There is no motivation to create a test of true innate spatial ability or pattern recognition (without the ridiculous cultural knowledge bias of early IQ tests, for instance), since no one really wants to know what the results would be if such a test were taken widely.
I think there is a motivation to create a "better" IQ test, but there's no consensus on what that would really mean. For example, you could create a test that assigned a score to people's ability to fit as many oddly shaped objects in a fixed volume. This would be a decent way to guage that person's ability to think spacially. Ok, so what do you do with this? Life is so complex that it is virtually impossible to control for all the factors that may affect a persons spacial awareness. If your goal was to prove/disprove any hypothesis on genetics affecting cognitive ability, this test would be useless because genetics are only one of many many factors that determines a person's development.
I think you are partially right saying that there is a PC barrier keeping people from doing experiments whose goal it is to find out, for example, which race is "the dumbest," but thats one use of PC that I actually agree with. Just look at "The Bell Curve." There you have a couple guys who start out with an answer to a question and justify it with anecdotal, incomplete evidence. Unless we can think of a perfect test, which is unlikely, I think we should stay away from this one, or we'll end up with more Bell Curves or worse, Mein Kampfs.
Finally I'd like to add a note on genetics: Why is it so well accepted that races differ in physical abilities yet not in other realms of achievement? For example see the prevalence of blacks in top level sprinting and basketball competition. Is this a social phenomenon, asians just don't want to grow up to be basketball players? (Hint: no. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000BD23 5-1F76-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21 as reference.) If this is true, and indeed it appears so (which doesn't bode well for me, a 5'7" asian with little hope of making it to the NBA;-) then why is it so outlandish to suggest that analogous differences appear in cognitive abilities?
It is accepted that races differ in some physical aspects because there is experimental evidence to support this. For running, there have been conclusive (remember this word) tests performed that show black athletes tend to have lower blood lactate levels than white athletes during strenuous exercise. This makes it easier for these black athletes to achieve higher VO2 levels while training which results in better competitive results.
As far as cognitive abilities, there is no conclusive evidence that black people (or any race) is any different from any other race. Things like SAT scores and IQ scores cannot be used because there are so many factors that can affect these scores that they are useless in any kind of genetic study. All we can get from them is a conclusion like, "Asians typically score higher on SAT tests than black people." You can't really make much more of an inference from that.
If this "gravity blocking" is not a real phenemenon, would you weigh differently on either side anyways because you are closer to the sun on the light side? I know a body in orbit doesn't feel the force of gravity from what it is orbitting (the sun) but are we, as people standing on the earth, really in orbit around the sun, or are we just stuck to something that is in orbit (the earth)? I'm not very experienced with physics as you may have guessed (just basic college classes).
This is the same irrational exuberance that persisted throughout the late 90s. People say, "Look, that looks cool, and a lot of people use it, so it MUST be a good investment." This groupthink forms a feedback loop and before you know it, the stock price is way beyond fair market valuations. When the company starts to run into trouble because it has too much cash on hand and too little management experience, people start dumping the stock, trying to get out while the price is high. This forms another feedback loop and the stock plummets.
Never, EVER buy a stock where the conventional wisdom says it is a sure thing...
It is that simple. When I buy a game (and I buy ALL of them) I always go to gamecopyworld.com and download the cracked exe so that I don't have to deal with the disk swapping. If I can't do this, and am forced to have the CD in the drive to play, I will not buy the game. It simply is not worth the hassle.
Bullshit.
Bush's entire campaign is based on the impression that he is a strong leader. How strong a leader do you think he will look like with 250,000 people demanding his head right outside of Madison Square Garden? Its awfully hard to act like a "war president" when the cameras are showing the royal guards beating up on American protesters.
As for this election being won by moderates and swing voters, once again I call bullshit. This election will be won by whoever can rile up its base enough. Remember, less than half of the population voted in the 2000 election. A whole bunch of Democrats didn't vote. Bush will be defeated when those Democrats who didn't vote can get riled up enough to get off their butts and go to the polls.
A cute little hedgehog is more marketable than a short fat plumber who plays with mushrooms.
How about a hedgehog that plays with mushrooms? And that, folks, was the worst joke I have told this month! I'm here all weekend. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Oh, you mean the ones that use human couriers to relay messages? The ones that live in caves with no access to computers?
