It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
I've had a similar argument with my parents who aren't out-and-out religious but do believe in some omnipotent being having a hand in things, but specifically as the 'thing' that lit the blue touchpaper on the Big Bang, and being the Architect of all that followed.
They argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang works that the easiest and most obvious solution is that God Did It and I argue that throughout history Man has pondered how things work and attributed events and happenings to divinity in some form or other.
Oh... the Sun came up again today. That must be God's work... ... well, I'd say even the devoutest religophile would concede that actually there's a smidgin of gravity and orbital mechanics at the route of that one.
Oooooh! The Earth is shaking - God must be angry... ... OK... scary as it must be, it's going to be tectonic plates and all that malarky
It's the miracle of birth... ... Er... well, science has that one pretty much sorted now too
We have explained the majority of events attributed to the largess of deities using science and the No. of unexplained things to boggle our poor little monkey-minds is getting more scarce, but having had such success in the past why does it seem more likely that the latest X-Files episode-like conundrum to bedazzle us will offer up the answer "GOD DID IT" once more, rather than "we don't know at the moment, but we're curious enough and tenacious enough that eventually WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT!".
A Super Being, a God (or Gods!), The Divine Entity, The Grand Architect, The Tooth Fairy, Superman, Father-bleedin'-Christmas are all so unlikely as to be knocked into a cocked-hat, odds-wise, next to the rational option that it's just something we haven't worked out yet, as has been proven time and time again throughout our ever-decreasingly religious past!
... and even funnier is the idea that The Gods set this all in motion anyway, that we WILL understand how the Big Bang worked, how digital watches work, where biros go, why people insist on driving in the middle lane, the whole enchilada - and yet there's STILL the option that some super being set it all in motion - devised the physics and the chemistry and the biology and the telephone sanitation, invented estate agents and parking wardens... so even if - even WHEN - science explains it all, there will still be room for the innately religious to 'relige' to their hearts content...
Not sure you could be done for careless driving as you have shown your above average observation skills by seeing the speed trap in time to do something about it.
I also pointed out that he knew there was nothing behind him and so he knew he wasn't going to be causing any danger to anyone behind him - he stopped and moved on pretty quickly and it was a two lane road and he was in the inside (AKA "slow").
That all said, I take your point, indeed I pointed it out myself by saying "potentially dangerous". hmm... does that make it my point?
The "average" nature of radar does offer a potentially dangerous way to _not_ get caught: A friend was pressing on and came over the brow of a hill to see a Police officer pointing a radar gun at him. He KNEW there was nothing behind him and stamped on the breaks resulting in him stopping sufficiently quickly that the radar gun hadn't posted a speed before he stopped - adding sufficient "zero speed" into the average calculation meant he wasn't caught speeding. He then calmly, and slowly, drove into the lay-by because he assumed, correctly, that the officer would probably want a quiet word.
Having the cars pass each other on a single cable will be interesting.
OK, so lets assume we have a "train" of cars ascending, followed by a similar "train" of cars descending. Any power generated on the descent could be beamed back to the ground and/or the counter weight for use on the next ascent.
Could the cars have "power" panels top and bottom and repeater lasers top and bottom to form a "power chain" throughout the "train"?
Maybe that wouldn't be necessary though: Power the bottom (and top?) car via the beamed power and when it touches the car above it could physically "connect" to it thereby transferring the power to the next car, etc - ie it becomes a "train" of cars which are linked in the way "trains" are traditionally envisaged.
This could also be the basis of a fail-safe for if a car fails - a "tug" (or perhaps "push") car could be sent up to connect and take control of the defective car to push or lower it to safety.
Actually, equipping the cars with a parachute could afford a cheap and quick rescue option of just letting go of the cable if they were low enough, though the thought of building in any mechanism to allow the car to "let go" does seem as foolish as the Bond Villains always building in an obvious self destruct button in their lairs!
... I suppose for actual "space elevator" applications the same thing will apply, only you'll be irradiating the floating counterweight or whatnot, and the destination.
Why not cover that side of the counterweight in the solar panels as well, and scoop up as much power as you can for use on the station... Perhaps even send some back down by having a power laser pointed down to fire energy at the top of the climber for when it gets nearer the top...
