As is common, the university press release (and the news story that cribs from it) is considerably over the top compared to the actual publications (and the actual findings). The research is interesting, but not some kind of groundbreaking discovery of Roman marine concrete, which is of course already well known. What it's actually doing is detailed investigation into the chemical properties of the concrete and how it's formed, in order to better understand the particular material-science aspects of this form of concrete.
Here's the abstract:
The material characteristics and elastic properties of aluminum-substituted 11 Å tobermorite in the relict lime clasts of 2000-year-old Roman seawater harbor concrete are described with TG-DSC and 29Si MAS NMR studies, along with nanoscale tomography, X-ray microdiffraction, and high-pressure X-ray diffraction synchrotron radiation applications. The crystals have aluminum substitution for silicon in tetrahedral bridging and branching sites and 11.49(3) Å interlayer (002) spacing. With prolonged heating to 350C, the crystals exhibit normal behavior. The experimentally measured isothermal bulk modulus at zero pressure, K0, 55 ±5 GPa, is less than ab initio and molecular dynamics models for ideal tobermorite with a double-silicate chain structure. Even so, K0, is substantially higher than calcium-aluminum-silicate-hydrate binder (C–A–S–H) in slag concrete. Based on nanoscale tomographic study, the crystal clusters form a well connected solid, despite having about 52% porosity. In the pumiceous cementitious matrix, Al-tobermorite with 11.27 Å interlayer spacing is locally associated with phillipsite, similar to geologic occurrences in basaltic tephra. The ancient concretes provide a sustainable prototype for producing Al-tobermorite in high-performance concretes with natural volcanic pozzolans.
Yes, but you still can't patent something that's widespread public knowledge. First-to-file is just a way of resolving disputes over priority when two people claim the right to patent an invention. The alternative system is first-to-invent, which has more problems because it requires digging into each party's private records of when they invented the thing, and trusting that those records aren't falsified.
You have to admit it's easier than doing real historical analysis, though! Technology is a complex thing, and analyzing who contributed to technological innovation requires a lot of tracing connections and contributions. You know, the kind of work historians of technology do.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier if, instead of having to do work, we could just sort companies by how much their stock has gone up, and declare that a measure of innovation?
A lot of that difference is cultural rather than technological, though. In 1995 people didn't want something like a tablet, even if it were cheaper and better.
The particular form today's economy is taking will probably actually produce more of them. It's mostly the poor and middle classes who are being hit, while the rich are doing very well, perhaps better than ever before. Trust-fund hipster kids come from rich families, not poor or middle-class ones, so this market segment looks bullish. As long as the S&P 500 keeps climbing and bonuses keep coming in, their trust funds will stay bankrolled...
Interestingly, the former chemicals division of Eastman Kodak, spun off in the 1990s as the Eastman Chemical Company, is still one of the major producers of cellulose acetate. While its usage as a film base usage is declining, its usage for lots of things, ranging from cigarette filters to LCD screens, is increasing.
governments can no longer afford to provide college education
It's more that they no longer want to pay for it, not that they can't afford it. California spends far less money on the UC system today than it did in 1985, for example, and it's not because the overall California budget has shrunk: they've just decided to spend the money on other things.
At Ayn Rand university, round-robin scheduling is strictly banned from the curriculum. The purpose of an OS scheduling algorithm must be to reward processes' individual merit, not to enforce discredited socialist concepts like "resource fairness" or "nonstarvation".
In my corner of the world (CS), I think the professors' name recognition plays a fairly big role, though I could be wrong w.r.t. what the average person notices. When I see e.g. a robotics course by Sebastian Thrun, or an AI course by Peter Norvig, or a data-analysis course by Michael Littman, their names catch my eye more than the fact that they happen to be at Stanford, Google, and Brown, respectively.
They're not claiming the existence of MOOCs threatens academic freedom, but that the universities' IP grab, claiming ownership of course materials in order to license them to for-profit firms like Coursera, does so. The traditional IP agreement is that universities own a share of patentable inventions developed using university facilities, but do not own copyrights on materials, such as books, articles, course slides, tutorials, presentations, etc. produced by professors, which are supposed to be free of any university legal interference.
I can't find a treason charge in the list of charges. The closest is that he's charged with a military-specific count of "aiding the enemy" while serving as a U.S. soldier. That appears to be using the theory that releasing documents publicly constitutes "indirect means" of aiding the enemy, and any U.S. soldier who indirectly aids the enemy has violated military conduct rules. That's rather different from charging and proving a civilian charge of treason, which has a higher bar.
The Constitution specifically restricts treason to two cases: 1) levying war against the United States; 2) "adhering" to its enemies, which is generally taken to require explicitly joining them or allying with them. For example, someone who joined the Wehrmacht during WW2 would be guilty of treason. So would someone who joins Al-Qaeda today. Or someone who raises a private army and invades a U.S. territory.
