It doesn't matter if the Japanese were unwilling to surrender or not. The Japanese were defeated. There was no reason to go into Japan and conquer the island. They were no longer a serious threat to the United States. We could have just left them there without the 'surrender'. The nukes were a warning to the Soviets. We could have just left the Japanese there pissed off at losing the war (or not even believing it).
civilians are not legitimate targets. That is why bombing hospitals and schools is so reprehensible. And we bombed hospitals and schools in Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
While I'm of the opinion that the US was more than justified in using the atomic bomb on Japan (twice, even)...
there was no justification for the use of this weapon. it was terrorism and blatantly broke 'the rules of war' that bush likes to talk about. just as importantly, there was no reason to use it against Japan, as they were already defeated. we probably used it as a warning to the Soviet Union.
I've always been confused by this. Does the Heisenberg princ. and Quantum Mechs say that the universe is fundamentally probalistic or that observers knowledge of the universe can only be probablistic? I THOUGHT that the heisenberg princ. said that in princip. it was impossible to both know the velocity and the... of a particle, but that doesn't mean that these two things don't have definate values, does it????
Hey! I like the show too! Its the best Star Trek show since Generation. Why? Because they have daring plot lines! Because the cinematography doesn't suck! Because the characters differ from the standard "I am a federation do-gooder who knows better than anyone else" so common in the other shows (i mean these people are not politically correct) running some slicked up luxury cruiseship. i mean c'mon! its a space vehicle, and space is harsh and cold and unfriendly, and the shows doesn't hesitate to show this. I know some of you say that there is no plot lines, or that nothing happens, but you know, there are. i liked the show the moment i saw the captain dictate a five minute letter to children back on earth. something differnt for a change. or where two of the crew nearly freeze to death(and suffocate) in a broken spacecraft, and so they get drunk and talk about how the vulcan has a fine ass. that was funny. there are no slick wonder solutions, and the biggest enemy is space, and friends out there are few and often unreliable.
hate to say it folks, but...loosen up!
I admit though that a lot of the shows are not very good, some boring, but i would say the percentage of good or better shows is higher than that of DS9 (which almost always sucked because there were almost zero interesting characters) and Voyager (which doesn't suck quite as bad because we always have the digital doctor to amuse us).
in terms of technologies that the star trek world invents and forgets, and all the uses of the present technology that are not utilized...well i've been contemplating writing a star trek novel in which a alien force learns all these technologies and kicks the federation's ass. ha! i've always thought that transporter technology is especially apt for military uses.
I'm not really just responding to your comment, but to the number of comments of the kind: because country A is not participating (or is against or is for) the war in Iraq, then their state news broadcasts will reflect a correlative bias.
the basic problem with this arguement is that news broadcasts even state run broadcasts in nations like Canada the U.S. Britain etc will not necessarily reflect the opinions of the nations leadership. How could they? do all u.s. congressman agree with the war in iraq? editorial decisions are going to reflect among other things the biases of individual editors, writers, etc., especially political biases (or ambitions/objectives), and that these are not going to necessarily co-incide with official foreign policy.
a little known fact of fiction
on
Baldness Be Gone?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
chewbacca was actually a victim of this wonder hair regrowth process. wouldn't ya know?
The sample size is small, just barely adequate for an ideal random sample, and much smaller than should easily have been obtained, I think. Perhaps they couldn't find enough women of the kind they were looking for willing to smell sweat for several weeks, or at least for the amount of money offered.
I wasn't trying to offer a counterargument to your or any others' argument. I am well aware that what is considered reasonable has changed time and time again, and not just when "technical possibilities change." Perhaps I did not read all of the discussion thoroughly enough to know that what I was doing was just restating the argument. However, your response was not warranted.
I suppose that one may sometimes extrapolate from a question the beliefs of the questioner, but I tend to think that this may often speak more of that person than the person asking the question.
But I will not speculate on your mental states. Rather I would like to address your charge of my being a Luddite.
