No, you have it right. Ignore the previous posters who themselves seem to have failed quantum mechanics. Particularly the one who likes to make flat out statements of "fact."
Actually, it's pretty hard to distinguish our idea of an elementary particle from a black hole with the same mass and force charges. What feature of electrons and quarks is it that you think is distinct from a black hole?
The possibility of the LHC producing black holes depends on string physics. Since this discussion is based on assuming that it is possible for the LHC to produce black holes, we must also assume string theory. IIRC the version of string theory that suggests the LHC can produce black holes also postulates "strings" that have more than one dimension.
No question humans react differently. That is actually my point. Someone pointed out that the chance of being killed by a terrorist is very small. Another poster took exception to that and said "well, what if they use a nuke next time?" The answer is, they'd have to pull off a Hiroshima every four years to bring the risk from terrorism up to a benchmark risk that we accept every day (dying in a motor vehicle crash).
"I'm sure you've done a lot more door-locking than seatbelt-buckling in your life."
a) No, actually. That's stupid. I always buckle my seat belt. I grew up in a place where people rarely locked their doors. I lock my door now, because I live in a city where the chance of being robbed is high enough to outweigh the extra cost of locking the door.
b) Except for the loss of life, all the things you mention were due to the reaction to the attack. Terrorists killed a few thousand people in a horrible act of violence. The reaction by the victims caused an economic downturn (although nothing like what a bunch of financiers would cause a bit less than a decade later), not to mention a profound change in the way of life in the US, and much of the rest of the western world. I agree, the world's reaction to September 11 caused FAR more damage than the terrorist attacks did. That's actually the point of terrorism - to attack in such a way that the victim's fear causes them to react in a way that magnifies the damage caused by your actions.
Your point about being more afraid of intentional harm doesn't really hold up. People who actually live in places where they stand a reasonable chance of being harmed intentionally, including by terrorists, accept the risk (though they might not like it), take reasonable precautions against it, and go about their lives. People who live in violent neighborhoods don't fear for their lives nearly as much as people who visit those places.
As for the rest of your post, nowhere did I say that all security precautions should be abolished because terrorists had all given up. The original point is that the chance of being killed by a terrorist is vanishingly small compared to other threats, and the effect of even a nuclear attack on that probability is much less than what the poster assumed.
A further point that I am prepared to make is that the responses to risks should be assessed in the context of their actual magnitude and the harm that those responses will entail. Should we abolish airport security? No, the likely harm from that course of action outweighs any benefits it might have. Should we, for example, put expensive and unproven terahertz scanners in all the airports in the world? I don't know, but in order to make a reasonable decision we have to consider the actual magnitude of the threat, the potential benefit and the potential damage. Will the money spent actually save lives? The Christmas bomber didn't even go through security. Perhaps we should spend that money on better screening and training of airport personnel. Maybe it would save more lives if it were used to upgrade some highways somewhere. Or funding outreach programs in the middle east.
Of course not, but it's an excellent reason not to worry when you get on a plane. Or to further increase aircraft maintenance requirements until they make flying too expensive for ordinary people.
When you're trying to decide what to worry about (and pass laws and make policy about), it's worth keeping a bit of perspective. Terrorism is a VERY minor threat to the average person.
The GGP implied that, were terrorists to explode a nuke, the danger of dying from terrorism would exceed that of dying in a car crash. I guess it would, for that day, even that year. But you'd have to have a very successful nuclear terrorist attack every four years to equal the car crash risk, long term.
Incidentally, you'd need about 10 September 11ths per year to bring your terrorism-death risk up to your car crash death risk.
Yes. We panic a lot less when confronted with dangers we're used to (and can deny).
Information is Beautiful linked to a good graphic showing the relative risk of various things from being killed by terrorists to having your nightclothes start on fire (hint: you were only slightly more likely to be a victim of terrorism than having your pyjamas cremate you). Unfortunately I can't find it. Here's a good one about the swine flu though:
If the fictional nuke wielding terrorists managed to set one off every four years and kill as many people as died at Hiroshima, they'd kill about as many people as die from motor vehicle accidents in the US in the same time period.