Treason cannot be charged just for any act that harms the United States or benefits its enemies, but only the specific acts of levying war against the country or joining someone else who is doing so. The Founding Fathers were worried about the more expansive meaning of "treason" that had been in use in Europe, to mean anyone who is taken to betray their country's interests, so defined it much more narrowly in the Constitution.
The justification for shooting an intruder in your house is self-defense, since you might reasonably fear for your life if someone's broken into your house (especially if they're armed). The purpose is not to authorize vigilante retaliation or punishment. Therefore, if the person isn't in your house anymore, there is no longer a justification for shooting them.
Actually, even if your house you shouldn't shoot them unless you actually do fear for your life and it's truly self-defense. Not all states require you to prove that (partly due to worries over whether it's possible to prove), but you are not supposed to shoot someone just because you can get away with it.
That's true, I'm not saying energy efficiency is bad or anything. But I was responding to the claim that increasing energy efficiency will stop per-capita energy usage from increasing.
Empirically, across a pretty wide range of situations, energy efficiency improvements tend to actually increase rather than decrease net energy usage, an observation known as the Jevons paradox.
About 1/3 of current GA piston planes can use an unleaded fuel. I would guess that number would increase rapidly if there were a phase-out period where 100LL were taxed to make it significantly more expensive.
It's piston-engine stuff like Cessnas that make up the remaining leaded avgas users, and even there, only the subset of engines that require the 100-octane avgas. Both newer and some older stuff can use 91-octane stuff that's now unleaded.
If a person uses force to continue to occupy property which is no longer theirs, because they have lost title to it in order to secure payment of their debts, they are not in the right, and their use of violence is unjustified.
The person who initiates violence, the murderous tax-protestor with insane theories for why his murder is justified, is the one in the wrong.
No, Hayek was an individualist, who thought a functioning state was necessary specifically to oppose collectivism. In the absence of a functioning state, the only feasible option is tribalism: people must band together for protection against roving bands of thieves, and to have any hope of contracts being enforced or anything else you expect in a functioning society.
Hayek, as an individualist, thought the basics of a functioning society should be available to any individual without a tribalist system of providing them. Hence, he believed a state should exist that can do some basic things: 1) defend the nation against outside threats; 2) provide police that make sure there are not roving bands of thieves, rapists, and murderers; 3) operate hospitals; 4) enforce commercial contracts; and 5) provide a minimum level of subsistence income as a safety net.
Those are all functions that are required for a society, and in the absence of a state guaranteeing them to all individuals, the void will be filled by collectivist, tribalist groupings such as extended-family clans, ethnic groups, churches, cults, and the like.
If they do something crazy like shoot a police officer, then they might be executed (or killed in an exchange of fire), yes. But not for nonpayment of taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
As is common, the university press release (and the news story that cribs from it) is considerably over the top compared to the actual publications (and the actual findings). The research is interesting, but not some kind of groundbreaking discovery of Roman marine concrete, which is of course already well known. What it's actually doing is detailed investigation into the chemical properties of the concrete and how it's formed, in order to better understand the particular material-science aspects of this form of concrete.
Here's the abstract:
Yes, but you still can't patent something that's widespread public knowledge. First-to-file is just a way of resolving disputes over priority when two people claim the right to patent an invention. The alternative system is first-to-invent, which has more problems because it requires digging into each party's private records of when they invented the thing, and trusting that those records aren't falsified.
You have to admit it's easier than doing real historical analysis, though! Technology is a complex thing, and analyzing who contributed to technological innovation requires a lot of tracing connections and contributions. You know, the kind of work historians of technology do.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier if, instead of having to do work, we could just sort companies by how much their stock has gone up, and declare that a measure of innovation?
A lot of that difference is cultural rather than technological, though. In 1995 people didn't want something like a tablet, even if it were cheaper and better.
Pinball was actually one of the first things EA did...
The particular form today's economy is taking will probably actually produce more of them. It's mostly the poor and middle classes who are being hit, while the rich are doing very well, perhaps better than ever before. Trust-fund hipster kids come from rich families, not poor or middle-class ones, so this market segment looks bullish. As long as the S&P 500 keeps climbing and bonuses keep coming in, their trust funds will stay bankrolled...
Interestingly, the former chemicals division of Eastman Kodak, spun off in the 1990s as the Eastman Chemical Company, is still one of the major producers of cellulose acetate. While its usage as a film base usage is declining, its usage for lots of things, ranging from cigarette filters to LCD screens, is increasing.
governments can no longer afford to provide college education
It's more that they no longer want to pay for it, not that they can't afford it. California spends far less money on the UC system today than it did in 1985, for example, and it's not because the overall California budget has shrunk: they've just decided to spend the money on other things.