Is there also an issue of having more than one climber on the cable at any one time - surely that means you'd want to be firing the power laser at a suitable angle anyway, to power a specific cable car.
A mother on the school run with kids misbehaving/fighting in the back for example?
I recently saw the aftermath of a (very!) minor accident where a guy was knocked off his pushbike by a young lady driving a car. He was thankfully uninjured and magnanimously let it go by suggesting she pay more attention in future because next time it might be his kids! I noticed that the young lady was wearing a Muslim-style headscarf which was not pinned back beside her head (which they often are) and was pretty much acting as blinkers! Arriving after the fact I've no idea if it was involved in the incident but it could easily have been a factor because of the reduced peripheral vision.
Even worse would be devout Muslims wearing the full Burkha, where there is often only a very small opening to look out - does this happen? In the UK it certainly does and it really makes a mockery of the safety laws!
See also driving whilst wearing hoodies.
See also darkened (AKA "privacy") Glass - at night - and the driver wearing sunglasses too!
The UK mobile (AKA "cell") phone laws specifically don't make it illegal to use walkie talkies because the Police use them! So all someone has to do is write a nice little iPhone WalkieTalkie app (ie Press-to-Talk) and we're laughing!
Presumably, the Ontario cops no longer use any devices in their cars... or did they build in a similar loophole? Perhaps eating an apple is banned, but read the fineprint and you'll see it's OK to eat doughnuts!
If something goes wrong on the surface, help is 39 days away, instead of 6 months.
Not sure that is always going to be the case, unless the VASIMR also has a side effect of locking Earth and Mars so they don't move relative to each other because I'm guessing the quoted 39 days is the minimum time for when Earth and Mars are at their closest.
He didn't walk in a publicly accessible system, he broke into a poorly secured one.
Er... OK, so how do you distinguish a publicly accessible system from a poorly secured one? He is, to all intents and purposes, the public and he sure as hell just walked in! Sure there may well have been a cardboard sign on the lawn with a plastic chain saying "Don't Walk On The Lawn" but that's hardly the barriers you'd expect of a top secret installation is it!
... I was under the impression that the British legal system was very closely related to the one in my country (U.S.A.)
Oh bless your little colonial cotton socks, that's so quaint!
I think you will find that the US legal system is closely related to the British one, which has been around a tad longer (though is not necessarily the better for being so - wigs and whatnot, I ask you! What on earth do they think they look like!).
Gravity has to be instantaneous, otherwise the Earth would have left its orbit long ago, because if gravity traveled only at the speed of light, the Earth and the sun would not "feel" each others gravity until eight minutes later.
Hmmmm. I can see what you are saying but I'm not sure it's true. Sure, if a planet suddenly appeared in a specified orbit it would take 'time' (8 mins for a planet at Earth's distance, for example) before the gravitational effects would 'start', but as I understand it, that's not how a planet arrives in its orbit. They are assumed to coalesce over long periods of time into the planets, and during that time there will be a constant gravitational force, albiet a delayed one.
Think about waiting for a bus which is 8 minutes late. If the busses are 8 minutes apart you still catch a bus, it's just the earlier one, and to all intents and purposes you are unaware of the late running.
We could test this theory if we could remove the sun. If the Earth continued in its orbit for 8 minutes or so then we'd know, however briefly, that gravity travels at the speed of light.
I meant locked in the fact that it has no orbital spin.
Surely the moon is spinning with the same period as its orbit so we always see the same side. Funnily enough, if it wasn't spinning it would look like it was!
Hmmmm. I guess some people are 'curious' and some aren't - luckily for the human race there are enough 'curious' folks out there that those 'stay-at-homers' can rely on others to do the _essential_ exploring for them! Without some people to push the boundaries we'd all still be living in caves in Africa!
At some point your island simply won't be big enough to grow enough coconuts to support the population and you'll be wishing someone was far-sighted (or maybe just "mad"!) enough to have gone looking to see what was over the horizon! If you're lucky you'll still have time and resources to be able to do it then, but chances are you simply won't have the funds available to go look because every last cent will be spent dividing up the last coconut so everyone get's their fair share!
Likewise, I often cruise in the right lanes because, where I am, everyone rushes over to the left because it's supposedly the "fast" lane(s). So I sit there on the right and pass the jammed up traffic to my left. I know, I know, you shouldn't pass on the right, but I didn't create the situation.
