Conspiracy with 1 person defies logic. The legal system is a joke. At least they found a half ass excuse with Don King by saying his 1 man corporation was another person besides himself the 1 man employee of that corporation (this was just part of the lead up to corporate person-hood.)
This DOES mean that reading becomes a thought crime. It starts out with simple clear things like reading directions on bomb making then it moves to whatever they can get a jury to believe your intent might have been with the knowledge you were seeking (or passively just reading or collecting, in court they may leave out that you may have just been getting torrents loaded with various books.)
YES we must wait until a crime is actually being committed. Future crime is the work of science fiction movies. No, this does not rule out somebody found actually making a bomb with proof of a motive (like plans) or who has struck before.
YES, we all die someday but at least we die as a free person and not as a authoritarian coward!
We let ATnT bribe it's way into being a bigger monster than they were previously and this despite having 1 majorly huge competitor in the cell market. The two of them together screw us probably worse than 1 entity because it wouldn't take long (well maybe a decade) to split them up again. That is being optimistic; but they can do quite well with an excuse of competition; plus this time they can make sure the system doesn't work like it did in the past.
The public has Internet AND TV to distract them with "reality" programming so they do not have to deal with their actual reality anymore.
There are a few "good apples" who get the rest too much sympathy for the public to do it. Ah, I'm talking about a minority so small that in many other areas it would amount to a rounding error.
OIL the life's blood of... all of us! Comparing that to the non-essential iPhone of hipsters of the world?
It takes about 10 calories of oil for 1 calorie of food you eat. per day. every day. The industrial revolution's fuels made the population boom possible. Oil is about LIFE; because we built this teetering world population upon an Oil foundation.
Oil was fraudulently priced too highly during an increased demand which stressed the already fragile world economy. Demand didn't raise the price of oil; they did and bribed anybody who knew better who could do anything about it.
They could just jack up the price tomorrow with no excuse what so ever and they would get it because its a NECESSITY (to avoid too much revolt, they do not push it any further than the edge of tolerance...) I bet they could hit 20 billion and not get enough congressmen to DO anything to them for a few more million in bribes.
The crime being stuck to the person is the problem; the punishment is merely relative to the culture. Iran probably will not kill him; they love those harsh things then make some sort of deal we don't know much about and a few years later he is out like an American hiker.
People do not notice long slow trends in part because you have to be old to have seen it; if you noticed it at all-- and if the trend was within a single lifetime.
College was something different in the past. It was not for everybody either. People who went into college already had status because not just anybody could get in but also not just anybody would even want to get in. Completing college was another level of status. It was this status, this prestige that gained which was beneficial later one in multiple ways. Gradually, more and more people saw it as a way to get ahead, especially the ones who started out from behind. Now we've past the point where many jobs have nothing to do with the degree and only seriously consider people with a degree for jobs that do not require one or perhaps even benefit from the worker having one. My local weatherman is not needed, they can go back to the models they used to have because for many decades now they just repeat the national weather service. The news readers suck at everything besides news reading so they do not need a journalism degree either.
So now days we are coming AFTER the colleges because these degrees we as a society overvalued and misunderstood are not fitting our expectations. College was NOT about job training. Trade schools and Apprenticeships are designed for that.
Forbit the signing away of one's rights. CA had something years ago saying employees couldn't sign away fundamental rights in employment contracts, but i forget all the details.
It is just a crime. Thought crimes are stupid. What you were feeling or thinking when you did the crime does not matter; point that matters-- you did the crime. Why you did it does not matter except during sentencing or to bias the jury but there is no need or should be any legal ability to codify bias against a criminal's bias.
Political posturing against unpopular minority groups unable to defend themselves against the scorn of the populace. its textbook. so we get another discriminatory law that undermines the system. Like taxing smokers "for their own good" when its just an easy scapegoat to rob a minority who can't help themselves and already waste money on the things as it is. (Sure they cost everybody more in the end and that should cost them but it has little to do with that politically as stadiums and other things are payed for by them because its not popular enough to tax the majority on a particular issue.) Another one is the crack cocaine laws for decades which were really about racism because 1 group didn't use 1 form of the drug. Or taking away former felon's voting rights sounds ok to people because they forever hate ex-convicts but that also is race influenced in its history and is really tied to class-ism.
