As far as the legality of a state seceding from "the union", I don't think even today that is a settled question as to if a state could secede in a peaceful manner or not.
Lincoln tried not to push the issue, but he did claim authority over already previously designated federal areas and the "right" of the federal government to resupply those areas in order to maintain a federal garrison or to maintain federal control over those areas. In a more modern context, this is more or less the situation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba that was established when Cuba was a part of the USA (well, sort of... and that is complex as well). Even though the Cuban government doesn't like the "Norte Americanos" having a military base on their island, they aren't directly challenging U.S. authority over that small piece of real estate. A direct challenge would create a state of war between Cuba and America... something Castro is justifiably not willing to directly provoke.
The Civil War didn't really start until after South Carolina decided to blockade Fort Sumter and then took on the further step of assaulting the federal troops at that base after the siege. This in effect was a formal declaration of war against the USA by the South Carolina government.
It would have been interesting to see what could have happened if a more peaceful solution to the situation could have occurred, but it didn't happen, nor did the legality of the secession really get tested other than leaving the union by force of arms isn't considered a constitutional method of secession. This is also one of the most glaring omissions in the U.S. Constitution that simply doesn't even mention the possibility of secession in any form.... although the treaty between the Republic of Texas and the USA does spell out explicitly the legal mechanism that could be taken to have that state leave the union.
It depends on where the officer is saying that you are an ass.
If he is saying it while cooking on his BBQ in his back yard while not in uniform.... I would care less. Or if he says it somewhat quietly in his patrol vehicle.... I would expect a law enforcement officer to be human and occasionally say that or even offer a somewhat obscene gesture on occasion too.
I could even see an officer saying some rather foul-mouthed things when finally chasing down and getting somebody who flees from a crime scene and leaves a wake of destruction while trying to flee. These kind of folks are usually assholes to begin with, so the comments are rather deserved.
If they say something along these lines in court while they are testifying against a criminal? No, it wouldn't be professional speech (and would deserve a justified reprimand).
Of course I consider an ordinary police officer to be a blue-collar worker for the most part... or at least somebody who deals with the bottom 5% of ethical and moral behavior among humanity that it isn't surprising if a few colorful words pop out every now and again.
Still, this doesn't rationalize why the RIAA is engaging in this sort of legal tactic against what is legitimate criticism and commentary by a knowledgeable expert familiar with the proceedings of the RIAA legal team and their legal battles.
I certainly hope that when this gets reviewed legally, that the courts will slap the RIAA hard and set a strong legal precedence to never allow this sort of action again, with perhaps the legal licenses of the RIAA attorneys under threat for even filing such an action. Unfortunately, disbarment is such a rare action in these sort of situation that even the threat is hardly something to worry about.
What we don't know here are the starting conditions that exist within a "typical" stellar nursery, or even what variables there might be in terms of typical stellar systems for metal-rich gaseous clouds (of the kind that create rocky planets like the Earth).
Yeah, we have a pretty good understanding of gravity and even enhanced understanding of subtle variations caused by Relativity thanks to Einstein (something often missing from simulations due to complexity of the calculations), but it is these additional variables that are the huge unknowns.
I dare say that until we have additional observational information here, we can't even come up with a good idea of what these variables might even be in the first place.... although I think it may be possible to come up with a theory that can explain some of these variables and assess their relative importance in terms of what we ultimately see in terms of star formation and their planetary systems.
Just off the top of my head, here are some variables to consider:
Gas cloud density - just how much "stuff" was in the cloud when the planetary system was being formed?
Temperature - How hot was the cloud when the star/planets were being formed?
Stellar density - How many stars that were formed earlier (perhaps from other gas clouds even) are "near" the nursery when the star was being formed and what was their geometric configuration?
I'm sure other variables could be considered as well, and all of these could have a profound impact on planetary system formation. My point is that we are missing information right now to even create a viable model beyond the most simplistic examples that explain just our own little solar system.
As far as a truly "Earth-like" rocky planet being discovered around a star of spectral classes between F & M type stars, I think it may be a bit longer than 2012 before that can happen.
Mind you, telescope precision and monitoring Doppler variations in radial velocities of stars are improving significantly (where most of these "discoveries" are happening), it would take some very hard precision instruments to be able to detect an "Earth-like" mass object. Smaller planets thus far identified are still at least an order of magnitude larger than the Earth.
We'll see, but predictions like this are hard to make without understanding the technology and knowings its limits. Research of this nature may give rise to some interesting candidates for inter-stellar space probes of the future, but I don't think that is going to happen within my lifetime.
If the imaged object does turn out to be a planet â" and it's not certain it is â" then theories of planet formation may have to be adjusted
Since all of the current theories about planetary formation around stellar objects consist of a statistical sample of one, I'd like to hope that Astro-physicists would be able to come up with some better theories when that sample size is increased.
One thing we do know from stellar observations is that binary or multiple star systems are much more common than solitary stellar systems like we have here around Sol. Even from observation of stellar nurseries it is also apparent that the physical structures that give rise to stars are born in highly complex environments of which our Solar System was likely a rather bland or even "ideal laboratory" example of how planetary systems were created.
Given the distance (330 AU... about 1/10th the same distance as between the Sun and Neptune) and if I were "betting" on what would be found with a planetary probe going to this star system, I think you would find nearly a complete planetary system around this gas giant as well, with this "planet" simply being in the Continuum between O-class blue giant stars and grains of sand.
Of course this observation of discovering a secondary system is based upon a sample size of 4 gas giants in our own solar system that all seem to have their own satellite systems as well. That is more like shooting fish in a barrel to make this sort of prediction.
Seriously, other than a highly simplistic planetary creation model, I fail to see what huge changes in formation theory this will actually make, other than to give more pause to think about how complex the stellar formation process might be.
While I'll admit that the SCSC was a classical example of big science, this is indeed one of the best examples of partisan politics in America and why long-term planning is nearly dead for anybody in the U.S. Federal Government. If it can't be built in 8 years (while the president who proposed the idea is still in office or nearly so), it won't be built.
When it was being cancelled back in 1993, I thought then and still think it was a major mistake by Congress, and only time will tell how bad of a decision that was. CERN, while an interesting project in its own right, still isn't going to accomplish what this project could have been.