Over here in the UK we're not allowed to 'undertake' at all and we get members of the "Middle Lane Owner's Club" who will join a 3 lane motorway and regardless of traffic will move to the centre lane and stay there for the duration of their journey! They will often refuse to even pull out to overtake a slower vehicle! You then get queues of cars overtaking them until someone loses their patience and swoops in to undertake. They say things like "but if you move into the 'slow' lane you might not be able to move back out again" - I say if you can't change lanes on a motorway/highway then you've no business being behind the wheel in the first place!
Also, we have a school zone that is usually 45 and drops down to 35 - as it says on the sign, "School days 8:30-9:30am, 3:30-4:30pm." But people can't be bothered reading the rest of the sign... they just always go 35! AAAARRRRRGGGG!!!
We have 20MPH zones around schools and I mostly don't have a problem with it, except that the schools aren't open 24/7 and we don't get the higher limit out of school hours! Why can't they change the limit (variable limit depending on conditions, now there's a thought!) depending on the time of day, etc. I'd say have the limit at 10MPH during the times the kids arrive and/or leave school, 20MPH the rest of the school time, and back up to 30MPH out of school hours, and school holidays etc!
I reckon most people who disregard speed limits do so because 90% of the time they are stupid limits (20MPH outside a school spilling kids out on to the streets, and 70MPH on an empty motorway for examples)! If the limits made sense people would be more likely to take notice!
If it was me, and they didn't have a warrant, I've asked them politely to leave and shot them dead if they displayed armed force and refused.
Unfortunately the UK Police also have new(ish) anti-terrorism laws that pretty much allow them to do whatever the hell they like! They just have to say something like "I am arresting you under the 2000blah-de-blah anti-terrorism laws" or somesuch. They don't have to say WHY they suspect you before or after they arrest you. They can keep you locked up for days!
There was a story about some woman on the underground who was approached by some particularly fiesty female cop who asked if she could check the woman's handbag. She asked why? The fem-Cop said something like she didn't need to say why, and if she wanted she could arrest the woman under these anti-terrorism laws and drag her arse off to the cop-shop...
Mostly, the UK is a great place to live, but we are most definately on the slippery-slope and it's sometimes a bit worrying!
Lets assume you meant...
Ask those same people about having THEIR face superimposed on a nude's body and see how their answers change.
... because the change to use of a nude child changes things drasticly.
OK... it's either illegal or it isn't and the fact that when people are involved in an 'event' their opinions of whether or not the event is, or should be, illegal change has no bearing on the actuality of the legality of the event - and thankfully so! That is the reason why vigilantes are frowned upon, because they will more often than not have an emotional attachment to the event, and almost by definition will be looking to string someone up for it!
To examine any event for legality you really need to be able to step outside emotions and look at the problem rationally, and, as per my previous post, this is perhaps where the better educated are at an advantage.
How about the possibility that highly educated people from whatever field, be it mathematics, English, chemistry, or whatever, are less likely to simply see the question as "save the children from the paedos" and vote to hang the guy.
They rationally look at the question and examine the facts, such as they are, to arrive at a conclusion. Some find for and some find against and the fact that some find the (alleged) perp not guilty isn't just because they can add up and/or spell, and it's actually not relevant which way they vote - the interesting thing is that they considered the evidence before voting whichever way they thought was the right way rather than following the herd!
Well, a 4000 mile transatlantic flight is often 7 hours one way and 8 hours the other. You do the math
... and of course this has nothing to do with the Earth rotating with you in one direction and against you in the other. No siree-bob, as when you fly the Earth stops rotating. Yep. That must be it.
If we delay manned missions to other planets/moons for half a century, it won't matter.
Actually, there are some who think that is untrue, and here's why. The cost of feeding the world is ever rising as the population climbs. As the population climbs the amount of land available to grow things falls. At the moment, finding the few billions it might take to get us off-world just seems expensive, but at some point finding those billions may actually require taking the decision to stop feeding some people and that will be a tough decision for anyone to make!