No, this technology is not going to be used on terrorists. It is going to be used on a combination of normal people suspected of criminal activity (ie anyone who bothers to encrypt their communications) and actual hightech criminals.
This technology will be effectively useless at stopping the terrorists we are worried about.
What makes this any more than a hypothesis arrived at using math?
The fact that it is a mathematically derived consequence of theories that have already been extensively tested.
My point was that, generally, a theory has to be able to be falsified by experimental evidence for it to be a theory. Right now, as far as I'm aware, there is no way to falsify Hawking's idea on information destruction in black holes. Therefore, to my understanding, Hawking's idea cannot be a theory. Where am I wrong here?
My feeling is that theoretical physics is pretty useless when it is being used to describe something that can not be realistically verified. I mean, with black holes, we think we've detected them but there's not even any real solid proof that they exist at all.
No theory is ever proved to be true. Theories are only proved to be false. Strictly speaking, we can't even prove that the universe has any physical existence outside our own perceptions, which we cannot prove to be reliable. Verification comes in the form of tests of the predictions of a theory (quite a few of which have already been passed by black hole theory). And mathematically deriving the consequences of a theory is the only way to come up with such tests. In recent years, for example, physicists have managed to test aspects of quantum theory that were once considered to be outside the range of possible verification.
I understand that a theory cannot be proven, only disproven (or shown to be inconsistent with experimental results). I also understand that there may be some time in the future that we can test Hawking's idea. But I don't consider this to satisfy the requirements of being a scientific theory. I mean, I could say "There is a pink elephant on the other side of the universe." Well, sometime in the future, we may get a telescope that can see to the other side of the universe with accurate enough precision to pick out a pink elephant. Does this mean my idea is a theory because it is potentially falsifiable?
Those numbers show that Doom 3 runs well on 3.2 (or 3.6) ghz machines with either current generation or last generation cards. Now how about with a 2 ghz machine? I'm curious how much difference the processor makes as opposed to the video card.
3.6 ghz is not exactly mainstream, thats bleeding edge and still cost a whole lot of money...
How does Hawking's "theory" on black holes even rise above a hypothesis? The top poster was right, was there any controlled test that was done to see if information really does make it out of a black hole?
What makes this any more than a hypothesis arrived at using math?
My feeling is that theoretical physics is pretty useless when it is being used to describe something that can not be realistically verified. I mean, with black holes, we think we've detected them but there's not even any real solid proof that they exist at all.
This investment that you speak of is usually diversified so much that only a fraction of it goes to US companies. In fact, a ton of US investment has been poured into the Chinese economy in the last couple years, straight into the pockets of powerful interests that have no reason not to exploit what amounts to slave labor...Chinese labor laws are *much* looser than US labor laws.
So most of this money isn't even being reinvested back into the US. Ok, what about the money that is reinvested? Giving a ton of cash to any given company doesn't ensure that that company is going to add to its payroll. You see, large companies aren't just happy being profitable. They have to be as profitable as possible in comparison to their competitors. This is why a company like GM will cut jobs even while making profits. So, money that the company now has by increased stock sales (the reinvestment by Bill Gates in your example) will go into whereever the company can put it in order to become more profitable. Does hiring additional people = more profit? Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes it is more profitable to take that money and pay off bonds with it. Sometimes it is more profitable to take the money and invest it back into the market (further dilluting it throughout the world market).
So when it comes down to it, cutting taxes on rich people, even if you assume that the money will be invested, doesn't really do much for the American worker. Its a shell game, and the Republican Party has been fooling people with it for decades.
Ok, so how to do this, without reducing the energy you're getting from the oxygen at the same time?
Just a thought, but couldn't you get pure oxygen by cracking water molecules? You could use the hydrogen for fuel cell powered cars and the oxygen could be used in normal combustion engines...I'm not an engineer obviously.
Although the protagonist in the story was hetero, her landlady was openly lesbian. The story took place in the future (late 21st century?) and there was no implied stigma about the woman's relationship with another woman...Certainly a progressive view of the future, and one I hope comes to be.
If your phone company shut off your phone service because your son and his friends were making prank phone calls, would you be ok with that?
If there was a phone number that was making prank calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I certainly hope the telephone company would feel compelled to shut down the line.
However, this is not in any way analogous. An analogous situation would be if somebody went out to the telephone pole outside my house, hacked into my line, and started making cold calls to random numbers selling fake viagra. Yes, once again I would at the very least, want the phone company to close down the line until the problem was solved!