Since you have given a detailed rebuttal, I want to start out by saying that I think we are roughly on the same page here.
As far as reusable vehicles are concerned, I think that takes a little bit of research and a whole lot of effort to make a genuinely reusable vehicle. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle was just part way there and really didn't get the job done. The refurbishing that takes place between typical Shuttle flights is so drastic that it almost is a whole new vehicle when it goes up again. Also, having a standing army of tens of thousands of workers to get that vehicle refurbished is one of the things that is also killing any sort of cost savings associated with its reusability.
For example, I consider a 747 to be almost as technically complicated as the Shuttle, and surprisingly has similar energy requirements if you consider a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney (something that routinely does happen with 747s nearly ever day). Yet the ground crew responsible for refurbishing a 747 number in the dozens, and most of them are involved with ticket sales and customer service directly related to passengers. Yes, there are mechanics and personnel dealing with consumables (aka fuel, but also emptying the toilet tanks and stocking the galleys) but it is a surprisingly efficient operation.
If, and this is a big if, SpaceX actually gets their act together and starts to send up spacecraft on a regular basis, one of the big selling points for that company is that they are much closer to airline type operations for servicing their spacecraft than nearly any other man-rated vehicle ever designed. Even the Falcon 1 has a surprisingly spartan flight crew given the nature of the vehicle.... and SpaceX has proven it can do an incredibly rapid recycling of the launch operations if there is a need to "tighten down that last bolt" or fix some minor problem on the vehicle before launch.
As far as the Space Shuttle being an X-project: I could only wish it were built with the philosophies of the earlier X-project program that created vehicles like the X-15. There even is a worthy successor of the X-15 that has flown recently, and another even more updated version that will soon be flying: Burt Rutan's Spaceship One and soon to be Spaceship Two. Both of these are completely reusable spacecraft that Rutan openly acknowledges are based from technology developed by the original Air Force X-projects. As to if this could be pushed into an orbital version is something I have debated before, and there are some legitimate doubts along that line. This is more along the line of what I am implying about reusable spacecraft, and perhaps some lessons learned from the Shuttle program could also be applied here. But it won't be a direct successor to the Shuttle.
As for the Apollo project, one of the worst things that ever happened to manned spaceflight was the cancellation of the Apollo Applications program. Von Braun and the engineers who designed the Saturn V intended that line of vehicles to be extended into production volumes of hundreds or even thousands, and the facilities in Huntsville and elsewhere had been built with this sort of intention in mind as well. Using 20/20 hindsight, even though I'll acknowledge that it would have been hard to prove this back in the early 1970's, I argue that every single goal that was accomplished by the Shuttle program... including launching crews of seven or more astronauts simultaneously and building the International Space Station... could have been built with the Saturn V/Apollo technology. Indeed I believe it would have been an order of magnitude cheaper and/or would have resulted in much more in-space infrastructure than actually resulted from the Shuttle program. I would love to see a 21st Century rev of the Apollo space capsule that would have been incrementally improved every year or so since the 1970's... and something that unfortunately will only be the target of science fiction authors at this point.
Florida is set up to deal with civilian flights. They are used to tourists, publicity, and showing off to the world, unlike SpaceX's previous launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California. Military restrictions on being able to visit the base, perform tests, and crazy launch windows that kept getting SpaceX bumped when they tried to set up a schedule all force SpaceX to move somewhere else.... which is why they move to the middle of the Pacific for the Falcon 1 launches.
The Falcon 9 is going to require considerably more infrastructure, especially if it becomes a manned vehicle. This launch pad looks like it will be a good place to do exactly those sorts of activities.
What is staring at all of these engineering efforts real hard is the ghost of Von Braun and the rocket engineers of Huntsville that built the Saturn V.
Essentially these engineers are being asked: "if we could do this with 1960's technology, why can't it be done today?"
What should have been done with the Ares rocket system is a clean-sheet design from the bottom up, using lessons learned from all of the previous spacecraft including the Saturn V and the Shuttle. Instead, they have this backward monster based on an improvised design with goals that have absolutely nothing at all to do with manned spaceflight.
I've been handed projects that were just this awful. In a couple of situations I developed prototypes that were so powerful that I was told to run with the prototype and turn it into the production version directly. In another case, I had a simply awful design handed to me by a genuinely incompetent engineer and told to simply make it work. Over time these kind of projects can be made to work, but at substantially more cost (time + resources) and they still seem to exhibit flaws that came from the original design that never seem to be worked out. This seems to be exactly what NASA is experiencing with the Ares system.
There are so many lessons to learn about the Shuttle that I don't know where to begin. One of the problems with a study of the Shuttle and what went wrong is that due to the plethora of mistakes in setting up that launch system, I am afraid that the wrong lessons are being learned.
Among them is a complete and irrational fear of re-usable manned launch vehicles for Earth to LEO spaceflight. While there may be some problems with the implementation of this idea in the Shuttle, this is IMHO one of the things that at least from a certain point of view that the Shuttle did right. Certainly the Space Shuttle has been able to get more people up into space and do useful things than any other manned space vehicle, including the Soyuz spacecraft (which is often mis-characterized as a "safe" vehicle).
For myself, I think the problem with the Shuttle program is that it should have been treated like an X-project with the intention to try a series of successively improved spacecraft that built on the predecessor and became better over time. As it was, the Columbia (aka the "prototype") was treated as a production vehicle, and the earlier prototypes were pressed into service as improved versions when in fact they were the predecessor spacecraft. I dare any major vehicle manufacturing company to be able to get away with something like that unless they are under a government contract.
There should have been a Shuttle 2.0 program some time ago, and unfortunately neither the U.S. Presidents over the past 20 years, the NASA administrators, nor Congress have had the will to get something like that built. And instead we have Apollo 2.0... and a bad rev of that by engineers who weren't even born when the original was under development.
A high resolution version of the image shows that the worker on the bottom of the tank was secured with a safety harness... in essence a seat belt.
What he is doing there, on the other hand, I can't say. I highly doubt that the tank was moving all that rapidly, and may have been in the range of about 5 mph or so. There are legitimate reasons for having workers move about to watch all sorts of issues that may happen when moving something that large, and what he is doing may in fact be OSHA compliant in terms of safety regs.