However, the $50 (which is overpriced - I know someone who got one for $25 for Christmas) IR thermometer should work pretty well for figuring out if the garage is hotter than it should be. You don't actually have to image.
They take that point of view here. The cops like to fly over in the helicopter with it's FLIR pod and check out houses. During the summer. In the winter they look for roofs with no snow.
People use digital cameras to make heat images all the time.
If you want even better, go buy some IR film. You used to be able to pay a guy (or a kid with a hobby) to shoot some pictures of your house with IR film and show you where it was leaking heat.
You're right, neither is the same as an expensive IR imager, but both will do just fine for finding grow ops. Particularly if you're a cop and you don't have to worry about the drug growers coming out of the house to beat you up during your hour long digital exposure of their house.
"Thermal imaging scanners, however cheap they become, will never be a commonly available item."
Yeah, everybody in the US doesn't have at least two of the things yet (probably).
A digital camera is a "thermal imaging scanner" that, with a bit of basic photographic knowledge, should be fine for detecting whether the garage is hotter than the rest of the house.
I guess most of the US cops don't have the advantage of just looking to see if there's any snow on the roof, hey?
Go buy a roll of IR film. It's not that expensive, just not digital.
If you want digital, buy a camera and cut off the IR filter.
It's not quite as nice as an IR video camera but it does the job just fine. IR film in particular was frequently used to produce an image of heat leaks from houses.
Lots of people. I used to read a lot of books on my Sony Clie, which had a similar sized (but not nearly as good) screen to the iPhone. I've got several reference books on my iPhone that I might not read cover to cover, but are very handy to refer to. The problem is, most books are difficult to format for the phone. The built in PDF reader has trouble zooming in on columns properly, for example.
The glasses are incredibly cheap. I'm sure someone somewhere takes them into account, but they're basically a rounding error. It probably costs more to pay the minimum wage high school kid to hand them to you than the glasses themselves cost.
I once had a Best Buy gift card. Past bad experiences had taught me to stay away from BB, but I figured even if it was a ripoff the gift card would make it worth picking something up.
I had something specific in mind so I checked the price at Future Shop first - $120. Went to Best Buy: $180. Well, they'll match it, right? Not a chance. They always find some way of wiggling out of doing an actual price match. So I went and picked it up at another place across town for $80.
Maybe Future Shop has changed their return policy in the last two years. The last time I tested it you just brought back the item and they gave you your money back.
In any large enough collection of random numbers you will be guaranteed to find whatever pattern you're looking for, whether it's a hundred thousand zeros in a row or the text of the collected works of Shakespeare. You can test statistically how likely you are to find particular patterns in a collection of numbers of a particular size though.
They're looking for any and all planets they can detect. The habitable-to-life-as-we-know-it ones are interesting for obvious subjective reasons, and also because if we've got any chance of detecting evidence of life from this far away it's not going to be some kind we haven't ever thought of before.
He decided to do something risky, for which he didn't have the right kind of training and he didn't even know how to use his equipment! Being an experience sky diver doesn't help you much as a balloon pilot, but it should have taught him enough to know he should be familiar with his equipment before launching.
His reason for doing it is also pretty silly. It was a publicity stunt. If he was flying a secret infiltration mission in WWII or something, fine, but a stunt to set a world record? The fund raising is irrelevant - there are smarter ways to raise money.
We used to do this in university with Future Shop, which is a less scummy version of Best Buy we have in Canada (one of them bought the other a few years ago, but somehow Future Shop has managed to remain less scummy).
One guy "borrowed" one of the newfangled PDAs that could actually play music, for the weekend. We tried to scrape together enough cash to borrow a colour laser printer, but couldn't get enough.
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No, you have it right. Ignore the previous posters who themselves seem to have failed quantum mechanics. Particularly the one who likes to make flat out statements of "fact."
Actually, it's pretty hard to distinguish our idea of an elementary particle from a black hole with the same mass and force charges. What feature of electrons and quarks is it that you think is distinct from a black hole?