I think the parent is pretty good but misses the HUGE point that the artists make only a minority of the profit from their work; most of it goes to the business middle men and related corporations who produce NOTHING. The business model for them is pretty much DEAD and unnecessary so not only should most of them go find other similar work but the ones who are left will have to settle for making less money and possibly a more fair portion of the wealth the artists generate.
His mistake was he should have covered himself by stealing a few billion dollars and giving a few million dollars to election campaigns. Or may he should have incorporated as a bank...
Just imagine how well musicians will be treated by their owners if they lose copyright when they die? No more managers giving drugs to artists but instead guarding them from such abuses... That would be the day... when the pathetic artists are protected by their benefactors! At least they'd get something for the exploitation.
I want the 30 hour work week with a month vacation that was supposed to happen by 2000. They never saw corporatism coming...
Where's the realistic and depressing predictions?
More people, fewer jobs, more robots and software doing the work.
Increased average work week. (seems contradictory...maybe everybody is part time and under employed.)
Smaller or weaker middle class in 1st world nations.
Recognized fall of the USA empire by 2025 (likely 2020. quote me.)
Rich people live twice as long as the lower classes.
The great debate over A.I. being life; what is life and many philosophical and religious issues as CS treads into people's ego boundaries (and many professions.)
Standardized micro-payments and increased surveillance. Think of the possibilities!
CA (as a state) is no parasite; far from it. California pays more federal taxes and receives back less money than probably any other state. In the USA, people don't even realize states like CA and NY support loser states like Texas; CA gives and doesn't get much back; while many southern states are a drain on the nation financially. People think the Greek situation is bad... we've been "bailing out" over half our states for a century.
CA has internal state-level money problems which in many ways reflect the nations problems; if they kept that federal money instead of losing it to poor states they'd be far better off. They also have a similar political problem; their budget situation is worse because their rules enforce the dysfunction which at the federal level the GOP is purposely causing dysfunction by choice. They've said as much; at some point they can start doing their job; in CA a lot of problems are written in law so fixing things involve 1st in fixing the system. For example, in CA a filibuster like rule is law on the budget while in the US Senate it is just a DoS attack. Another example is yearly budget battles (vs 2 yrs.) Another example is off-the-table big budget items.
I'm not connected to CA; but the parent was so far off
It is self offense maybe. It is not defense; as you said "those who WOULD kill you" so you are striking 1st and by definition that is not defense. If they declare war/intent then that is the beginning of an attack (although only formal) therefore you can take the defense. Yes, one could interpret "would" in other ways but we are in the context of modern insane geopolitics so that means "would" is purely presumptive and exaggerated or false.
I thought that the skin effect was Hz dependent and that at low Hz it is much lower than at high Hz-- meaning that we probably are using the whole wire except for really thick cables.
We need a new grid that is designed smarter (not a smart grid) which can handle distributed power sources better; as well as lose less power --- because power costs a whole lot more today we shouldn't be losing 10% or more to the grid (especially if the power is coming from the immediate area's solar panels.)
What about DC power? a DC grid? resistance losses are due to VOLTAGE not AC/DC and surely we can more cheaply convert DC today than during the AC/DC fight a century ago when DC conversion was difficult and costly. (even if it costs more, consider all the grid tie and sync costs a distributed AC grid needs as well as component lifespan and the fact you can put cables DC underground and not waste power.)
These cables do not sound like a solution to me. Americans should see what other nations are doing to address the problem and adopt the successful solutions (I know that is "unamerican" but no reason to not hope for maturity.) I hear that somebody did really well by working with recyclers... since copper has to be taken to somebody.
I thought Japan was lowering their limits on radiation recently to make it appear not as bad? What used to be the safe amount?? Or is this just in general while other specific things were lowered? I definitely remember reports on politicians adjusting the limits but do not remember what there were on (may have been for crops) and if they were forced to restore the previous limits.
If you KILL the black market by removing the profit motive you make it difficult to buy the stuff on the black market.
Making a bigger police state is foolish; some of the biggest police states have been unable to stop forbidden things besides drugs...Christianity, revolutionary talk, underground papers, guerrillas, the French resistance, banned products, ALCOHOL, violations of copyright... just to name a few.
Cigarettes still continue under a really discriminatory tax; illegal non-taxed product is probably impossible to come bye and will be as long as the tax is not too high...