I think you missed the main point of my response here: We (meaning America, Britain, all of the EU, and most of the signatory members of the Berne Convention) are citizens of representative democracies that can and should demand more from our elected leaders on this issue.
For far too long ordinary folks have let the content publishers have nearly the only voice in determining copyright policies. Furthermore, organizations like the UK Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department are wrapped up in their own naval gazing to realize that the citizens whom they represent don't want the same things they are trying to negotiate for. They may speak on behalf of their countries in these international copyright conferences, but there is a huge dis-connect between what is happening on this level and what ordinary citizens are thinking copyright actually means.
Frankly I have my doubts that these diplomats even represent the thinking of the heads of government, much less the greater legislative bodies that must approve these treaties or the citizens they represent.
The ordinary American citizen is not really pushing for stricter copyrights, longer terms, or things like software patents... and it is unfortunate that some countries are being pressured diplomatically to think otherwise.
One of the problems here is that the author of the article seems to think the authority to change the situation lies with the court system, when in fact this is a legislative problem that is compounded by a massive mis-interpretation of what the general public thinks it ought to be about.
While I understand that the Register is a UK publication, it reads like it was written by an American (perhaps a personal bias). From an American perspective, the record companies are fighting something even tougher: The U.S. Constitution. More to the point, if the copyright clause of the constitution were to be properly interpreted to understand that the protection was only for a limited time (life + 75 years isn't a "limited time" in spite of what the U.S. Supreme Court claims). Retroactive copyright term extensions make the situation even worse... but I'm barking up the wrong issue here anyway.
The point here is that legislative bodies of the world like Congress, Parliament, and other similar bodies have been dealing with this issue as if the publishing bodies (including recording studios in the case of music) are the only individuals that need to be served when these laws are drafted. Individual consumers as well as the artists/authors/composers/performers need to be strongly considered as well, and the real point of legislation ought to be asking this question:
What can changes in the current copyright legislation do to expand the number of creative works, and "promote the useful arts and sciences"?
This is certainly not something that is being asked by legislators (MPs or Congressmen), and nearly all legislation in the past couple of decades on both sides of the pond works to kill off incentives by individuals to create these kind of artistic works. International agreements, while they do seek to "equalize copyright laws", tend to take the lowest common denominator approach and offer the best possible protection for the publisher as any of the countries in the treaty organization (aka the "Berne Convention"). This question about what can be done to promote the development of these artistic works certainly isn't being asked at these treaty conferences either, nor by the legislative bodies when the treaties are being ratified.
I have no idea what the Ford Motor company has to do with the reliability of Diebold voting machines, as the comparison is irrelevant anyway.
What you can do is to discuss what exactly Diebold does for its banking customers and noting error rates for ATM transactions.... they are far worse than a "zero incident" rate. This is even the same company that makes these voting machines, and IMHO an incredibly valid criticism.
The point being is that electronic voting standards IMHO ought to be much stronger and more completely tested than something done for a mere banking transaction that can be fixed after the fact and traced through alternative methods of measurement... something which is much harder to accomplish the day after an election which results in a very close race.
I can't stand the lax security standards on Diebold machines that are used in my voting precinct, even though there are (thank goodness!) some backup measures such as a voter-verified paper trail that is used to certify the election results and can at least be used for recounts.
IMHO the only thing electronic voting machines should be used for is for ballot preparation purposes. In other words, go ahead and use a computer to select the candidates that you want for each office and to put all of the ballot information into some sort of standardized format. But it should be a paper ballot that is actually cast and counted. Security measures such as watermarked paper, timestamping, and multiple vote tallying machines made by independent companies could IMHO significantly improve the voting process and bring integrity to the whole process. But then again, who am I to suggest any of these silly features.
I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a reusable vehicle capable of spaceflight is something impossible to design.
I would agree, however, that the Shuttle should have been kept as a prototype and have gone through several more revisions since its original development. Furthermore, relying upon only a single vehicle type was a massive mistake for NASA and should never have happened... at least beyond the initial deployment of the Columbia and perhaps the Challenger.
Vehicles like the DC-X, Dynasoar, and a whole bunch of other failed NASA designs... many of which never even made it beyond a paper study, even though some of them had actual hardware built as well.... should have either received more political support or at least should have been deployed between the early 1980's and today. Unfortunately, the last manned spacecraft design to make it into space that came from a NASA engineer/designer was the Space Shuttle... and that was originally drawn up in the 1960's by Von Braun's shop in Huntsville even though Von Braun wasn't directly responsible for it. At least they were real rocket scientists who had flown actual hardware before they made that design.
The problem I have with those who want to assert that modern technology (aka integrated circuits, nano-technology, modern rocketry, "the internet", etc.) is something that came from alien spaceships is that they are openly trying to suggest mankind is mostly a bunch of morons.
I know for a fact that all of these devices were created by stinking brilliant engineers and scientists who put a hell of a lot of effort into making them in the first place. They were human engineers, and people no different than you can see in any major engineering college.
We don't need "alien technology" to explain anything that has happened in the past 60 years or so (things that came supposedly from the Roswell, NM spaceship crash), and these UFO nuts are just that: people grasping for things that simply don't exist.
There may be some merit for the "UFO's" being advanced technology currently under development at some sort of skunkworks place like Area 51 (aka "Groom Lake AFB"), but the folks who work there are ordinary folks like you or me, with perhaps some sort of high security area set up to keep legitimate military secrets from getting out.
To reinforce the point you made about how much "land" there is "out there", Mars has more habitable surface area than the land area of the entire Earth. The Moon is at least as big as all of North America, and that is if you include Greenland, the Caribbean islands, and Central America as well. Yeah, that isn't something to "give up" and let the Chinese take over... discounting ownership of the "high frontier" that gives you a tactical and military advantage when you engage in some sort of geo-political conflict like what is happening in Afghanistan or Georgia (republic, not state).
As for the length of this "gap", I'm not too optimistic with the Ares I developments, where they are adding kludges like shock absorbers because they can't solve the pogoing problem with their engines (something Von Braun was somehow able to solve with the Saturn V rocket for some reason). The whole project looks like they can't figure out what the engineers of the '50's and '60's were able to come up with and can't seem to duplicate with current technology.
