The hero culture is too deeply ingrained in American culture. More than any other Western country the US plays up so-called heroes. Whether it's the NY fire dept. or Superman the US needs its heroes in a way that other Western countries don't. "British Hero". "French Hero". "Swedish Hero". These are just adjectives attached to nouns. But the term "American Hero" is an idiom of its own with a meaning beyond simply a hero who happens to be American. It represents a piece of US culture exemplified by its fiction, news reporting and historical documents.
Whay am I saying all this? Well it ain't gonna change! Americans only understand history as a narrative about heroes. The US space program succeeded because it was a heroic venture and had popular support. I can't imagine it succeeding any other way. You think the public actually care about science? You're lucky any publicly funded science happens at all. NASA needs to compete with Hollywood for our dollars in order to succeed and that's not going to happen by explaining science to an uninterested public!
...and have occasional stomach problems. Everyone knows that stomach problems can be connected to inner ear problems. Does that mean I can write a web page about the dangers of mp3s on digestion and get/. to post my story on the front page?
If you are getting that from a first level tech support person ask to be sent to someone more senior.
I could write a book on our attempts to get anywhere with the Pac-Bell monopoly. Their customer service system, as many customers will tell you, designed to discourage customers from attempting to get any service. These techniques are extremely successful, we were succesfully discouraged after several hours of attempting to get service. (And that's just referring to the last few days.)
One major DSL problem
on
DSL Rising
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· Score: 5, Interesting
In my experience telephone lines in the Bay Area are not really suitable for reliable DSL service. A bit of weather (like last night, but not also on much milder days too) and signal quality degrades. For voice it just produces crackling on the line but it kills DSL. If I speak to Pac-Bell (or whatever name my local phone monopoly has this week) the response is simply "it's raining, that's normal". DSL runs over ordinary telephone lines which were not designed to carry high bandwidth data.
With Cable I experienced a reliable weather-independent service.
It's not a definition of circularity. I'm not saying anything about how I come to the conclusion that the Bible is possible to believe in its entirety. Again people are attacking me my imagining some argument that I didn't make and accusing me of circularity. You people really are pretty incompetent when it comes to reading stuff critically.
My primary objection is the continual pitting of evolution against creationism when the two are apples and oranges, fact and faith, and neither can disprove the other
I really don't understand this at all. Religion and science both make statements of (intended) fact (As well as other things. Religion can also provide a path to salvation, something that Science cannot). If they contradict each other they contradict each other. There is no such thing as a fact fact and a faith fact. That's like saying "my car has 4 wheels" and "I am male" are different kinds of facts because you demonstrate them in different ways (looking out the window, looking down my pants). It doesn't matter how you come to a fact, but once you do it is, well, just a fact.
I believe you must be referring to the pejorative usage of the term 'syllogism'. I don't think you are applying the term correctly. I am not deducing that the Earth is 6000 years old from the fact that gas giants can form in hundreds of years. Read what I wrote again, I think it's pretty clear. I'm just claiming that I'm not surprised by the discovery.
Nonetheless - I'm going to press forward and show how it is evidence for my claim notwithstanding your syllogism dig.
Let me spell out my logic in full. I need to simplify greatly in order to do this but I am merely trying to illustrate the general form of an argument rather than give the actual argument (which would require much more time than I have right now).
Suppose we have two hypotheses: (1) The Universe is 6000 years old and (2) The Universe is many millions of years old. There are various bits of (on their own inconclusive) evidence in support of both of these hypotheses. Part of the evidence in favor of hypothesis (2) is that there are things in this Universe that apparently need >6000 years to form. Some of this evidence has been removed. As a result the pendulum shifts slightly away from hypothesis (2) to hypothesis (1). So I claim this discovery does, by an indirect path, provide evidence for hypothesis (1).
Seriously, in defense of Christianity, and I am agnostic, scant few Christians subscribe to creationism or intelligent design...
Not in the US where I live. Obviously we need to send more people over to spread the word. But truth isn't determined democratically anyway.