There are some who suggest that if we don't det off-world NOW we may never have the spare cash to throw at it again, and that's a BIG risk for the survival of our species, and presumably all the species we take along with us for the ride. Though, to be fair, they often quote 100 years as "NOW", but it's still a gamble upon which our species very survival may rest!
Not only that, but I'd like to see it at least start to happen!
NHS IT: last year's hardware at next year's prices
on
IT and Health Care
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· Score: 2, Interesting
There are tens of thousands possible tests one can subject a patient to, tens of thousands of possible but often ill defined disease concepts and a virtually unlimited set of possible individual patient attributes, states and conditions where each such attribute/state/condition has the potential to influence clinical decision making from guessing the most likely diagnosis to choosing a therapy plan that may help the patient. No matter how you cut it you will end up grossly simplifying many important aspects of this complex business and inevitably upset clinicians that are used to a certain way of doing things and are very fond of the status quo.
So why not have the ability to "skin" the interface to keep the primadonna clinicians happy? Provide a 'reasonable' default interface and a tool kit that enterprising folk can use to charge the clinicians for making a bespoke interface for that clinician. The clinician then owns his own interface that he can carry around with him (on a thumbdrive maybe).
The system should obviously provide an interface that attempts to provide standard information in a standard way, but should also have the ability to step 'over' the standard way when the clinicians feel it is preventing them from correctly/accurately/fully writing up the patient notes. These occasions should automatically flag themselves up to someone in the "office" who can manaully glean the correct info to fill in the "standard info". It could also notify the writers of the software, providing a feedback loop to help to improve the software for future versions.
My experience of "IT in Healthcare" is the closed shop encouraged by the NHS which means you HAVE to buy from a very small set of approved vendors who then provide last year's hardware at next year's prices!
This will probably be dealt with in 2010. Unfortunately, that will probably put the fucking tories into power.
I remember the last time the tories ousted labour and the hell of paying back all the debts we'd been saddled with that time, but at least they'll be getting the country back in roughly the same state they left it... oh wait... this just in... apparently it's going to be just like the last time, if not worse!
That said, I honestly don't really trust them any more than I trust the current crop!
The energy will come from the car. If it didn't you wouldn't need the cars for the plates to generate energy! The 'car' will therefore lose energy, but this will only be 'extra fuel' if you are assuming that the drivers will want to keep their speed the same throughout the experience. As some have pointed out, keeping your speed down in the car park is a good idea and one option for the loss of energy experience by the car might be kinetic (speed) rather than chemical (fuel). What if all that happens is that the car slows down as it climbs onto the plate, then maybe slows a little more as it climbs out of the dip caused by the plate dropping? No extra fuel burnt. Car travelling ever-so-slightly slower in the car park. Some energy provided to the shop.
I don't know how much these plates cost to install and maintain, but it doesn't sound like such a bad idea...
Coverage in Britain has concentrated on the fact that there were some UK citizens on the 'plane, like all you Johnny Foreigners somehow don't count... and that there were some children on board too, which is apparently even worse than UK adults dieing!
I don't get it... Is there some value system used to weigh up who's most valuable in a 'plane load of casualties? I REALLY wish they wouldn't do it. I look forward to the "Lucky there were no babies on board" headlines! Do sick children (as in "unwell" - really!) count more than healthy ones perhaps? Where do pregnant women figure?
They are pandering to the crowd (using real Pandas!) and the apparent need to join in the "recreational grief" when actually, yes, it's sad, but will otherwise have no effect on anyone not directly involved!
It's ludicrous and they should stop it!
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It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
I've had a similar argument with my parents who aren't out-and-out religious but do believe in some omnipotent being having a hand in things, but specifically as the 'thing' that lit the blue touchpaper on the Big Bang, and being the Architect of all that followed.
They argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang works that the easiest and most obvious solution is that God Did It and I argue that throughout history Man has pondered how things work and attributed events and happenings to divinity in some form or other. ... the Sun came up again today. That must be God's work ...
... well, I'd say even the devoutest religophile would concede that actually there's a smidgin of gravity and orbital mechanics at the route of that one. ...
... OK ... scary as it must be, it's going to be tectonic plates and all that malarky ...