The whole issue is that there seems to be a lack of leadership at the top. Mike Griffin seemingly wants to take on that leadership role, but unfortunately his boss (Pres. Bush) doesn't want to give him either the resources or the leadership necessary to make whatever changes need to be done. And unfortunately Congress is putting their hand in the cookie jar as well making it even tougher to make any realistic changes that could make this whole thing get done on time and under budget.
My first impression of this thought is "OK, somebody wants to waste other people's money".
Typically I try to have an outlook that any sort of government spending is mainly harmless... especially if it is out right corruption and embezzlement. Typical pork barrel type projects are just methods of wealth transfer to somebody better connected politically, even if along the way some sort of "public good" is created that can prove beneficial. At the very least it keeps the government busy gazing at its own naval instead of trying to screw up my own life with some sort of oppressive program.
Unfortunately, this proposal fits more into the worst possible nightmare for those who hate big government: A big project that will not only transfer a huge amount of wealth, but that in the long run may do far more harm than good. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that those who are proposing this sort of concept can honestly suggest that they understand the global climatological systems to a level to understand what exactly this sort of proposal to modify the weather might actually do.... provided they actually succeed and can influence global temperatures.
My only hope with something like this is that the contractor will churn up a bunch of activity and run massively over budget, and eventually the whole thing will get dropped like a NASA manned launch vehicle.
As long as none of these ships actually make it out to sea, I won't mind. But the second it starts to actually happen is when I might just have to get into action, politically or otherwise.
Even assuming the most wild predictions do come true, that it does start to influence and change the climate in a positive manner (who gets to decide that again?), there will still be maintenance of these ships and continued funding for this project once it is up and going. Dare I suggest that ships in the sea may sink? What about "radical right-wing elements" going along and deliberately blowing these things up? How about ship-builders themselves paying to have these vessels sunk... perhaps covertly? Or planned obsolescence by ship builders that will happen faster than they can be built?
Even more important, what is going to be the "hook" to keep political support for continuing this project regardless of the long-term consequences? That was something decidedly missing from the Apollo project, and that had support from both conservative and liberal parts of the American political landscape. This is a political hot potato that I don't see will happen at least on a completed level of operation, although I have no doubt that money will be spent on something like this in some form or another and simply be a waste of resources and money.
And all of this will happen because of the "environmental movement"... what irony.
The fact is that art and science simply weren't as well defined (or as exclusively disjointed of communities) as currently exist. Scientific reasoning was considered one form of artistic expression, along with other forms of art in the 18th Century (aka when the Constitution was written).
Copyright laws clearly were intended to protect artists of a classical variety... meaning photographers like Ansel Adams, sculptors, and painters of 2-dimensional works of art, as well as authors, printers, and engravers.
This isn't reserved exclusively for purely scientific publications, and can include political thought.
Nice try here, but you are reading things into this clause that simply aren't there, and aren't supported by legal precedent or statutory law that implements this section of the constitution either, including the Copyright Act of 1790 that was largely written by the very authors of this paragraph.
The "science" here is that there has been a noted historical correlation between long-term solar minimums and overall global temperatures, as noted by historians who have kept records of sunspots going back to the 1750's with specific daily sunspot counts and historical records of daily average temperatures for a rather large number of locations around the Earth.
More to the point, while the exact mechanism for why this occurs isn't completely clear, that it does happen is a historical fact... at least for noting that similar periods in the past did have a significant drop in temperatures throughout the world. Unlike most of the global warming scare numbers, this is based on information that goes back hundreds of years and could be done with 18th century equipment. It is also collaborated with other information like tree rings and ice core samples that go back to the same era.
Generally, no. Usually those who are watching these things happen they measure hundreds of sunspots and then try to do a statistical average over the course of a month to make up the monthly average. Sometimes sunspots are more heavily concentrated on one side of the sun rather than the other, so a monthly statistical average makes much more sense than taking a strictly daily number.
Instead, they are now grasping at straws to even mark off what might even remotely be called a sunspot. That is why this is such a big deal, as reporting the number "0" is often something used to mark off missing data than the actual number observed.
Even if you arbitrarily mark off some other set of 30 days to calculate this figure, this is something to pay attention to.
Here are some daily data sets to compare. First, for 2000:
There is a huge difference between these two datasets, and it is remarkable for all of the zeros that are noted in any given day. What is even being called a sunspot is something that is called into question here.
For a whole bunch of historical data, including measurements of sunspots by ancient Chinese historians and data going back several thousand years, see:
The purpose of the "age 65" retirement limit is mainly due to actuarial tables generated by insurance companies in the 1930's which measured the overall health of "typical" workers in an industrial environment. At that time and under the employment conditions of the era, workers over the age of 65 were considered a liability and a great many insurance companies therefore refused to cover employer liability for anybody over that age.
There was also a tendency that most people would be dead by the age of 65 at the time, so it was more or less a moot point in that era. It was only a very small fraction of our population that lived for a great many years past the typical retirement age.
Unfortunately, a number of people are indeed very healthy and still can and do work past the age of 65. So why has that retirement age not been advanced with improvements to heath care, employment conditions, or better nutrition? Before you go half cocked about the nutrition habits of a typical American, those that really want to live to a fairly advanced age can and do take care of themselves rather well with much better knowledge about nutrition than was had 70 years ago.
Unfortunately, no insurance company wants to break ranks with the other companies and change the situation, not to mention codification of this particular age limit in law that seems to be immutable when it is based on outdated ideas or a misunderstanding of where the limit came from.
This is precisely what is being discussed right now among some climatologists. The problem isn't so much that there is a solar sunspot minimum, but rather that the current trend is that the number of sunspots is still statistically dropping when in fact it should be going up dramatically.... given a more typical historical trend over the past couple of centuries.
The delay of the start of the next sunspot maximum cycle is what is causing all sorts of head scratching and wondering if there is some other cycle that until now hasn't been observed in the sun. All I can say is thank goodness that there is historical data going back to the 1700's that can confirm this is something that could happen, even if there are a few individuals who don't get it.
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As far as the legality of a state seceding from "the union", I don't think even today that is a settled question as to if a state could secede in a peaceful manner or not.