First, I would like to point out that if one was not-Luddite, it does not follow that that person has no reservations about any technology or technological change. Your argument seems to rest upon the idea that all technological change is good, which it plainly is not. Nor do I think that it is unreasonable to question which technological and social changes we want. However, in any case, I am not a Luddite, and do not on principle reject longevity treatments, cloning, cybernetic enhancements, designer babies, or any of those other things that loom on the horizon. In fact, my position on these issues might best be called Transhumanist, and at a guess that might be more radical than even your beliefs, and certainly cannot be called Luddite! On the other hand, I tend to hold the belief that people have both the right to life and to death, and I think that this is only reasonable in a world that can prolong life beyond the point where one may even be capable of making such choices, and so instead, place the burden on others- doctors, family, friends, and courts to make life and death decisions. I am well aware that traditional thinking on liberty and society hold that suicide is not counted among the rights one might have, but perhaps we should change our thinking. In any case, the reason for my comment was rather to ask the opinions of other slashdotters whether or not abstaining from longevity treatments would be considered suicide (I can't claim authorship for this thought, I read it in the Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars trilogy.)as it is one small worry that I have about the ramifications of such treatments. A more important concern for me is whether or not such treatments will divide the rich from the poor. And finally,I am perplexed that you would call anyone who regularly reads/. a Luddite as this is a forum of techies, and it seems rather improbable. However, since its certainly possible that there are Luddites at/. and its a logical error to speak of the particular by speaking solely of the general (i.e. my saying dogs have tongues doesn't mean that my dog has a tongue), we'll let that go. in any case, have a nice day.
Of course EVERYONE doesn't know everybody else within 6 degrees of separation (or even n degrees); but this is a well known fact. saying everyone is just a gross over-simplification of network theory. in any case, there is some reason to believe that the originator (or the one who popularized it) of theory whats'his'name doctored his data. wish i could remember where i read that. sorry.
but in any case, many networks have a high degree of connectivity, and because some individuals know many many people, even individuals who don't know many people may possibly still gain access to the rest of the network fairly quickly. of course completely isolated people don't...but i don't know any that don't even know of others people...i mean, did wolves raise her/him? c'mon.
its a little late and i don't know how often this will be read, but I want to put my two cents in. or three.
curing diseases and the research to do this is a noble and just calling. However, much medical research simply exacerbates a more important problem. Population growth.
Sure medical research has done wonders for birth control. But i think that the lives saved from medical research probably outweighs those prevented by birth control. maybe.
but i'm not going to forgoe a medical cure for the sake of limiting the world's population!
I'll tell you how to get the U.S. to Mars. Its real simple.
All you need is for some communist country (China), or some other country we don't like too well, to send an unmanned solar power radio broadcaster to Mars. On Mars this unit would broadcast anti-american propoganda to Earth 24/7 and claim ownership of Mars. In English. Over all of the publically used frequencies.
"Now this clearly is not the best time to be making such choices, with continuing threats from terrorists, a possible war with Iraq on the horizon and problems looming with North Korea."
This is quoted from the article.
Let me tell you. There will never be a good time. There will be political dissent, terrorists, and threating wars. But we can't let those things stop us.
If a population is distributed in some standard way, then a random sample of even size 30 will give you a pretty good idea of a population distribution of millions.
However! When you are trying to make inferences about the population like this, you must have a frame.
What does this mean? The question is: how can you produce a random representative sample when you cannot identify the population from which to take the sample? To obtain a sample you have to first produce a list of entities from which you must choose
Recently I was contemplating conducting a demographic study of such a hidden popluation, in that case enlgish language instructors in Warsaw, Poland. How was I to find the instructors? There was no listing, and even if there were some kind of directory, there is little reason to think that it would be representative.
so in the case of the blogs, if you can't locate certain blogs to include in your frame, then you can't include them in your sample, and so your sample is going to be skewed.
however, in any case, the skewing would just chop off those lesser known blog on the tail end anyway, reducing the extremity of the distribution.
one way of identifying such hidden populations is through the technique of snowballing, which basically is to take advantage of the connectivity of a network. you ask a blogger to name other bloggers, and you keep a list of those you identify. the problem is that a snowball sample is not random and thus not good for inferential stats.