Free government clinics where you strap in and shoot up can be quite helpful in helping these extra desperate people (not to mention they flip out in a safe place.) A huge amount of domestic violence is drug related. You can't over limit them otherwise you create an alternative market to serve them! Yet another best solution impossible in the USA because the moralist nanny state freaks insist in dictating your lifestyle.
Making a 3D skin model and making a real jet are two totally different things. Not to mention the academic information behind this can be openly found and used; I doubt they are adding much theory that isn't already known.
No, I think Iran has rights to the part of the passage way that lies within their waters and part of it does (it is setup as two lanes.) Actually, the GPS lanes could be moved to Oman's waters and not touch Iranian waters; unless the treaty requires the 1 lane always be theirs or that the dividing line is defined as between the two lanes... I don't know but I wouldn't think so. Then Iran would be stuck as the traffic would move around them. It would not be within their rights to mess with the water outside their jurisdiction. I rarely hear of a treaty that doesn't have some sort of a national security clause of some sort (even without one its an excuse that often trumps any previous laws.)
That being said, I'm not a biased Iranian Apologist; I have no connection to them, I am a white atheist and I hate all theocracies. Iran is not being handled properly and a huge portion of its people are not close to as backwards as their leadership who cares about ideology over its own people; but they get punished by the madness inside and outside their nation. BTW, here is a talk on game theory: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2009/04/28/predicting-the-future-of-iran-using-game-theory-bruce-bueno-de-mesquita-on-tedcom/
Actually, science doesn't require an explanation or understanding - merely a form of proof. Now science is not static; it is a process. More proof and study follow; especially for things that are poorly understood (bigger discoveries likely= more interest.)
The black box is unproven, not fake. As far as I've heard (which is little.) You can't be doing science if you assume it is fake; you must PROVE it is fake. This is much harder, it is far easier to just prove it doesn't work.;-)
This "skeptical" science line is on par with being a "lazy" programmer or the 1/3 image framing rules in photography. They are a generalized guidelines not a rule!! Probably such things should be limited to students only because we have too many ignorant people using them as rules. I'm waiting for a congress moron to talk about how all our good programmers are lazy and if they would only work harder... our internet tubes wouldn't clog up so often...
"Cold Fusion is impossible" is bad science because this has never been proven; we have many times where theories and discoveries were proven false but no proof. Flight was loaded with failures for 100s of years; lots of proven false theories/experiments later somebody proved one true and we didn't understand why it worked at the time either. It worked and that is all that mattered to most people.
If it takes in X amount and outputs Y amount. It could be influential if it runs at 1% efficiency because your gas car is below 50% on expensive fuel -- if it runs cheaper at 1% it still wins! (if it is nuclear or fusion the power density would be so great wasting wouldn't matter again...until that fuel supply gets low...) Somebody credible needs to test it; if it works, then others will test it... Actually, it may not work but it could raise interesting problems which leads to discoveries none of which could result in a new power source. I forget but MIT was looking into some Canadian gadget with magnetism which was some silly over unity type thing (from the sound of it) because it didn't fail as predicted and raised interesting questions-- that one was quite a while ago
What is even worse is how we have US officials framing the idea of Iran blocking their waterway as an act of war! The Irony!! When it is the US involved in cutting off Iranian Oil from getting out as part of the sanctions against Iran exercising its (unpopular) rights -- that is not an act of war...
Me, I think it is a big game of chicken. Convincing the other players who is more crazy, the USA or Iran. All the oil buyers want is stability so siding with the USA is what they think is in their best interests at the moment; while before, they were playing more towards the middle. If Iran can convince them that they are more crazy and can foobar everybody more then it will go back to being less committed. This is not likely to happen; I think. The USA has less to lose compared to everybody else and has power factions pushing heavily to attack Iran more than ever before and this is well known (and its an election year.)
Somalis compared to Americans?? It is a simple balance where any group put into our situation would act no differently. Humans are all relative in their judgements. You couldn't pick a larger contrast in the world-- the poorest and suffering vs the richest and pampered! They can't be fairly compared unless you think in relative terms; and even then none of this is quantitative so it is always going to be a subjective comparison.
Humans don't function on fixed points they operate upon relative distances and you'll be hard pressed to find any evidence against this; all the science says so and that is where I learned about it. Hell, even vision itself is interpretative!