Ok, your internet connection no longer works. You call up your ISP and they tell you your computer has become hijacked and taken off the internet for your protection. They then give you clear instructions on how to un-hijack your computer, which you follow, they test, and now you are back on the internet.
Tell me again why this will make the ISP lose money? If anything the ISP will save money on not having to support the bandwidth required by thousands of spambots churning out hundreds of thousands of emails a day.
I don't see the problem here. These machines have been *hijacked* so there should be no issue cutting them off from the internet if not for the internet's sake, than for the sake of the owner of the computer! I mean, if the machine has been comprimised, there could be a keylogger running just as easily as a spambot program. Pull the damned thing off the internet and tell the user to fix their machine. If they don't know how to do this, charge them $20 for a technician to come out there and run adaware, S&D, etc...or offer to send them these programs on a CD through the mail or for pickup at the ISP office.
There is no excuse for not securing your computer. If people don't want to take the half hour it takes to learn how to download and run adaware, S&D, and/or an antivirus program, they should NOT be allowed to connect to the internet. Is this so unreasonable?
Next time record it going up the 1, much nicer scenery. The 5 is probably the most boring drive in all of california. Bakersfield, Fresno, Stockton...holy god it is boring.
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I think you are partially right saying that there is a PC barrier keeping people from doing experiments whose goal it is to find out, for example, which race is "the dumbest," but thats one use of PC that I actually agree with. Just look at "The Bell Curve." There you have a couple guys who start out with an answer to a question and justify it with anecdotal, incomplete evidence. Unless we can think of a perfect test, which is unlikely, I think we should stay away from this one, or we'll end up with more Bell Curves or worse, Mein Kampfs.
As far as cognitive abilities, there is no conclusive evidence that black people (or any race) is any different from any other race. Things like SAT scores and IQ scores cannot be used because there are so many factors that can affect these scores that they are useless in any kind of genetic study. All we can get from them is a conclusion like, "Asians typically score higher on SAT tests than black people." You can't really make much more of an inference from that.
If this "gravity blocking" is not a real phenemenon, would you weigh differently on either side anyways because you are closer to the sun on the light side? I know a body in orbit doesn't feel the force of gravity from what it is orbitting (the sun) but are we, as people standing on the earth, really in orbit around the sun, or are we just stuck to something that is in orbit (the earth)? I'm not very experienced with physics as you may have guessed (just basic college classes).
This is the same irrational exuberance that persisted throughout the late 90s. People say, "Look, that looks cool, and a lot of people use it, so it MUST be a good investment." This groupthink forms a feedback loop and before you know it, the stock price is way beyond fair market valuations. When the company starts to run into trouble because it has too much cash on hand and too little management experience, people start dumping the stock, trying to get out while the price is high. This forms another feedback loop and the stock plummets.
Never, EVER buy a stock where the conventional wisdom says it is a sure thing...
It is that simple. When I buy a game (and I buy ALL of them) I always go to gamecopyworld.com and download the cracked exe so that I don't have to deal with the disk swapping. If I can't do this, and am forced to have the CD in the drive to play, I will not buy the game. It simply is not worth the hassle.
Bullshit. Bush's entire campaign is based on the impression that he is a strong leader. How strong a leader do you think he will look like with 250,000 people demanding his head right outside of Madison Square Garden? Its awfully hard to act like a "war president" when the cameras are showing the royal guards beating up on American protesters.
As for this election being won by moderates and swing voters, once again I call bullshit. This election will be won by whoever can rile up its base enough. Remember, less than half of the population voted in the 2000 election. A whole bunch of Democrats didn't vote. Bush will be defeated when those Democrats who didn't vote can get riled up enough to get off their butts and go to the polls.
I believe you mean "Camptown Lady". Or maybe it goes by both names, I'm just trying to be anal.
And that, folks, was the worst joke I have told this month!
I'm here all weekend. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
I just wrote the opening lyrics to "Oops, I Did It Again" on a piece of paper with a pencil.
Damn, shouldn't have done that, now I need to go vomit...
Oh, you mean the ones that use human couriers to relay messages? The ones that live in caves with no access to computers?
No, this technology is not going to be used on terrorists. It is going to be used on a combination of normal people suspected of criminal activity (ie anyone who bothers to encrypt their communications) and actual hightech criminals.
This technology will be effectively useless at stopping the terrorists we are worried about.