And someone mod up my original comment. I am being persecuted for what are mainstream beliefs in much of the US.
if such a thing is possible given its complexities
A Literalist isn't just someone who believes the truth of the Bible. It is someone who believes that it is possible to believe the truth of the Bible as well as believing its truth. So for a Literalist there can be no question of whether or not it is 'possible given its complexities'.
God made the Earth about 6000 years ago so it couldn't have formed in millions of years. Similarly evidence from the petrochemical industry is now demonstrating that coal and oil can form in short periods of time too. Ultimately all science will lead back to scripture.
If all SF writers Forward was the absolute worst at character and story. But that doesn't matter one bit. His ideas were great! It's very depressing the way people forget this when they review someone's work and that eventually it gets to the point that a great SF writer suddenly feels the need to sacrifice the science for story and character when they are completely incapable of it. The same has happened with Egan, Bear, Clarke and many others.
If someone makes a public announcement you must ask "why are they saying it?". Is it even remotely possible that we are being told this for our edification? I think not. I'm not sure what the real reason is.
It was a book on evolution and human health that I no longer have and no longer have a reference to. However, if you do a web search on myopia and evolution you'll find quite a few references which you can then chase up to find a trustworthy source. There's quite a bit of unreliable material on this subject so definitely don't trust just web sites!
When an out of focus image is presented to the retina it stimulates growth of that part of the eye resulting in a change in eyeball shape. This is the normal mechanism by which the lens-retina system forms and maintains a system that can focus in an organism over its lifetime. However it's not a perfect mechanism and using the wrong lenses can seriously mess it up.
This, incidentally, is one of the reasons for myopia in our modern society. The eye is adjusting to long periods of close up work to which it is not well adapted. This causes the eye to grow into a maladapted shape.
With this new realization, is there any doubt that there exists life on other planets?
The discovery was life on Earth. From this you conclude there is life on other planets. This is what is known in the logic trade as a non-sequitur. There are two things you can do with a non-sequitur. You can admit you were wrong or fill in the details.
I've read dozens of fiction and non-fiction books on my Palm now. I'm a busy person and often have little time to read. My Palm allows me to read any time, even in meetings. As a result I think it's one of the most important pieces of technology that's appeared in my lifetime. The biggest advance since Gutenberg. It's much underrated IMHO.
I know Yang-Mills and Yang-Baxter but I have no recollection of Yang-Chibara. It sounds like a plausible name but I'd expect at least one reference to Chibara at arxiv.org if it were for real.
I think you mean Calabi-Yau manifolds. Typically 6D Calabi-Yau manifolds are used to describe the 'compactification' of 10D manifolds down to 4D in Superstring theory.
There is almost no experimental proofs for quantum field theory
How about the prediction of the anomalous electron magnetic moment to quite a few decimal places? That prediction uses QFT.
And there is no reasonable argument for the choice of 11 dimensions
What does that have to do with it? QFT works in 4 dimensions. Are you confused between QFT and supersymmetric QFT? And strangeness has nothing to do with supersymmetry. I think you should go back to your mathematics.
Hmmm...and I've never heard of Yang-Chibara manifolds and they aren't mentioned anywhere in arxiv.org.
Let's see. 2Mb. I don't know what the screen res is - let's say 160x160, which is probably an overestimate. Assume mono so that's 8 pixels/byte. That means 2,000,000/160/160*8 = 625 images.
I'll be watching carefully to see how much longer people with these things spend in the bathroom.
Slashdot Mirror
Whay am I saying all this? Well it ain't gonna change! Americans only understand history as a narrative about heroes. The US space program succeeded because it was a heroic venture and had popular support. I can't imagine it succeeding any other way. You think the public actually care about science? You're lucky any publicly funded science happens at all. NASA needs to compete with Hollywood for our dollars in order to succeed and that's not going to happen by explaining science to an uninterested public!
...and have occasional stomach problems. Everyone knows that stomach problems can be connected to inner ear problems. Does that mean I can write a web page about the dangers of mp3s on digestion and get /. to post my story on the front page?