A people put into a horrible situation where the risk is close to the risk of doing nothing have far less of a leap from inaction and action in terms of costs and risks to themselves and/or their families. That is when mass movements happen; when the gap between the two is small enough that a lot of people are willing to take it. There are always people on either side of the bell curve who are heroes/nutcases or cowards/benefactors. The "gap" is a distance that is transferable between situations; not the start/end points- its the delta that matters.
There is NOT a lot to lose to these people by taking risks or sacrificing all when the gap becomes small.
Possibly the most powerful but often forgotten is the whole culture's reaction - the peer pressure is so great; people only lie to themselves when they think they outgrew it; Americans are especially defensive about being individualists and it is really ironic! In American culture the activists are nutcases, hippies, losers, bitching, get a job... etc. for generations now. In Somalia, the fighters were/are much more publicly supported and at least far better understood than activists are here. You know, a major part of the design of the US was to civilize popular revolution and give it an outlet besides violent warfare. Now in recent times its becoming clear to people that system is not working and has only been placating people to trick them into believing they have a political outlet. If this understanding grows a new outlet will be needed until some change can be perceived ("let them eat cake" will probably suffice for another generation. Occupy may appease some for a while because its a movement that is building and I think that a cycle of building movements that fall apart due to ineffectiveness could keep people busy a while longer.)
Rich Kings didn't have the same perspective and their relative judgement didn't make them cowards but they acted like cowards to those on the outside because of the perspective shift. Too much relative risk; so much so that the peasant couldn't comprehend it because their lives or even that of their family was LOW; they were already just slightly above bottom.... Which is why such horrific punishments were needed to control those people; to widen the gap between inaction and action. Midevil times, the Romans, and all those "primitive" societies needed their levels of barbarism. Don't think this is lost on people today; many in the USA were for illegal barbaric methods because civilized ones were not strong enough to control the "tarrist peoples" because they wouldn't understand otherwise. They understood, but more accurately it was about making them feel the proper amount of fear to drive the point home. In the USA they merely need to take away your SUV and your mind is blown at the loss. (exaggerating but still, its a relative thing... ah... take money from a baby and they don't care; take away the toy it is sucking on... )
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Conspiracy with 1 person defies logic. The legal system is a joke. At least they found a half ass excuse with Don King by saying his 1 man corporation was another person besides himself the 1 man employee of that corporation (this was just part of the lead up to corporate person-hood.)
This DOES mean that reading becomes a thought crime. It starts out with simple clear things like reading directions on bomb making then it moves to whatever they can get a jury to believe your intent might have been with the knowledge you were seeking (or passively just reading or collecting, in court they may leave out that you may have just been getting torrents loaded with various books.)
YES we must wait until a crime is actually being committed. Future crime is the work of science fiction movies. No, this does not rule out somebody found actually making a bomb with proof of a motive (like plans) or who has struck before.
YES, we all die someday but at least we die as a free person and not as a authoritarian coward!
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
We let ATnT bribe it's way into being a bigger monster than they were previously and this despite having 1 majorly huge competitor in the cell market. The two of them together screw us probably worse than 1 entity because it wouldn't take long (well maybe a decade) to split them up again. That is being optimistic; but they can do quite well with an excuse of competition; plus this time they can make sure the system doesn't work like it did in the past.
The public has Internet AND TV to distract them with "reality" programming so they do not have to deal with their actual reality anymore.
There are a few "good apples" who get the rest too much sympathy for the public to do it. Ah, I'm talking about a minority so small that in many other areas it would amount to a rounding error.
OIL the life's blood of ... all of us! Comparing that to the non-essential iPhone of hipsters of the world?
It takes about 10 calories of oil for 1 calorie of food you eat. per day. every day. The industrial revolution's fuels made the population boom possible. Oil is about LIFE; because we built this teetering world population upon an Oil foundation.
Oil was fraudulently priced too highly during an increased demand which stressed the already fragile world economy. Demand didn't raise the price of oil; they did and bribed anybody who knew better who could do anything about it.
They could just jack up the price tomorrow with no excuse what so ever and they would get it because its a NECESSITY (to avoid too much revolt, they do not push it any further than the edge of tolerance...) I bet they could hit 20 billion and not get enough congressmen to DO anything to them for a few more million in bribes.
The crime being stuck to the person is the problem; the punishment is merely relative to the culture. Iran probably will not kill him; they love those harsh things then make some sort of deal we don't know much about and a few years later he is out like an American hiker.