The possibility of the LHC producing black holes depends on string physics. Since this discussion is based on assuming that it is possible for the LHC to produce black holes, we must also assume string theory. IIRC the version of string theory that suggests the LHC can produce black holes also postulates "strings" that have more than one dimension.
No question humans react differently. That is actually my point. Someone pointed out that the chance of being killed by a terrorist is very small. Another poster took exception to that and said "well, what if they use a nuke next time?" The answer is, they'd have to pull off a Hiroshima every four years to bring the risk from terrorism up to a benchmark risk that we accept every day (dying in a motor vehicle crash).
"I'm sure you've done a lot more door-locking than seatbelt-buckling in your life."
a) No, actually. That's stupid. I always buckle my seat belt. I grew up in a place where people rarely locked their doors. I lock my door now, because I live in a city where the chance of being robbed is high enough to outweigh the extra cost of locking the door.
b) Except for the loss of life, all the things you mention were due to the reaction to the attack. Terrorists killed a few thousand people in a horrible act of violence. The reaction by the victims caused an economic downturn (although nothing like what a bunch of financiers would cause a bit less than a decade later), not to mention a profound change in the way of life in the US, and much of the rest of the western world. I agree, the world's reaction to September 11 caused FAR more damage than the terrorist attacks did. That's actually the point of terrorism - to attack in such a way that the victim's fear causes them to react in a way that magnifies the damage caused by your actions.
Your point about being more afraid of intentional harm doesn't really hold up. People who actually live in places where they stand a reasonable chance of being harmed intentionally, including by terrorists, accept the risk (though they might not like it), take reasonable precautions against it, and go about their lives. People who live in violent neighborhoods don't fear for their lives nearly as much as people who visit those places.
As for the rest of your post, nowhere did I say that all security precautions should be abolished because terrorists had all given up. The original point is that the chance of being killed by a terrorist is vanishingly small compared to other threats, and the effect of even a nuclear attack on that probability is much less than what the poster assumed.
A further point that I am prepared to make is that the responses to risks should be assessed in the context of their actual magnitude and the harm that those responses will entail. Should we abolish airport security? No, the likely harm from that course of action outweighs any benefits it might have. Should we, for example, put expensive and unproven terahertz scanners in all the airports in the world? I don't know, but in order to make a reasonable decision we have to consider the actual magnitude of the threat, the potential benefit and the potential damage. Will the money spent actually save lives? The Christmas bomber didn't even go through security. Perhaps we should spend that money on better screening and training of airport personnel. Maybe it would save more lives if it were used to upgrade some highways somewhere. Or funding outreach programs in the middle east.
Of course not, but it's an excellent reason not to worry when you get on a plane. Or to further increase aircraft maintenance requirements until they make flying too expensive for ordinary people.
When you're trying to decide what to worry about (and pass laws and make policy about), it's worth keeping a bit of perspective. Terrorism is a VERY minor threat to the average person.
The GGP implied that, were terrorists to explode a nuke, the danger of dying from terrorism would exceed that of dying in a car crash. I guess it would, for that day, even that year. But you'd have to have a very successful nuclear terrorist attack every four years to equal the car crash risk, long term.
Incidentally, you'd need about 10 September 11ths per year to bring your terrorism-death risk up to your car crash death risk.
Yes. We panic a lot less when confronted with dangers we're used to (and can deny).
Information is Beautiful linked to a good graphic showing the relative risk of various things from being killed by terrorists to having your nightclothes start on fire (hint: you were only slightly more likely to be a victim of terrorism than having your pyjamas cremate you). Unfortunately I can't find it. Here's a good one about the swine flu though:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaukner/4052849920/sizes/l/
Why shouldn't it be? Relativity only puts constraints on how fast you can move through space, not how fast space itself can stretch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
If the fictional nuke wielding terrorists managed to set one off every four years and kill as many people as died at Hiroshima, they'd kill about as many people as die from motor vehicle accidents in the US in the same time period.
Yes, you're right, I was mistaken.
However, the $50 (which is overpriced - I know someone who got one for $25 for Christmas) IR thermometer should work pretty well for figuring out if the garage is hotter than it should be. You don't actually have to image.