... Er ... well, science has that one pretty much sorted now too
Oh
Oooooh! The Earth is shaking - God must be angry
It's the miracle of birth
We have explained the majority of events attributed to the largess of deities using science and the No. of unexplained things to boggle our poor little monkey-minds is getting more scarce, but having had such success in the past why does it seem more likely that the latest X-Files episode-like conundrum to bedazzle us will offer up the answer "GOD DID IT" once more, rather than "we don't know at the moment, but we're curious enough and tenacious enough that eventually WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT!".
A Super Being, a God (or Gods!), The Divine Entity, The Grand Architect, The Tooth Fairy, Superman, Father-bleedin'-Christmas are all so unlikely as to be knocked into a cocked-hat, odds-wise, next to the rational option that it's just something we haven't worked out yet, as has been proven time and time again throughout our ever-decreasingly religious past!
I also pointed out that he knew there was nothing behind him and so he knew he wasn't going to be causing any danger to anyone behind him - he stopped and moved on pretty quickly and it was a two lane road and he was in the inside (AKA "slow").
That all said, I take your point, indeed I pointed it out myself by saying "potentially dangerous". hmm ... does that make it my point?
The "average" nature of radar does offer a potentially dangerous way to _not_ get caught: A friend was pressing on and came over the brow of a hill to see a Police officer pointing a radar gun at him. He KNEW there was nothing behind him and stamped on the breaks resulting in him stopping sufficiently quickly that the radar gun hadn't posted a speed before he stopped - adding sufficient "zero speed" into the average calculation meant he wasn't caught speeding. He then calmly, and slowly, drove into the lay-by because he assumed, correctly, that the officer would probably want a quiet word.
OK, so lets assume we have a "train" of cars ascending, followed by a similar "train" of cars descending. Any power generated on the descent could be beamed back to the ground and/or the counter weight for use on the next ascent.
Could the cars have "power" panels top and bottom and repeater lasers top and bottom to form a "power chain" throughout the "train"?
Maybe that wouldn't be necessary though: Power the bottom (and top?) car via the beamed power and when it touches the car above it could physically "connect" to it thereby transferring the power to the next car, etc - ie it becomes a "train" of cars which are linked in the way "trains" are traditionally envisaged.
This could also be the basis of a fail-safe for if a car fails - a "tug" (or perhaps "push") car could be sent up to connect and take control of the defective car to push or lower it to safety.
Actually, equipping the cars with a parachute could afford a cheap and quick rescue option of just letting go of the cable if they were low enough, though the thought of building in any mechanism to allow the car to "let go" does seem as foolish as the Bond Villains always building in an obvious self destruct button in their lairs!
... I suppose for actual "space elevator" applications the same thing will apply, only you'll be irradiating the floating counterweight or whatnot, and the destination.
Why not cover that side of the counterweight in the solar panels as well, and scoop up as much power as you can for use on the station ... Perhaps even send some back down by having a power laser pointed down to fire energy at the top of the climber for when it gets nearer the top ...
Is there also an issue of having more than one climber on the cable at any one time - surely that means you'd want to be firing the power laser at a suitable angle anyway, to power a specific cable car.
... I'm really worried about other stuff more. ...
A mother on the school run with kids misbehaving/fighting in the back for example?
I recently saw the aftermath of a (very!) minor accident where a guy was knocked off his pushbike by a young lady driving a car. He was thankfully uninjured and magnanimously let it go by suggesting she pay more attention in future because next time it might be his kids! I noticed that the young lady was wearing a Muslim-style headscarf which was not pinned back beside her head (which they often are) and was pretty much acting as blinkers! Arriving after the fact I've no idea if it was involved in the incident but it could easily have been a factor because of the reduced peripheral vision.
Even worse would be devout Muslims wearing the full Burkha, where there is often only a very small opening to look out - does this happen? In the UK it certainly does and it really makes a mockery of the safety laws!
See also driving whilst wearing hoodies.
See also darkened (AKA "privacy") Glass - at night - and the driver wearing sunglasses too!
Presumably, the Ontario cops no longer use any devices in their cars ... or did they build in a similar loophole? Perhaps eating an apple is banned, but read the fineprint and you'll see it's OK to eat doughnuts!
If something goes wrong on the surface, help is 39 days away, instead of 6 months.