People do not notice long slow trends in part because you have to be old to have seen it; if you noticed it at all-- and if the trend was within a single lifetime.
College was something different in the past. It was not for everybody either. People who went into college already had status because not just anybody could get in but also not just anybody would even want to get in. Completing college was another level of status. It was this status, this prestige that gained which was beneficial later one in multiple ways. Gradually, more and more people saw it as a way to get ahead, especially the ones who started out from behind. Now we've past the point where many jobs have nothing to do with the degree and only seriously consider people with a degree for jobs that do not require one or perhaps even benefit from the worker having one. My local weatherman is not needed, they can go back to the models they used to have because for many decades now they just repeat the national weather service. The news readers suck at everything besides news reading so they do not need a journalism degree either.
So now days we are coming AFTER the colleges because these degrees we as a society overvalued and misunderstood are not fitting our expectations. College was NOT about job training. Trade schools and Apprenticeships are designed for that.
Forbit the signing away of one's rights. CA had something years ago saying employees couldn't sign away fundamental rights in employment contracts, but i forget all the details.
It is just a crime. Thought crimes are stupid. What you were feeling or thinking when you did the crime does not matter; point that matters-- you did the crime. Why you did it does not matter except during sentencing or to bias the jury but there is no need or should be any legal ability to codify bias against a criminal's bias.
Political posturing against unpopular minority groups unable to defend themselves against the scorn of the populace. its textbook. so we get another discriminatory law that undermines the system. Like taxing smokers "for their own good" when its just an easy scapegoat to rob a minority who can't help themselves and already waste money on the things as it is. (Sure they cost everybody more in the end and that should cost them but it has little to do with that politically as stadiums and other things are payed for by them because its not popular enough to tax the majority on a particular issue.) Another one is the crack cocaine laws for decades which were really about racism because 1 group didn't use 1 form of the drug. Or taking away former felon's voting rights sounds ok to people because they forever hate ex-convicts but that also is race influenced in its history and is really tied to class-ism.
I think the parent is pretty good but misses the HUGE point that the artists make only a minority of the profit from their work; most of it goes to the business middle men and related corporations who produce NOTHING. The business model for them is pretty much DEAD and unnecessary so not only should most of them go find other similar work but the ones who are left will have to settle for making less money and possibly a more fair portion of the wealth the artists generate.
His mistake was he should have covered himself by stealing a few billion dollars and giving a few million dollars to election campaigns. Or may he should have incorporated as a bank...
Since when did the US military start to care about buying things that worked? cough...cough..f-22...cough...cough..
Just imagine how well musicians will be treated by their owners if they lose copyright when they die? No more managers giving drugs to artists but instead guarding them from such abuses... That would be the day... when the pathetic artists are protected by their benefactors! At least they'd get something for the exploitation.
I want the 30 hour work week with a month vacation that was supposed to happen by 2000. They never saw corporatism coming...
Where's the realistic and depressing predictions?
More people, fewer jobs, more robots and software doing the work.
Increased average work week. (seems contradictory...maybe everybody is part time and under employed.)
Smaller or weaker middle class in 1st world nations.
Recognized fall of the USA empire by 2025 (likely 2020. quote me.)
Rich people live twice as long as the lower classes.
The great debate over A.I. being life; what is life and many philosophical and religious issues as CS treads into people's ego boundaries (and many professions.)
Standardized micro-payments and increased surveillance. Think of the possibilities!
CA (as a state) is no parasite; far from it. California pays more federal taxes and receives back less money than probably any other state. In the USA, people don't even realize states like CA and NY support loser states like Texas; CA gives and doesn't get much back; while many southern states are a drain on the nation financially. People think the Greek situation is bad... we've been "bailing out" over half our states for a century.
CA has internal state-level money problems which in many ways reflect the nations problems; if they kept that federal money instead of losing it to poor states they'd be far better off. They also have a similar political problem; their budget situation is worse because their rules enforce the dysfunction which at the federal level the GOP is purposely causing dysfunction by choice. They've said as much; at some point they can start doing their job; in CA a lot of problems are written in law so fixing things involve 1st in fixing the system. For example, in CA a filibuster like rule is law on the budget while in the US Senate it is just a DoS attack. Another example is yearly budget battles (vs 2 yrs.) Another example is off-the-table big budget items.