Lincoln tried not to push the issue, but he did claim authority over already previously designated federal areas and the "right" of the federal government to resupply those areas in order to maintain a federal garrison or to maintain federal control over those areas. In a more modern context, this is more or less the situation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba that was established when Cuba was a part of the USA (well, sort of... and that is complex as well). Even though the Cuban government doesn't like the "Norte Americanos" having a military base on their island, they aren't directly challenging U.S. authority over that small piece of real estate. A direct challenge would create a state of war between Cuba and America... something Castro is justifiably not willing to directly provoke.
The Civil War didn't really start until after South Carolina decided to blockade Fort Sumter and then took on the further step of assaulting the federal troops at that base after the siege. This in effect was a formal declaration of war against the USA by the South Carolina government.
It would have been interesting to see what could have happened if a more peaceful solution to the situation could have occurred, but it didn't happen, nor did the legality of the secession really get tested other than leaving the union by force of arms isn't considered a constitutional method of secession. This is also one of the most glaring omissions in the U.S. Constitution that simply doesn't even mention the possibility of secession in any form.... although the treaty between the Republic of Texas and the USA does spell out explicitly the legal mechanism that could be taken to have that state leave the union.
It depends on where the officer is saying that you are an ass.
If he is saying it while cooking on his BBQ in his back yard while not in uniform.... I would care less. Or if he says it somewhat quietly in his patrol vehicle.... I would expect a law enforcement officer to be human and occasionally say that or even offer a somewhat obscene gesture on occasion too.
I could even see an officer saying some rather foul-mouthed things when finally chasing down and getting somebody who flees from a crime scene and leaves a wake of destruction while trying to flee. These kind of folks are usually assholes to begin with, so the comments are rather deserved.
If they say something along these lines in court while they are testifying against a criminal? No, it wouldn't be professional speech (and would deserve a justified reprimand).
Of course I consider an ordinary police officer to be a blue-collar worker for the most part... or at least somebody who deals with the bottom 5% of ethical and moral behavior among humanity that it isn't surprising if a few colorful words pop out every now and again.
Still, this doesn't rationalize why the RIAA is engaging in this sort of legal tactic against what is legitimate criticism and commentary by a knowledgeable expert familiar with the proceedings of the RIAA legal team and their legal battles.
I certainly hope that when this gets reviewed legally, that the courts will slap the RIAA hard and set a strong legal precedence to never allow this sort of action again, with perhaps the legal licenses of the RIAA attorneys under threat for even filing such an action. Unfortunately, disbarment is such a rare action in these sort of situation that even the threat is hardly something to worry about.
What we don't know here are the starting conditions that exist within a "typical" stellar nursery, or even what variables there might be in terms of typical stellar systems for metal-rich gaseous clouds (of the kind that create rocky planets like the Earth).
Yeah, we have a pretty good understanding of gravity and even enhanced understanding of subtle variations caused by Relativity thanks to Einstein (something often missing from simulations due to complexity of the calculations), but it is these additional variables that are the huge unknowns.
I dare say that until we have additional observational information here, we can't even come up with a good idea of what these variables might even be in the first place.... although I think it may be possible to come up with a theory that can explain some of these variables and assess their relative importance in terms of what we ultimately see in terms of star formation and their planetary systems.
Just off the top of my head, here are some variables to consider:
I'm sure other variables could be considered as well, and all of these could have a profound impact on planetary system formation. My point is that we are missing information right now to even create a viable model beyond the most simplistic examples that explain just our own little solar system.
As far as a truly "Earth-like" rocky planet being discovered around a star of spectral classes between F & M type stars, I think it may be a bit longer than 2012 before that can happen.
Mind you, telescope precision and monitoring Doppler variations in radial velocities of stars are improving significantly (where most of these "discoveries" are happening), it would take some very hard precision instruments to be able to detect an "Earth-like" mass object. Smaller planets thus far identified are still at least an order of magnitude larger than the Earth.
We'll see, but predictions like this are hard to make without understanding the technology and knowings its limits. Research of this nature may give rise to some interesting candidates for inter-stellar space probes of the future, but I don't think that is going to happen within my lifetime.
I meant that Neptune was 1/10th the distance as this object. Yeah, I screwed up here. Thanks for pointing that out.
Since all of the current theories about planetary formation around stellar objects consist of a statistical sample of one, I'd like to hope that Astro-physicists would be able to come up with some better theories when that sample size is increased.
One thing we do know from stellar observations is that binary or multiple star systems are much more common than solitary stellar systems like we have here around Sol. Even from observation of stellar nurseries it is also apparent that the physical structures that give rise to stars are born in highly complex environments of which our Solar System was likely a rather bland or even "ideal laboratory" example of how planetary systems were created.
Given the distance (330 AU... about 1/10th the same distance as between the Sun and Neptune) and if I were "betting" on what would be found with a planetary probe going to this star system, I think you would find nearly a complete planetary system around this gas giant as well, with this "planet" simply being in the Continuum between O-class blue giant stars and grains of sand.
Of course this observation of discovering a secondary system is based upon a sample size of 4 gas giants in our own solar system that all seem to have their own satellite systems as well. That is more like shooting fish in a barrel to make this sort of prediction.
Seriously, other than a highly simplistic planetary creation model, I fail to see what huge changes in formation theory this will actually make, other than to give more pause to think about how complex the stellar formation process might be.
While I'll admit that the SCSC was a classical example of big science, this is indeed one of the best examples of partisan politics in America and why long-term planning is nearly dead for anybody in the U.S. Federal Government. If it can't be built in 8 years (while the president who proposed the idea is still in office or nearly so), it won't be built.
When it was being cancelled back in 1993, I thought then and still think it was a major mistake by Congress, and only time will tell how bad of a decision that was. CERN, while an interesting project in its own right, still isn't going to accomplish what this project could have been.
Thanks for a nice trip down memory lane!
Since you have given a detailed rebuttal, I want to start out by saying that I think we are roughly on the same page here.
As far as reusable vehicles are concerned, I think that takes a little bit of research and a whole lot of effort to make a genuinely reusable vehicle. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle was just part way there and really didn't get the job done. The refurbishing that takes place between typical Shuttle flights is so drastic that it almost is a whole new vehicle when it goes up again. Also, having a standing army of tens of thousands of workers to get that vehicle refurbished is one of the things that is also killing any sort of cost savings associated with its reusability.