WCIII is alreadt fast on 1GHz machines. More than twice as fast as my 550MHz system. I hope it becomes playable. It's pretty unplayable right now.
Are you sure? How much faster is WCIII? 1% faster? 10% faster? 100% faster? Details please!
...I hope they introduce a good system for tracking whose liver is whose. I'd hate to get your liver put in me by mistake.
With Cable I experienced a reliable weather-independent service.
Nonetheless - I'm going to press forward and show how it is evidence for my claim notwithstanding your syllogism dig.
Let me spell out my logic in full. I need to simplify greatly in order to do this but I am merely trying to illustrate the general form of an argument rather than give the actual argument (which would require much more time than I have right now).
Suppose we have two hypotheses: (1) The Universe is 6000 years old and (2) The Universe is many millions of years old. There are various bits of (on their own inconclusive) evidence in support of both of these hypotheses. Part of the evidence in favor of hypothesis (2) is that there are things in this Universe that apparently need >6000 years to form. Some of this evidence has been removed. As a result the pendulum shifts slightly away from hypothesis (2) to hypothesis (1). So I claim this discovery does, by an indirect path, provide evidence for hypothesis (1).
Not in the US where I live. Obviously we need to send more people over to spread the word. But truth isn't determined democratically anyway.And someone mod up my original comment. I am being persecuted for what are mainstream beliefs in much of the US.
God made the Earth about 6000 years ago so it couldn't have formed in millions of years. Similarly evidence from the petrochemical industry is now demonstrating that coal and oil can form in short periods of time too. Ultimately all science will lead back to scripture.
Unfortunately wen you bouhgt your spellchecker you forgot to get the ecxpensive one and now it's broke like mien.
If all SF writers Forward was the absolute worst at character and story. But that doesn't matter one bit. His ideas were great! It's very depressing the way people forget this when they review someone's work and that eventually it gets to the point that a great SF writer suddenly feels the need to sacrifice the science for story and character when they are completely incapable of it. The same has happened with Egan, Bear, Clarke and many others.
If someone makes a public announcement you must ask "why are they saying it?". Is it even remotely possible that we are being told this for our edification? I think not. I'm not sure what the real reason is.
It was a book on evolution and human health that I no longer have and no longer have a reference to. However, if you do a web search on myopia and evolution you'll find quite a few references which you can then chase up to find a trustworthy source. There's quite a bit of unreliable material on this subject so definitely don't trust just web sites!
When an out of focus image is presented to the retina it stimulates growth of that part of the eye resulting in a change in eyeball shape. This is the normal mechanism by which the lens-retina system forms and maintains a system that can focus in an organism over its lifetime. However it's not a perfect mechanism and using the wrong lenses can seriously mess it up.
This, incidentally, is one of the reasons for myopia in our modern society. The eye is adjusting to long periods of close up work to which it is not well adapted. This causes the eye to grow into a maladapted shape.
But everyone knows they've been running this project since at least 1969 when they produced synthetic views from the surface of the moon...
I put a warning on my web site about how much I charge for 'storing' spam. But so far all of the invoices I have sent have been ignored.
That sucks. I was hoping to see Matrix II and III in a movie theater. Now I have to watch it as a cheesy animation on an AOL website. Crap!
And you don't take a photo. Either you're a liar, dumb, or both.
I've read dozens of fiction and non-fiction books on my Palm now. I'm a busy person and often have little time to read. My Palm allows me to read any time, even in meetings. As a result I think it's one of the most important pieces of technology that's appeared in my lifetime. The biggest advance since Gutenberg. It's much underrated IMHO.
I think you mean Calabi-Yau manifolds. Typically 6D Calabi-Yau manifolds are used to describe the 'compactification' of 10D manifolds down to 4D in Superstring theory.
Hmmm...and I've never heard of Yang-Chibara manifolds and they aren't mentioned anywhere in arxiv.org.
OK, I've been succesfully trolled.
I'll be watching carefully to see how much longer people with these things spend in the bathroom.