I'm not connected to CA; but the parent was so far off
It is self offense maybe. It is not defense; as you said "those who WOULD kill you" so you are striking 1st and by definition that is not defense. If they declare war/intent then that is the beginning of an attack (although only formal) therefore you can take the defense. Yes, one could interpret "would" in other ways but we are in the context of modern insane geopolitics so that means "would" is purely presumptive and exaggerated or false.
I thought that the skin effect was Hz dependent and that at low Hz it is much lower than at high Hz-- meaning that we probably are using the whole wire except for really thick cables.
We need a new grid that is designed smarter (not a smart grid) which can handle distributed power sources better; as well as lose less power --- because power costs a whole lot more today we shouldn't be losing 10% or more to the grid (especially if the power is coming from the immediate area's solar panels.)
What about DC power? a DC grid? resistance losses are due to VOLTAGE not AC/DC and surely we can more cheaply convert DC today than during the AC/DC fight a century ago when DC conversion was difficult and costly. (even if it costs more, consider all the grid tie and sync costs a distributed AC grid needs as well as component lifespan and the fact you can put cables DC underground and not waste power.)
These cables do not sound like a solution to me. Americans should see what other nations are doing to address the problem and adopt the successful solutions (I know that is "unamerican" but no reason to not hope for maturity.) I hear that somebody did really well by working with recyclers... since copper has to be taken to somebody.
I thought Japan was lowering their limits on radiation recently to make it appear not as bad? What used to be the safe amount?? Or is this just in general while other specific things were lowered? I definitely remember reports on politicians adjusting the limits but do not remember what there were on (may have been for crops) and if they were forced to restore the previous limits.
If you KILL the black market by removing the profit motive you make it difficult to buy the stuff on the black market.
Making a bigger police state is foolish; some of the biggest police states have been unable to stop forbidden things besides drugs...Christianity, revolutionary talk, underground papers, guerrillas, the French resistance, banned products, ALCOHOL, violations of copyright... just to name a few.
Cigarettes still continue under a really discriminatory tax; illegal non-taxed product is probably impossible to come bye and will be as long as the tax is not too high...
Free government clinics where you strap in and shoot up can be quite helpful in helping these extra desperate people (not to mention they flip out in a safe place.) A huge amount of domestic violence is drug related. You can't over limit them otherwise you create an alternative market to serve them! Yet another best solution impossible in the USA because the moralist nanny state freaks insist in dictating your lifestyle.
Making a 3D skin model and making a real jet are two totally different things. Not to mention the academic information behind this can be openly found and used; I doubt they are adding much theory that isn't already known.
No, I think Iran has rights to the part of the passage way that lies within their waters and part of it does (it is setup as two lanes.) Actually, the GPS lanes could be moved to Oman's waters and not touch Iranian waters; unless the treaty requires the 1 lane always be theirs or that the dividing line is defined as between the two lanes... I don't know but I wouldn't think so. Then Iran would be stuck as the traffic would move around them. It would not be within their rights to mess with the water outside their jurisdiction. I rarely hear of a treaty that doesn't have some sort of a national security clause of some sort (even without one its an excuse that often trumps any previous laws.)
That being said, I'm not a biased Iranian Apologist; I have no connection to them, I am a white atheist and I hate all theocracies. Iran is not being handled properly and a huge portion of its people are not close to as backwards as their leadership who cares about ideology over its own people; but they get punished by the madness inside and outside their nation. BTW, here is a talk on game theory: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2009/04/28/predicting-the-future-of-iran-using-game-theory-bruce-bueno-de-mesquita-on-tedcom/
You haven't seen anything; I can really piss people like you off talking about cultural relativism.
Actually, science doesn't require an explanation or understanding - merely a form of proof. Now science is not static; it is a process. More proof and study follow; especially for things that are poorly understood (bigger discoveries likely= more interest.)
The black box is unproven, not fake. As far as I've heard (which is little.) You can't be doing science if you assume it is fake; you must PROVE it is fake. This is much harder, it is far easier to just prove it doesn't work. ;-)
This "skeptical" science line is on par with being a "lazy" programmer or the 1/3 image framing rules in photography. They are a generalized guidelines not a rule!! Probably such things should be limited to students only because we have too many ignorant people using them as rules. I'm waiting for a congress moron to talk about how all our good programmers are lazy and if they would only work harder... our internet tubes wouldn't clog up so often...