For example, I consider a 747 to be almost as technically complicated as the Shuttle, and surprisingly has similar energy requirements if you consider a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney (something that routinely does happen with 747s nearly ever day). Yet the ground crew responsible for refurbishing a 747 number in the dozens, and most of them are involved with ticket sales and customer service directly related to passengers. Yes, there are mechanics and personnel dealing with consumables (aka fuel, but also emptying the toilet tanks and stocking the galleys) but it is a surprisingly efficient operation.
If, and this is a big if, SpaceX actually gets their act together and starts to send up spacecraft on a regular basis, one of the big selling points for that company is that they are much closer to airline type operations for servicing their spacecraft than nearly any other man-rated vehicle ever designed. Even the Falcon 1 has a surprisingly spartan flight crew given the nature of the vehicle.... and SpaceX has proven it can do an incredibly rapid recycling of the launch operations if there is a need to "tighten down that last bolt" or fix some minor problem on the vehicle before launch.
As far as the Space Shuttle being an X-project: I could only wish it were built with the philosophies of the earlier X-project program that created vehicles like the X-15. There even is a worthy successor of the X-15 that has flown recently, and another even more updated version that will soon be flying: Burt Rutan's Spaceship One and soon to be Spaceship Two. Both of these are completely reusable spacecraft that Rutan openly acknowledges are based from technology developed by the original Air Force X-projects. As to if this could be pushed into an orbital version is something I have debated before, and there are some legitimate doubts along that line. This is more along the line of what I am implying about reusable spacecraft, and perhaps some lessons learned from the Shuttle program could also be applied here. But it won't be a direct successor to the Shuttle.
As for the Apollo project, one of the worst things that ever happened to manned spaceflight was the cancellation of the Apollo Applications program. Von Braun and the engineers who designed the Saturn V intended that line of vehicles to be extended into production volumes of hundreds or even thousands, and the facilities in Huntsville and elsewhere had been built with this sort of intention in mind as well. Using 20/20 hindsight, even though I'll acknowledge that it would have been hard to prove this back in the early 1970's, I argue that every single goal that was accomplished by the Shuttle program... including launching crews of seven or more astronauts simultaneously and building the International Space Station... could have been built with the Saturn V/Apollo technology. Indeed I believe it would have been an order of magnitude cheaper and/or would have resulted in much more in-space infrastructure than actually resulted from the Shuttle program. I would love to see a 21st Century rev of the Apollo space capsule that would have been incrementally improved every year or so since the 1970's... and something that unfortunately will only be the target of science fiction authors at this point.
My problem with Ares is that they are taki
One thing missing from the grandparent list:
Florida is set up to deal with civilian flights. They are used to tourists, publicity, and showing off to the world, unlike SpaceX's previous launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California. Military restrictions on being able to visit the base, perform tests, and crazy launch windows that kept getting SpaceX bumped when they tried to set up a schedule all force SpaceX to move somewhere else.... which is why they move to the middle of the Pacific for the Falcon 1 launches.
The Falcon 9 is going to require considerably more infrastructure, especially if it becomes a manned vehicle. This launch pad looks like it will be a good place to do exactly those sorts of activities.
What is staring at all of these engineering efforts real hard is the ghost of Von Braun and the rocket engineers of Huntsville that built the Saturn V.
Essentially these engineers are being asked: "if we could do this with 1960's technology, why can't it be done today?"
What should have been done with the Ares rocket system is a clean-sheet design from the bottom up, using lessons learned from all of the previous spacecraft including the Saturn V and the Shuttle. Instead, they have this backward monster based on an improvised design with goals that have absolutely nothing at all to do with manned spaceflight.
I've been handed projects that were just this awful. In a couple of situations I developed prototypes that were so powerful that I was told to run with the prototype and turn it into the production version directly. In another case, I had a simply awful design handed to me by a genuinely incompetent engineer and told to simply make it work. Over time these kind of projects can be made to work, but at substantially more cost (time + resources) and they still seem to exhibit flaws that came from the original design that never seem to be worked out. This seems to be exactly what NASA is experiencing with the Ares system.
There are so many lessons to learn about the Shuttle that I don't know where to begin. One of the problems with a study of the Shuttle and what went wrong is that due to the plethora of mistakes in setting up that launch system, I am afraid that the wrong lessons are being learned.
Among them is a complete and irrational fear of re-usable manned launch vehicles for Earth to LEO spaceflight. While there may be some problems with the implementation of this idea in the Shuttle, this is IMHO one of the things that at least from a certain point of view that the Shuttle did right. Certainly the Space Shuttle has been able to get more people up into space and do useful things than any other manned space vehicle, including the Soyuz spacecraft (which is often mis-characterized as a "safe" vehicle).
For myself, I think the problem with the Shuttle program is that it should have been treated like an X-project with the intention to try a series of successively improved spacecraft that built on the predecessor and became better over time. As it was, the Columbia (aka the "prototype") was treated as a production vehicle, and the earlier prototypes were pressed into service as improved versions when in fact they were the predecessor spacecraft. I dare any major vehicle manufacturing company to be able to get away with something like that unless they are under a government contract.
There should have been a Shuttle 2.0 program some time ago, and unfortunately neither the U.S. Presidents over the past 20 years, the NASA administrators, nor Congress have had the will to get something like that built. And instead we have Apollo 2.0... and a bad rev of that by engineers who weren't even born when the original was under development.
A high resolution version of the image shows that the worker on the bottom of the tank was secured with a safety harness... in essence a seat belt.
What he is doing there, on the other hand, I can't say. I highly doubt that the tank was moving all that rapidly, and may have been in the range of about 5 mph or so. There are legitimate reasons for having workers move about to watch all sorts of issues that may happen when moving something that large, and what he is doing may in fact be OSHA compliant in terms of safety regs.
I think you missed the main point of my response here: We (meaning America, Britain, all of the EU, and most of the signatory members of the Berne Convention) are citizens of representative democracies that can and should demand more from our elected leaders on this issue.