Not sure that is always going to be the case, unless the VASIMR also has a side effect of locking Earth and Mars so they don't move relative to each other because I'm guessing the quoted 39 days is the minimum time for when Earth and Mars are at their closest.
Witch ever way you slice there'd be no spell when both Earth and the satellites were blocked by the Sun so it's a wizard idea.
Er ... OK, so how do you distinguish a publicly accessible system from a poorly secured one? He is, to all intents and purposes, the public and he sure as hell just walked in! Sure there may well have been a cardboard sign on the lawn with a plastic chain saying "Don't Walk On The Lawn" but that's hardly the barriers you'd expect of a top secret installation is it!
Oh bless your little colonial cotton socks, that's so quaint!
I think you will find that the US legal system is closely related to the British one, which has been around a tad longer (though is not necessarily the better for being so - wigs and whatnot, I ask you! What on earth do they think they look like!).
Hmmmm. I can see what you are saying but I'm not sure it's true. Sure, if a planet suddenly appeared in a specified orbit it would take 'time' (8 mins for a planet at Earth's distance, for example) before the gravitational effects would 'start', but as I understand it, that's not how a planet arrives in its orbit. They are assumed to coalesce over long periods of time into the planets, and during that time there will be a constant gravitational force, albiet a delayed one.
Think about waiting for a bus which is 8 minutes late. If the busses are 8 minutes apart you still catch a bus, it's just the earlier one, and to all intents and purposes you are unaware of the late running.
We could test this theory if we could remove the sun. If the Earth continued in its orbit for 8 minutes or so then we'd know, however briefly, that gravity travels at the speed of light.
I meant locked in the fact that it has no orbital spin.
Surely the moon is spinning with the same period as its orbit so we always see the same side. Funnily enough, if it wasn't spinning it would look like it was!
Do I win a t-shirt?
Hmmmm. I guess some people are 'curious' and some aren't - luckily for the human race there are enough 'curious' folks out there that those 'stay-at-homers' can rely on others to do the _essential_ exploring for them! Without some people to push the boundaries we'd all still be living in caves in Africa!
At some point your island simply won't be big enough to grow enough coconuts to support the population and you'll be wishing someone was far-sighted (or maybe just "mad"!) enough to have gone looking to see what was over the horizon! If you're lucky you'll still have time and resources to be able to do it then, but chances are you simply won't have the funds available to go look because every last cent will be spent dividing up the last coconut so everyone get's their fair share!
Over here in the UK we're not allowed to 'undertake' at all and we get members of the "Middle Lane Owner's Club" who will join a 3 lane motorway and regardless of traffic will move to the centre lane and stay there for the duration of their journey! They will often refuse to even pull out to overtake a slower vehicle! You then get queues of cars overtaking them until someone loses their patience and swoops in to undertake. They say things like "but if you move into the 'slow' lane you might not be able to move back out again" - I say if you can't change lanes on a motorway/highway then you've no business being behind the wheel in the first place!
Also, we have a school zone that is usually 45 and drops down to 35 - as it says on the sign, "School days 8:30-9:30am, 3:30-4:30pm." But people can't be bothered reading the rest of the sign... they just always go 35! AAAARRRRRGGGG!!!
We have 20MPH zones around schools and I mostly don't have a problem with it, except that the schools aren't open 24/7 and we don't get the higher limit out of school hours! Why can't they change the limit (variable limit depending on conditions, now there's a thought!) depending on the time of day, etc. I'd say have the limit at 10MPH during the times the kids arrive and/or leave school, 20MPH the rest of the school time, and back up to 30MPH out of school hours, and school holidays etc! I reckon most people who disregard speed limits do so because 90% of the time they are stupid limits (20MPH outside a school spilling kids out on to the streets, and 70MPH on an empty motorway for examples)! If the limits made sense people would be more likely to take notice!
Unfortunately the UK Police also have new(ish) anti-terrorism laws that pretty much allow them to do whatever the hell they like! They just have to say something like "I am arresting you under the 2000blah-de-blah anti-terrorism laws" or somesuch. They don't have to say WHY they suspect you before or after they arrest you. They can keep you locked up for days!
There was a story about some woman on the underground who was approached by some particularly fiesty female cop who asked if she could check the woman's handbag. She asked why? The fem-Cop said something like she didn't need to say why, and if she wanted she could arrest the woman under these anti-terrorism laws and drag her arse off to the cop-shop ...