"Cold Fusion is impossible" is bad science because this has never been proven; we have many times where theories and discoveries were proven false but no proof. Flight was loaded with failures for 100s of years; lots of proven false theories/experiments later somebody proved one true and we didn't understand why it worked at the time either. It worked and that is all that mattered to most people.
If it takes in X amount and outputs Y amount. It could be influential if it runs at 1% efficiency because your gas car is below 50% on expensive fuel -- if it runs cheaper at 1% it still wins! (if it is nuclear or fusion the power density would be so great wasting wouldn't matter again...until that fuel supply gets low...) Somebody credible needs to test it; if it works, then others will test it... Actually, it may not work but it could raise interesting problems which leads to discoveries none of which could result in a new power source. I forget but MIT was looking into some Canadian gadget with magnetism which was some silly over unity type thing (from the sound of it) because it didn't fail as predicted and raised interesting questions-- that one was quite a while ago
Parent is well informed on the topic.
What is even worse is how we have US officials framing the idea of Iran blocking their waterway as an act of war! The Irony!! When it is the US involved in cutting off Iranian Oil from getting out as part of the sanctions against Iran exercising its (unpopular) rights -- that is not an act of war...
Me, I think it is a big game of chicken. Convincing the other players who is more crazy, the USA or Iran. All the oil buyers want is stability so siding with the USA is what they think is in their best interests at the moment; while before, they were playing more towards the middle. If Iran can convince them that they are more crazy and can foobar everybody more then it will go back to being less committed. This is not likely to happen; I think. The USA has less to lose compared to everybody else and has power factions pushing heavily to attack Iran more than ever before and this is well known (and its an election year.)
Somalis compared to Americans?? It is a simple balance where any group put into our situation would act no differently. Humans are all relative in their judgements. You couldn't pick a larger contrast in the world-- the poorest and suffering vs the richest and pampered! They can't be fairly compared unless you think in relative terms; and even then none of this is quantitative so it is always going to be a subjective comparison.
Humans don't function on fixed points they operate upon relative distances and you'll be hard pressed to find any evidence against this; all the science says so and that is where I learned about it. Hell, even vision itself is interpretative!
A people put into a horrible situation where the risk is close to the risk of doing nothing have far less of a leap from inaction and action in terms of costs and risks to themselves and/or their families. That is when mass movements happen; when the gap between the two is small enough that a lot of people are willing to take it. There are always people on either side of the bell curve who are heroes/nutcases or cowards/benefactors. The "gap" is a distance that is transferable between situations; not the start/end points- its the delta that matters.
There is NOT a lot to lose to these people by taking risks or sacrificing all when the gap becomes small.
Possibly the most powerful but often forgotten is the whole culture's reaction - the peer pressure is so great; people only lie to themselves when they think they outgrew it; Americans are especially defensive about being individualists and it is really ironic! In American culture the activists are nutcases, hippies, losers, bitching, get a job... etc. for generations now. In Somalia, the fighters were/are much more publicly supported and at least far better understood than activists are here. You know, a major part of the design of the US was to civilize popular revolution and give it an outlet besides violent warfare. Now in recent times its becoming clear to people that system is not working and has only been placating people to trick them into believing they have a political outlet. If this understanding grows a new outlet will be needed until some change can be perceived ("let them eat cake" will probably suffice for another generation. Occupy may appease some for a while because its a movement that is building and I think that a cycle of building movements that fall apart due to ineffectiveness could keep people busy a while longer.)
Rich Kings didn't have the same perspective and their relative judgement didn't make them cowards but they acted like cowards to those on the outside because of the perspective shift. Too much relative risk; so much so that the peasant couldn't comprehend it because their lives or even that of their family was LOW; they were already just slightly above bottom.... Which is why such horrific punishments were needed to control those people; to widen the gap between inaction and action. Midevil times, the Romans, and all those "primitive" societies needed their levels of barbarism. Don't think this is lost on people today; many in the USA were for illegal barbaric methods because civilized ones were not strong enough to control the "tarrist peoples" because they wouldn't understand otherwise. They understood, but more accurately it was about making them feel the proper amount of fear to drive the point home. In the USA they merely need to take away your SUV and your mind is blown at the loss. (exaggerating but still, its a relative thing... ah... take money from a baby and they don't care; take away the toy it is sucking on... )
Mod parent up.