural that there are neutrinos which don't interact with the weak force. My consideration is the following: For each particle except the neutrino there are left-handed and right-handed versions. Only for neutrinos, only left-handed have been observed. Now what would a right-handed neutrino look like? Well, obviously it would not interact strong or electromagnetic, because after all it's a neutrino. But it also wouldn't interact weak, because it's right-handed. This would explain why it wasn't observed in experiments (because AFAIK Neutrinos are always observed through their weak interaction). On the other hand, it would interact gravitationally, and would therefore make a form of dark matter, without any extension to the standard model, except that one would drop the claim that there are only left-handed neutrinos. Since it seems strange anyway that neutrinos, unlike all other particles, only come in left-handed form, I'd expect that a "sterile" right-handed neutrino would be the natural assumption.
However the fact that particle physicists don't assume that, I guess there are good reasons not to assume it. So what is the problem with this reasoning? And could the sterile neutrino from this story be actually such a right-handed neutrino?
It also was planned to be finished much earlier, so that actual research would not have had to wait that long. Well, if they had known in advance about their Space Shuttle problems...
Slashdot Mirror
If you get five more weeks with 10% more vacation, I'll bid 89% of your current salary to do your job, because fifty weeks holiday a year still sounds pretty sweet to me.
I would first ask about what his current salary is. Maybe it's a dollar per year.
That's true, but I've found writing Slashdot comments is much more effective. :-)
Yes, but unfortunately you'll never get around to do it, because there are so many other things to do, like buying food, or reading Slashdot and answering to comments there. And what would be the point in buying it anyway if you never get around to actually read it?
Indeed, you probably wanted to create a Slashdot account for years, but always you went on Slashdot, you found a story you wanted to read, and then you had to comment, to answer comments, and finally you didn't have any time to create an account because you had to get to your next appointment, right?
Maybe that's the true trick with test-driven programming: Each single test which no longer fails is a reward.
Today? Nothing. Back then? A lot.
Don't make the basic mistake to dismiss the short term relevance. A lot of the things I do don't have any long term relevance (at least individually; another aspect which is easily overlooked is that the sum of individually irrelevant things can be together very relevant). But my life would be poor without them.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1388
And actually it's not hard to believe in God creating the universe while being in line with science: After all, the big bang theory is scientific consensus at this point.
From the article:
"Since before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World, the Zoque people of southern Mexico would venture each year during the Easter season deep into the sulfuric cave Cueva del Azufre to implore their deities for a bountiful rain season."
And later:
"Ironically, it was the last ceremony ever held, as the Zoques ended the practice that year due to political pressure from the government, which sought to preserve the cave as a hotbed for tourism and potential revenue."
So they stopped doing ceremonies for the weather gods. This is surely not the only case. So people stop worshipping weather gods, and the climate goes wild. Coincidence? Unlikely! So now we have proof: Global warming is man-made, by neglecting weather ceremonies!
Indeed, if you increase the current in the better-learning direction too much, the result will not be much better learning, but permanent damage. That's a very non-linear effect.
So if I write a program in Chef, can I copyright it?
Well, the "stolen" GPL code is usually plagiarized, not just copied.
Well, it's the cry-bees visiting the cry-flowers. Or something like that.
Not protecting your identity on the net is more like a woman going alone in the dark through a park where it's known that there's an active rapist. Is it a stupid idea to do this? Hell yes! Does that mean the rapist is less guilty? Of course not.
Well, perhaps they would care more about protecting their identity. For example, if I post anything negative about, say, Microsoft here on Slashdot, then all they can tell is that someone who's using the nick "maxwell demon" on Slashdot has said something negative about them on Slashdot. While with a lot of research they could probably infer who I am, it's hard enough that it won't be worth for them for just a negative comment. I don't let Slashdot show my email address publicly (and I trust Slashdot not to reveal it behind the scenes either). I don't give any other personal details (name, homepage, ...). And I don't use the same nick on any other page.
No, it's better for the economy if he buys a 3D TV now. Followed by a "Real 3D" TV tomorrow, and a "Full 3D" after that. Or however they'll call the next few standards for 3D TV.
Actually the question is: "Are you still beating your wife?"
And of course you may only answer with yes or no.
And the very first must be the patent lawyer holding the patent on shooting patent lawyers.
Awesome. Has anyone done experimental verification with entangled triplets? I always seen them talked about as pairs only.
Yes: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6769/abs/403515a0.html
If you claim that you are from his bank, I think it is.
The "released" browsers are:
Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 beta
Firefox 4 Beta 6
Opera 11.00 alpha (build 1029)
Safari Version 5.0.2 (6533.18.5)
The only one which doesn't have "beta" or even "alpha" in its name is Safari. So probably that one is actually released.
May I direct your attention to the three characters at the end of my post? Those letters are:
U+003A COLON
U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS
U+0029 RIGHT PARENTHESIS
You can learn more about the meaning of this character combination at Wikipedia.
Or to make it short:
WHOOSH!
Isn't Hawking radiation a process where gravitation creates particles?
Also, since Neutrons have nonzero mass, wouldn't they also interact with the Higgs boson? Could the Higgs boson allow creation paths? Maybe a Higgs particle decays into a right-handed neutrino and something else?
Are you sure? IIUC, if left-handedness depended on the frame of reference, then whether an electron (which very clearly has mass) can interact weakly would also depend on the frame of reference, and that doesn't make sense to me: Either the electron interacts, or it doesn't.
Well, the point is not that it's needed, the point is that to me it seems unnatural to assume it doesn't exist. Therefore given that AFAIK particle physicists generally do so, I expect there to be good reasons for that which I don't know.
Well, it's simple: At big bang, the matter went forward in time into our universe, and the antimatter went backward in time into the anti-universe. :-)
Since you are a /former) particle physicist, maybe you can explain me why it's not considered entirely natural that there are neutrinos which don't interact with the weak force. My consideration is the following: For each particle except the neutrino there are left-handed and right-handed versions. Only for neutrinos, only left-handed have been observed. Now what would a right-handed neutrino look like? Well, obviously it would not interact strong or electromagnetic, because after all it's a neutrino. But it also wouldn't interact weak, because it's right-handed. This would explain why it wasn't observed in experiments (because AFAIK Neutrinos are always observed through their weak interaction). On the other hand, it would interact gravitationally, and would therefore make a form of dark matter, without any extension to the standard model, except that one would drop the claim that there are only left-handed neutrinos. Since it seems strange anyway that neutrinos, unlike all other particles, only come in left-handed form, I'd expect that a "sterile" right-handed neutrino would be the natural assumption.
However the fact that particle physicists don't assume that, I guess there are good reasons not to assume it. So what is the problem with this reasoning? And could the sterile neutrino from this story be actually such a right-handed neutrino?
It also was planned to be finished much earlier, so that actual research would not have had to wait that long. Well, if they had known in advance about their Space Shuttle problems ...