I think that space exploration, and more specifically the colonization of the solar system, is one of the most important tasks we have to accomplish. And the most difficult precisely because the need for it does not seem as pressing as the needs we find here. but it is precisely our situation on earth that I believe offers the best arguement for the colonization of the solar system. Why? The sciences have learned that OUR place in this biome we call earth is fragile, and it just might be out of control. In fact, it is out of control. We are train running into a mountain's side. We see it, and we'll hit it, and we'll close our eyes.
the space shuttle IS over-rated.
and personally i hope to see a space-elevator someday. a much cheaper and perhaps a much more environmentally friendly way to escape this gravity well
Its hard to know from the post who is exactly to blame. is the peroxide company to blame, or did the rocket team not fully anticipate whats involved in buying large amounts of volatile chemicals? since i don't know, i can't say.
yes, but about political correctness? one memorable moment in the series is when the second officer says, point blank, that the vulcan has a nice rear.
Then they sucked for so long, that I stopped watching...
and finally Enterprise.
I think that its actually decent. The cinematography is better, for one, and the stories are a little less conventional.
in any case I think that The Next Generation was good because of the strength of the characters of Data and Whorf and Q, Moriarty, and the Borg. oh and that geeky nervous engineer
deepspace nine doesn't have any really memorable characters. mayby modo (is that his name?)
voyager had the doctor. beyond that it was all mediocre.
sex appeal is sex appeal and its nice, but trek has started to depend on it too much.
Although the limit must have frustrated programmers, I think it forced programmers to come up with innovative games. No wonder many people consider the Atari age to be the Golden Age of video-games.
Slashdot Mirror
what? sounds like you have a fetish!
right on.
hey josh. martianfrontier.com is off. tell me how i can contact you.
civilians are not legitimate targets. That is why bombing hospitals and schools is so reprehensible. And we bombed hospitals and schools in Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
there was no justification for the use of this weapon. it was terrorism and blatantly broke 'the rules of war' that bush likes to talk about. just as importantly, there was no reason to use it against Japan, as they were already defeated. we probably used it as a warning to the Soviet Union.
I've always been confused by this. Does the Heisenberg princ. and Quantum Mechs say that the universe is fundamentally probalistic or that observers knowledge of the universe can only be probablistic? I THOUGHT that the heisenberg princ. said that in princip. it was impossible to both know the velocity and the ... of a particle, but that doesn't mean that these two things don't have definate values, does it????
hate to say it folks, but...loosen up!
I admit though that a lot of the shows are not very good, some boring, but i would say the percentage of good or better shows is higher than that of DS9 (which almost always sucked because there were almost zero interesting characters) and Voyager (which doesn't suck quite as bad because we always have the digital doctor to amuse us).
in terms of technologies that the star trek world invents and forgets, and all the uses of the present technology that are not utilized...well i've been contemplating writing a star trek novel in which a alien force learns all these technologies and kicks the federation's ass. ha! i've always thought that transporter technology is especially apt for military uses.
the basic problem with this arguement is that news broadcasts even state run broadcasts in nations like Canada the U.S. Britain etc will not necessarily reflect the opinions of the nations leadership. How could they? do all u.s. congressman agree with the war in iraq? editorial decisions are going to reflect among other things the biases of individual editors, writers, etc., especially political biases (or ambitions/objectives), and that these are not going to necessarily co-incide with official foreign policy.
hmm...don't chewt'bacca
The sample size is small, just barely adequate for an ideal random sample, and much smaller than should easily have been obtained, I think. Perhaps they couldn't find enough women of the kind they were looking for willing to smell sweat for several weeks, or at least for the amount of money offered.
I suppose that one may sometimes extrapolate from a question the beliefs of the questioner, but I tend to think that this may often speak more of that person than the person asking the question.
But I will not speculate on your mental states. Rather I would like to address your charge of my being a Luddite.