I understand that a theory cannot be proven, only disproven (or shown to be inconsistent with experimental results). I also understand that there may be some time in the future that we can test Hawking's idea. But I don't consider this to satisfy the requirements of being a scientific theory.
I mean, I could say "There is a pink elephant on the other side of the universe." Well, sometime in the future, we may get a telescope that can see to the other side of the universe with accurate enough precision to pick out a pink elephant. Does this mean my idea is a theory because it is potentially falsifiable?
Those numbers show that Doom 3 runs well on 3.2 (or 3.6) ghz machines with either current generation or last generation cards. Now how about with a 2 ghz machine? I'm curious how much difference the processor makes as opposed to the video card.
3.6 ghz is not exactly mainstream, thats bleeding edge and still cost a whole lot of money...
How does Hawking's "theory" on black holes even rise above a hypothesis? The top poster was right, was there any controlled test that was done to see if information really does make it out of a black hole?
What makes this any more than a hypothesis arrived at using math?
My feeling is that theoretical physics is pretty useless when it is being used to describe something that can not be realistically verified. I mean, with black holes, we think we've detected them but there's not even any real solid proof that they exist at all.
I'm sure you will have no problems. Upgrades always run smoothly.... ;)
Good luck, don't pull out too much hair!
This investment that you speak of is usually diversified so much that only a fraction of it goes to US companies. In fact, a ton of US investment has been poured into the Chinese economy in the last couple years, straight into the pockets of powerful interests that have no reason not to exploit what amounts to slave labor...Chinese labor laws are *much* looser than US labor laws.
So most of this money isn't even being reinvested back into the US. Ok, what about the money that is reinvested? Giving a ton of cash to any given company doesn't ensure that that company is going to add to its payroll. You see, large companies aren't just happy being profitable. They have to be as profitable as possible in comparison to their competitors. This is why a company like GM will cut jobs even while making profits. So, money that the company now has by increased stock sales (the reinvestment by Bill Gates in your example) will go into whereever the company can put it in order to become more profitable. Does hiring additional people = more profit? Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes it is more profitable to take that money and pay off bonds with it. Sometimes it is more profitable to take the money and invest it back into the market (further dilluting it throughout the world market).
So when it comes down to it, cutting taxes on rich people, even if you assume that the money will be invested, doesn't really do much for the American worker. Its a shell game, and the Republican Party has been fooling people with it for decades.
Although the protagonist in the story was hetero, her landlady was openly lesbian. The story took place in the future (late 21st century?) and there was no implied stigma about the woman's relationship with another woman...Certainly a progressive view of the future, and one I hope comes to be.
However, this is not in any way analogous. An analogous situation would be if somebody went out to the telephone pole outside my house, hacked into my line, and started making cold calls to random numbers selling fake viagra. Yes, once again I would at the very least, want the phone company to close down the line until the problem was solved!
Ok, your internet connection no longer works. You call up your ISP and they tell you your computer has become hijacked and taken off the internet for your protection. They then give you clear instructions on how to un-hijack your computer, which you follow, they test, and now you are back on the internet.
Tell me again why this will make the ISP lose money? If anything the ISP will save money on not having to support the bandwidth required by thousands of spambots churning out hundreds of thousands of emails a day.
I don't see the problem here. These machines have been *hijacked* so there should be no issue cutting them off from the internet if not for the internet's sake, than for the sake of the owner of the computer! I mean, if the machine has been comprimised, there could be a keylogger running just as easily as a spambot program. Pull the damned thing off the internet and tell the user to fix their machine. If they don't know how to do this, charge them $20 for a technician to come out there and run adaware, S&D, etc...or offer to send them these programs on a CD through the mail or for pickup at the ISP office.
There is no excuse for not securing your computer. If people don't want to take the half hour it takes to learn how to download and run adaware, S&D, and/or an antivirus program, they should NOT be allowed to connect to the internet. Is this so unreasonable?
Seriously, if you want to bring out the biggest nerds of them all, ask what the best linux console applications are.
Not insulting (I'm a nerd), just stating a truism.
Sorry, prior art. Its called a window.
You can ban people from your property. You could also script an item that would send the intruder flying away by applying a huge force to him.
Next time record it going up the 1, much nicer scenery. The 5 is probably the most boring drive in all of california. Bakersfield, Fresno, Stockton...holy god it is boring.