Mostly, the UK is a great place to live, but we are most definately on the slippery-slope and it's sometimes a bit worrying!
OK ... it's either illegal or it isn't and the fact that when people are involved in an 'event' their opinions of whether or not the event is, or should be, illegal change has no bearing on the actuality of the legality of the event - and thankfully so! That is the reason why vigilantes are frowned upon, because they will more often than not have an emotional attachment to the event, and almost by definition will be looking to string someone up for it!
To examine any event for legality you really need to be able to step outside emotions and look at the problem rationally, and, as per my previous post, this is perhaps where the better educated are at an advantage.
They rationally look at the question and examine the facts, such as they are, to arrive at a conclusion. Some find for and some find against and the fact that some find the (alleged) perp not guilty isn't just because they can add up and/or spell, and it's actually not relevant which way they vote - the interesting thing is that they considered the evidence before voting whichever way they thought was the right way rather than following the herd!
Actually, there are some who think that is untrue, and here's why. The cost of feeding the world is ever rising as the population climbs. As the population climbs the amount of land available to grow things falls. At the moment, finding the few billions it might take to get us off-world just seems expensive, but at some point finding those billions may actually require taking the decision to stop feeding some people and that will be a tough decision for anyone to make!
There are some who suggest that if we don't det off-world NOW we may never have the spare cash to throw at it again, and that's a BIG risk for the survival of our species, and presumably all the species we take along with us for the ride. Though, to be fair, they often quote 100 years as "NOW", but it's still a gamble upon which our species very survival may rest!
Not only that, but I'd like to see it at least start to happen!
So why not have the ability to "skin" the interface to keep the primadonna clinicians happy? Provide a 'reasonable' default interface and a tool kit that enterprising folk can use to charge the clinicians for making a bespoke interface for that clinician. The clinician then owns his own interface that he can carry around with him (on a thumbdrive maybe).
The system should obviously provide an interface that attempts to provide standard information in a standard way, but should also have the ability to step 'over' the standard way when the clinicians feel it is preventing them from correctly/accurately/fully writing up the patient notes. These occasions should automatically flag themselves up to someone in the "office" who can manaully glean the correct info to fill in the "standard info". It could also notify the writers of the software, providing a feedback loop to help to improve the software for future versions.
My experience of "IT in Healthcare" is the closed shop encouraged by the NHS which means you HAVE to buy from a very small set of approved vendors who then provide last year's hardware at next year's prices!
I remember the last time the tories ousted labour and the hell of paying back all the debts we'd been saddled with that time, but at least they'll be getting the country back in roughly the same state they left it ... oh wait ... this just in ... apparently it's going to be just like the last time, if not worse!
That said, I honestly don't really trust them any more than I trust the current crop!
The energy will come from the car. If it didn't you wouldn't need the cars for the plates to generate energy! The 'car' will therefore lose energy, but this will only be 'extra fuel' if you are assuming that the drivers will want to keep their speed the same throughout the experience. As some have pointed out, keeping your speed down in the car park is a good idea and one option for the loss of energy experience by the car might be kinetic (speed) rather than chemical (fuel). What if all that happens is that the car slows down as it climbs onto the plate, then maybe slows a little more as it climbs out of the dip caused by the plate dropping? No extra fuel burnt. Car travelling ever-so-slightly slower in the car park. Some energy provided to the shop.
I don't know how much these plates cost to install and maintain, but it doesn't sound like such a bad idea ...
Coverage in Britain has concentrated on the fact that there were some UK citizens on the 'plane, like all you Johnny Foreigners somehow don't count ... and that there were some children on board too, which is apparently even worse than UK adults dieing!
I don't get it ... Is there some value system used to weigh up who's most valuable in a 'plane load of casualties? I REALLY wish they wouldn't do it. I look forward to the "Lucky there were no babies on board" headlines! Do sick children (as in "unwell" - really!) count more than healthy ones perhaps? Where do pregnant women figure?
They are pandering to the crowd (using real Pandas!) and the apparent need to join in the "recreational grief" when actually, yes, it's sad, but will otherwise have no effect on anyone not directly involved!
It's ludicrous and they should stop it!