For far too long ordinary folks have let the content publishers have nearly the only voice in determining copyright policies. Furthermore, organizations like the UK Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department are wrapped up in their own naval gazing to realize that the citizens whom they represent don't want the same things they are trying to negotiate for. They may speak on behalf of their countries in these international copyright conferences, but there is a huge dis-connect between what is happening on this level and what ordinary citizens are thinking copyright actually means.
Frankly I have my doubts that these diplomats even represent the thinking of the heads of government, much less the greater legislative bodies that must approve these treaties or the citizens they represent.
The ordinary American citizen is not really pushing for stricter copyrights, longer terms, or things like software patents... and it is unfortunate that some countries are being pressured diplomatically to think otherwise.
One of the problems here is that the author of the article seems to think the authority to change the situation lies with the court system, when in fact this is a legislative problem that is compounded by a massive mis-interpretation of what the general public thinks it ought to be about.
While I understand that the Register is a UK publication, it reads like it was written by an American (perhaps a personal bias). From an American perspective, the record companies are fighting something even tougher: The U.S. Constitution. More to the point, if the copyright clause of the constitution were to be properly interpreted to understand that the protection was only for a limited time (life + 75 years isn't a "limited time" in spite of what the U.S. Supreme Court claims). Retroactive copyright term extensions make the situation even worse... but I'm barking up the wrong issue here anyway.
The point here is that legislative bodies of the world like Congress, Parliament, and other similar bodies have been dealing with this issue as if the publishing bodies (including recording studios in the case of music) are the only individuals that need to be served when these laws are drafted. Individual consumers as well as the artists/authors/composers/performers need to be strongly considered as well, and the real point of legislation ought to be asking this question:
What can changes in the current copyright legislation do to expand the number of creative works, and "promote the useful arts and sciences"?
This is certainly not something that is being asked by legislators (MPs or Congressmen), and nearly all legislation in the past couple of decades on both sides of the pond works to kill off incentives by individuals to create these kind of artistic works. International agreements, while they do seek to "equalize copyright laws", tend to take the lowest common denominator approach and offer the best possible protection for the publisher as any of the countries in the treaty organization (aka the "Berne Convention"). This question about what can be done to promote the development of these artistic works certainly isn't being asked at these treaty conferences either, nor by the legislative bodies when the treaties are being ratified.
I have no idea what the Ford Motor company has to do with the reliability of Diebold voting machines, as the comparison is irrelevant anyway.
What you can do is to discuss what exactly Diebold does for its banking customers and noting error rates for ATM transactions.... they are far worse than a "zero incident" rate. This is even the same company that makes these voting machines, and IMHO an incredibly valid criticism.
The point being is that electronic voting standards IMHO ought to be much stronger and more completely tested than something done for a mere banking transaction that can be fixed after the fact and traced through alternative methods of measurement... something which is much harder to accomplish the day after an election which results in a very close race.
I can't stand the lax security standards on Diebold machines that are used in my voting precinct, even though there are (thank goodness!) some backup measures such as a voter-verified paper trail that is used to certify the election results and can at least be used for recounts.
IMHO the only thing electronic voting machines should be used for is for ballot preparation purposes. In other words, go ahead and use a computer to select the candidates that you want for each office and to put all of the ballot information into some sort of standardized format. But it should be a paper ballot that is actually cast and counted. Security measures such as watermarked paper, timestamping, and multiple vote tallying machines made by independent companies could IMHO significantly improve the voting process and bring integrity to the whole process. But then again, who am I to suggest any of these silly features.
I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a reusable vehicle capable of spaceflight is something impossible to design.
I would agree, however, that the Shuttle should have been kept as a prototype and have gone through several more revisions since its original development. Furthermore, relying upon only a single vehicle type was a massive mistake for NASA and should never have happened... at least beyond the initial deployment of the Columbia and perhaps the Challenger.
Vehicles like the DC-X, Dynasoar, and a whole bunch of other failed NASA designs... many of which never even made it beyond a paper study, even though some of them had actual hardware built as well.... should have either received more political support or at least should have been deployed between the early 1980's and today. Unfortunately, the last manned spacecraft design to make it into space that came from a NASA engineer/designer was the Space Shuttle... and that was originally drawn up in the 1960's by Von Braun's shop in Huntsville even though Von Braun wasn't directly responsible for it. At least they were real rocket scientists who had flown actual hardware before they made that design.
The problem I have with those who want to assert that modern technology (aka integrated circuits, nano-technology, modern rocketry, "the internet", etc.) is something that came from alien spaceships is that they are openly trying to suggest mankind is mostly a bunch of morons.
I know for a fact that all of these devices were created by stinking brilliant engineers and scientists who put a hell of a lot of effort into making them in the first place. They were human engineers, and people no different than you can see in any major engineering college.
We don't need "alien technology" to explain anything that has happened in the past 60 years or so (things that came supposedly from the Roswell, NM spaceship crash), and these UFO nuts are just that: people grasping for things that simply don't exist.
There may be some merit for the "UFO's" being advanced technology currently under development at some sort of skunkworks place like Area 51 (aka "Groom Lake AFB"), but the folks who work there are ordinary folks like you or me, with perhaps some sort of high security area set up to keep legitimate military secrets from getting out.
To reinforce the point you made about how much "land" there is "out there", Mars has more habitable surface area than the land area of the entire Earth. The Moon is at least as big as all of North America, and that is if you include Greenland, the Caribbean islands, and Central America as well. Yeah, that isn't something to "give up" and let the Chinese take over... discounting ownership of the "high frontier" that gives you a tactical and military advantage when you engage in some sort of geo-political conflict like what is happening in Afghanistan or Georgia (republic, not state).
As for the length of this "gap", I'm not too optimistic with the Ares I developments, where they are adding kludges like shock absorbers because they can't solve the pogoing problem with their engines (something Von Braun was somehow able to solve with the Saturn V rocket for some reason). The whole project looks like they can't figure out what the engineers of the '50's and '60's were able to come up with and can't seem to duplicate with current technology.
The whole issue is that there seems to be a lack of leadership at the top. Mike Griffin seemingly wants to take on that leadership role, but unfortunately his boss (Pres. Bush) doesn't want to give him either the resources or the leadership necessary to make whatever changes need to be done. And unfortunately Congress is putting their hand in the cookie jar as well making it even tougher to make any realistic changes that could make this whole thing get done on time and under budget.