First, I would like to point out that if one was not-Luddite, it does not follow that that person has no reservations about any technology or technological change. Your argument seems to rest upon the idea that all technological change is good, which it plainly is not. Nor do I think that it is unreasonable to question which technological and social changes we want. However, in any case, I am not a Luddite, and do not on principle reject longevity treatments, cloning, cybernetic enhancements, designer babies, or any of those other things that loom on the horizon. In fact, my position on these issues might best be called Transhumanist, and at a guess that might be more radical than even your beliefs, and certainly cannot be called Luddite! On the other hand, I tend to hold the belief that people have both the right to life and to death, and I think that this is only reasonable in a world that can prolong life beyond the point where one may even be capable of making such choices, and so instead, place the burden on others- doctors, family, friends, and courts to make life and death decisions. I am well aware that traditional thinking on liberty and society hold that suicide is not counted among the rights one might have, but perhaps we should change our thinking. In any case, the reason for my comment was rather to ask the opinions of other slashdotters whether or not abstaining from longevity treatments would be considered suicide (I can't claim authorship for this thought, I read it in the Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars trilogy.)as it is one small worry that I have about the ramifications of such treatments. A more important concern for me is whether or not such treatments will divide the rich from the poor. And finally,I am perplexed that you would call anyone who regularly reads /. a Luddite as this is a forum of techies, and it seems rather improbable. However, since its certainly possible that there are Luddites at /. and its a logical error to speak of the particular by speaking solely of the general (i.e. my saying dogs have tongues doesn't mean that my dog has a tongue), we'll let that go. in any case, have a nice day.
but in any case, many networks have a high degree of connectivity, and because some individuals know many many people, even individuals who don't know many people may possibly still gain access to the rest of the network fairly quickly. of course completely isolated people don't...but i don't know any that don't even know of others people...i mean, did wolves raise her/him? c'mon.
Would refusal of Life Extension Treatments be considered suicide?
curing diseases and the research to do this is a noble and just calling. However, much medical research simply exacerbates a more important problem. Population growth.
Sure medical research has done wonders for birth control. But i think that the lives saved from medical research probably outweighs those prevented by birth control. maybe.
but i'm not going to forgoe a medical cure for the sake of limiting the world's population!
All you need is for some communist country (China), or some other country we don't like too well, to send an unmanned solar power radio broadcaster to Mars. On Mars this unit would broadcast anti-american propoganda to Earth 24/7 and claim ownership of Mars. In English. Over all of the publically used frequencies.
and call bush chicken.
"Now this clearly is not the best time to be making such choices, with continuing threats from terrorists, a possible war with Iraq on the horizon and problems looming with North Korea." This is quoted from the article. Let me tell you. There will never be a good time. There will be political dissent, terrorists, and threating wars. But we can't let those things stop us.
by kitchen waste they mean my useless toaster? or the burnt toast it spits out?
.
.
.
. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all.
However! When you are trying to make inferences about the population like this, you must have a frame.
What does this mean? The question is: how can you produce a random representative sample when you cannot identify the population from which to take the sample? To obtain a sample you have to first produce a list of entities from which you must choose
Recently I was contemplating conducting a demographic study of such a hidden popluation, in that case enlgish language instructors in Warsaw, Poland. How was I to find the instructors? There was no listing, and even if there were some kind of directory, there is little reason to think that it would be representative.
so in the case of the blogs, if you can't locate certain blogs to include in your frame, then you can't include them in your sample, and so your sample is going to be skewed.
however, in any case, the skewing would just chop off those lesser known blog on the tail end anyway, reducing the extremity of the distribution.
one way of identifying such hidden populations is through the technique of snowballing, which basically is to take advantage of the connectivity of a network. you ask a blogger to name other bloggers, and you keep a list of those you identify. the problem is that a snowball sample is not random and thus not good for inferential stats.
the space shuttle IS over-rated.
and personally i hope to see a space-elevator someday. a much cheaper and perhaps a much more environmentally friendly way to escape this gravity well
Its hard to know from the post who is exactly to blame. is the peroxide company to blame, or did the rocket team not fully anticipate whats involved in buying large amounts of volatile chemicals? since i don't know, i can't say.
and I even liked The Next Generation.
Then they sucked for so long, that I stopped watching...
and finally Enterprise. I think that its actually decent. The cinematography is better, for one, and the stories are a little less conventional.
in any case I think that The Next Generation was good because of the strength of the characters of Data and Whorf and Q, Moriarty, and the Borg. oh and that geeky nervous engineer
deepspace nine doesn't have any really memorable characters. mayby modo (is that his name?)
voyager had the doctor. beyond that it was all mediocre.
sex appeal is sex appeal and its nice, but trek has started to depend on it too much.
Although the limit must have frustrated programmers, I think it forced programmers to come up with innovative games. No wonder many people consider the Atari age to be the Golden Age of video-games.