"because there COULD have been."
No, because people believe there could have been.
They take that point of view here. The cops like to fly over in the helicopter with it's FLIR pod and check out houses. During the summer. In the winter they look for roofs with no snow.
People use digital cameras to make heat images all the time.
If you want even better, go buy some IR film. You used to be able to pay a guy (or a kid with a hobby) to shoot some pictures of your house with IR film and show you where it was leaking heat.
You're right, neither is the same as an expensive IR imager, but both will do just fine for finding grow ops. Particularly if you're a cop and you don't have to worry about the drug growers coming out of the house to beat you up during your hour long digital exposure of their house.
"Thermal imaging scanners, however cheap they become, will never be a commonly available item."
Yeah, everybody in the US doesn't have at least two of the things yet (probably).
A digital camera is a "thermal imaging scanner" that, with a bit of basic photographic knowledge, should be fine for detecting whether the garage is hotter than the rest of the house.
I guess most of the US cops don't have the advantage of just looking to see if there's any snow on the roof, hey?
Go buy a roll of IR film. It's not that expensive, just not digital.
If you want digital, buy a camera and cut off the IR filter.
It's not quite as nice as an IR video camera but it does the job just fine. IR film in particular was frequently used to produce an image of heat leaks from houses.
Lots of people. I used to read a lot of books on my Sony Clie, which had a similar sized (but not nearly as good) screen to the iPhone. I've got several reference books on my iPhone that I might not read cover to cover, but are very handy to refer to. The problem is, most books are difficult to format for the phone. The built in PDF reader has trouble zooming in on columns properly, for example.
I don't really see that it has that many advantages over PDF. Translation? Do you really want to listen to/read a machine translated book?
The glasses are incredibly cheap. I'm sure someone somewhere takes them into account, but they're basically a rounding error. It probably costs more to pay the minimum wage high school kid to hand them to you than the glasses themselves cost.
I once had a Best Buy gift card. Past bad experiences had taught me to stay away from BB, but I figured even if it was a ripoff the gift card would make it worth picking something up.
I had something specific in mind so I checked the price at Future Shop first - $120. Went to Best Buy: $180. Well, they'll match it, right? Not a chance. They always find some way of wiggling out of doing an actual price match. So I went and picked it up at another place across town for $80.
Maybe Future Shop has changed their return policy in the last two years. The last time I tested it you just brought back the item and they gave you your money back.
In any large enough collection of random numbers you will be guaranteed to find whatever pattern you're looking for, whether it's a hundred thousand zeros in a row or the text of the collected works of Shakespeare. You can test statistically how likely you are to find particular patterns in a collection of numbers of a particular size though.
Finding patterns can be hard. If you have an idea of what you're looking for you can do much better than if you just want to find any pattern. SETI at Home has a page about what they look for: http://seticlassic.ssl.berkeley.edu/about_seti/about_seti_at_home_4.html
Give that someone a decade old processor and see how happy he is.
They're looking for any and all planets they can detect. The habitable-to-life-as-we-know-it ones are interesting for obvious subjective reasons, and also because if we've got any chance of detecting evidence of life from this far away it's not going to be some kind we haven't ever thought of before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe)
Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth talked about it, and the books written after Asimov's death featured it prominently.
The whole planet was actually called Gaia.
I'm going to go with idiot.
He decided to do something risky, for which he didn't have the right kind of training and he didn't even know how to use his equipment! Being an experience sky diver doesn't help you much as a balloon pilot, but it should have taught him enough to know he should be familiar with his equipment before launching.
His reason for doing it is also pretty silly. It was a publicity stunt. If he was flying a secret infiltration mission in WWII or something, fine, but a stunt to set a world record? The fund raising is irrelevant - there are smarter ways to raise money.
We used to do this in university with Future Shop, which is a less scummy version of Best Buy we have in Canada (one of them bought the other a few years ago, but somehow Future Shop has managed to remain less scummy).
One guy "borrowed" one of the newfangled PDAs that could actually play music, for the weekend. We tried to scrape together enough cash to borrow a colour laser printer, but couldn't get enough.