At Ayn Rand university, round-robin scheduling is strictly banned from the curriculum. The purpose of an OS scheduling algorithm must be to reward processes' individual merit, not to enforce discredited socialist concepts like "resource fairness" or "nonstarvation".
In my corner of the world (CS), I think the professors' name recognition plays a fairly big role, though I could be wrong w.r.t. what the average person notices. When I see e.g. a robotics course by Sebastian Thrun, or an AI course by Peter Norvig, or a data-analysis course by Michael Littman, their names catch my eye more than the fact that they happen to be at Stanford, Google, and Brown, respectively.
They're not claiming the existence of MOOCs threatens academic freedom, but that the universities' IP grab, claiming ownership of course materials in order to license them to for-profit firms like Coursera, does so. The traditional IP agreement is that universities own a share of patentable inventions developed using university facilities, but do not own copyrights on materials, such as books, articles, course slides, tutorials, presentations, etc. produced by professors, which are supposed to be free of any university legal interference.
I can't find a treason charge in the list of charges. The closest is that he's charged with a military-specific count of "aiding the enemy" while serving as a U.S. soldier. That appears to be using the theory that releasing documents publicly constitutes "indirect means" of aiding the enemy, and any U.S. soldier who indirectly aids the enemy has violated military conduct rules. That's rather different from charging and proving a civilian charge of treason, which has a higher bar.
The Constitution specifically restricts treason to two cases: 1) levying war against the United States; 2) "adhering" to its enemies, which is generally taken to require explicitly joining them or allying with them. For example, someone who joined the Wehrmacht during WW2 would be guilty of treason. So would someone who joins Al-Qaeda today. Or someone who raises a private army and invades a U.S. territory.
Treason cannot be charged just for any act that harms the United States or benefits its enemies, but only the specific acts of levying war against the country or joining someone else who is doing so. The Founding Fathers were worried about the more expansive meaning of "treason" that had been in use in Europe, to mean anyone who is taken to betray their country's interests, so defined it much more narrowly in the Constitution.
How is it treason? Is he levying war against the United States? Is he siding with the enemies of the United States?
The justification for shooting an intruder in your house is self-defense, since you might reasonably fear for your life if someone's broken into your house (especially if they're armed). The purpose is not to authorize vigilante retaliation or punishment. Therefore, if the person isn't in your house anymore, there is no longer a justification for shooting them.
Actually, even if your house you shouldn't shoot them unless you actually do fear for your life and it's truly self-defense. Not all states require you to prove that (partly due to worries over whether it's possible to prove), but you are not supposed to shoot someone just because you can get away with it.
That's true, I'm not saying energy efficiency is bad or anything. But I was responding to the claim that increasing energy efficiency will stop per-capita energy usage from increasing.
Empirically, across a pretty wide range of situations, energy efficiency improvements tend to actually increase rather than decrease net energy usage, an observation known as the Jevons paradox.
Shooting someone because you don't want to pay your debts is not "basic self-defense", you kook.
About 1/3 of current GA piston planes can use an unleaded fuel. I would guess that number would increase rapidly if there were a phase-out period where 100LL were taxed to make it significantly more expensive.
It's piston-engine stuff like Cessnas that make up the remaining leaded avgas users, and even there, only the subset of engines that require the 100-octane avgas. Both newer and some older stuff can use 91-octane stuff that's now unleaded.
You're trying to enslave people into a neo-feudal society. That's not freedom.
It's not even socialism. Hayek and Friedman, both strong opponents of socialism, supported a basic income.
If a person uses force to continue to occupy property which is no longer theirs, because they have lost title to it in order to secure payment of their debts, they are not in the right, and their use of violence is unjustified.
The person who initiates violence, the murderous tax-protestor with insane theories for why his murder is justified, is the one in the wrong.
No, Hayek was an individualist, who thought a functioning state was necessary specifically to oppose collectivism. In the absence of a functioning state, the only feasible option is tribalism: people must band together for protection against roving bands of thieves, and to have any hope of contracts being enforced or anything else you expect in a functioning society.
Hayek, as an individualist, thought the basics of a functioning society should be available to any individual without a tribalist system of providing them. Hence, he believed a state should exist that can do some basic things: 1) defend the nation against outside threats; 2) provide police that make sure there are not roving bands of thieves, rapists, and murderers; 3) operate hospitals; 4) enforce commercial contracts; and 5) provide a minimum level of subsistence income as a safety net.
Those are all functions that are required for a society, and in the absence of a state guaranteeing them to all individuals, the void will be filled by collectivist, tribalist groupings such as extended-family clans, ethnic groups, churches, cults, and the like.
Nobody will be executed for nonpayment of taxes.
If they do something crazy like shoot a police officer, then they might be executed (or killed in an exchange of fire), yes. But not for nonpayment of taxes.