My first impression of this thought is "OK, somebody wants to waste other people's money".
Typically I try to have an outlook that any sort of government spending is mainly harmless... especially if it is out right corruption and embezzlement. Typical pork barrel type projects are just methods of wealth transfer to somebody better connected politically, even if along the way some sort of "public good" is created that can prove beneficial. At the very least it keeps the government busy gazing at its own naval instead of trying to screw up my own life with some sort of oppressive program.
Unfortunately, this proposal fits more into the worst possible nightmare for those who hate big government: A big project that will not only transfer a huge amount of wealth, but that in the long run may do far more harm than good. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that those who are proposing this sort of concept can honestly suggest that they understand the global climatological systems to a level to understand what exactly this sort of proposal to modify the weather might actually do.... provided they actually succeed and can influence global temperatures.
My only hope with something like this is that the contractor will churn up a bunch of activity and run massively over budget, and eventually the whole thing will get dropped like a NASA manned launch vehicle.
As long as none of these ships actually make it out to sea, I won't mind. But the second it starts to actually happen is when I might just have to get into action, politically or otherwise.
Even assuming the most wild predictions do come true, that it does start to influence and change the climate in a positive manner (who gets to decide that again?), there will still be maintenance of these ships and continued funding for this project once it is up and going. Dare I suggest that ships in the sea may sink? What about "radical right-wing elements" going along and deliberately blowing these things up? How about ship-builders themselves paying to have these vessels sunk... perhaps covertly? Or planned obsolescence by ship builders that will happen faster than they can be built?
Even more important, what is going to be the "hook" to keep political support for continuing this project regardless of the long-term consequences? That was something decidedly missing from the Apollo project, and that had support from both conservative and liberal parts of the American political landscape. This is a political hot potato that I don't see will happen at least on a completed level of operation, although I have no doubt that money will be spent on something like this in some form or another and simply be a waste of resources and money.
And all of this will happen because of the "environmental movement"... what irony.
I think you are more referencing the laws of Entropy/Thermodynamics rather than the laws of Motion (usually attributed to Newton as "Newton's laws").
Written in a simple, easy to understand fashion, the laws of entropy/energy are:
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) The game is rigged where everybody will go broke in the end.
But then again too many environmentalists are unaware of basic principles of science, so perhaps they think you can reverse entropy on a global scale.
I think you are misinterpreting the wording here.
The fact is that art and science simply weren't as well defined (or as exclusively disjointed of communities) as currently exist. Scientific reasoning was considered one form of artistic expression, along with other forms of art in the 18th Century (aka when the Constitution was written).
Copyright laws clearly were intended to protect artists of a classical variety... meaning photographers like Ansel Adams, sculptors, and painters of 2-dimensional works of art, as well as authors, printers, and engravers.
This isn't reserved exclusively for purely scientific publications, and can include political thought.
Nice try here, but you are reading things into this clause that simply aren't there, and aren't supported by legal precedent or statutory law that implements this section of the constitution either, including the Copyright Act of 1790 that was largely written by the very authors of this paragraph.
The "science" here is that there has been a noted historical correlation between long-term solar minimums and overall global temperatures, as noted by historians who have kept records of sunspots going back to the 1750's with specific daily sunspot counts and historical records of daily average temperatures for a rather large number of locations around the Earth.
More to the point, while the exact mechanism for why this occurs isn't completely clear, that it does happen is a historical fact... at least for noting that similar periods in the past did have a significant drop in temperatures throughout the world. Unlike most of the global warming scare numbers, this is based on information that goes back hundreds of years and could be done with 18th century equipment. It is also collaborated with other information like tree rings and ice core samples that go back to the same era.
Generally, no. Usually those who are watching these things happen they measure hundreds of sunspots and then try to do a statistical average over the course of a month to make up the monthly average. Sometimes sunspots are more heavily concentrated on one side of the sun rather than the other, so a monthly statistical average makes much more sense than taking a strictly daily number.
Instead, they are now grasping at straws to even mark off what might even remotely be called a sunspot. That is why this is such a big deal, as reporting the number "0" is often something used to mark off missing data than the actual number observed.
Even if you arbitrarily mark off some other set of 30 days to calculate this figure, this is something to pay attention to.
Here are some daily data sets to compare. First, for 2000:
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/AMERICAN_NUMBERS/2000
And then for this year (2008):
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/2008
There is a huge difference between these two datasets, and it is remarkable for all of the zeros that are noted in any given day. What is even being called a sunspot is something that is called into question here.
For a whole bunch of historical data, including measurements of sunspots by ancient Chinese historians and data going back several thousand years, see:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/SSN/ssn.html
This includes daily measurements as well as the monthly averages.
The purpose of the "age 65" retirement limit is mainly due to actuarial tables generated by insurance companies in the 1930's which measured the overall health of "typical" workers in an industrial environment. At that time and under the employment conditions of the era, workers over the age of 65 were considered a liability and a great many insurance companies therefore refused to cover employer liability for anybody over that age.
There was also a tendency that most people would be dead by the age of 65 at the time, so it was more or less a moot point in that era. It was only a very small fraction of our population that lived for a great many years past the typical retirement age.
Unfortunately, a number of people are indeed very healthy and still can and do work past the age of 65. So why has that retirement age not been advanced with improvements to heath care, employment conditions, or better nutrition? Before you go half cocked about the nutrition habits of a typical American, those that really want to live to a fairly advanced age can and do take care of themselves rather well with much better knowledge about nutrition than was had 70 years ago.
Unfortunately, no insurance company wants to break ranks with the other companies and change the situation, not to mention codification of this particular age limit in law that seems to be immutable when it is based on outdated ideas or a misunderstanding of where the limit came from.
This is precisely what is being discussed right now among some climatologists. The problem isn't so much that there is a solar sunspot minimum, but rather that the current trend is that the number of sunspots is still statistically dropping when in fact it should be going up dramatically.... given a more typical historical trend over the past couple of centuries.
The delay of the start of the next sunspot maximum cycle is what is causing all sorts of head scratching and wondering if there is some other cycle that until now hasn't been observed in the sun. All I can say is thank goodness that there is historical data going back to the 1700's that can confirm this is something that could happen, even if there are a few individuals who don't get it.