No, because as I noted elsewhere, it's possible for space to be flat while spacetime is still curved. Also, all that is established is that space is on average flat (or very close to it); locally, it is certainly curved (near concentrations of masses like stars and galaxies).
I think the discovery can be put more precisely without too much confusion. I don't doubt that you understand all that is meant by the universe being "on overage" flat, but the experiment has broader implications than this post makes clear.
A flat universe is flat in the absense of something that curves it, while a curved universe is curved even in such absense. That is, mass is responsible for all (?) of the curvature (one effect of which is gravity) which we see, in a flat universe. In a curved universe, space is warped even in the absense of a mass (travelling objects appear to be deflected by the gravity of a mass which isn't there).
We've of course already heard this news about a year ago when the most powerful instruments we had at the time said that the curvature was as close to zero as we could measure. This experiment uses more powerful instruments, confirming that the curvature is even closer to zero than we could accurately say before.
This is actually one of the few experiments which says that the universe is not as wierd as the wierdest imaginable possibility. A flat universe is what most people expect: things go in straight lines unless something (in this case, gravity) interferes with them. If any of the wierdness that Einstein proposed (trajectories bent by nothing but space itself) actually occurs, it is too small for us to measure.
Hmmm does it catch this? mypassword, updated to mypassword1, updated to mypassword2...ect...
It's actually amazing how often password changes of this sort actually occur. I used to work for a (now-all-but-defunct) software (later hardware) retail company that required the managers to change their passwords every month: the password was changed simply my incrementing the last number of the previous password. What is really amazing is that we retained the same system even after firing the guy upon whose name the original system (incrementation and all) was based; he was the one who introduced the system.
Oddly enough, at the time the company abandoned all retail operations, this was not the thing that made me decide that it was headed for disaster. Although, now that I think on it, I do remember receiving an email that their customer database had been hacked...
Yeah, God forbid if someone broke into my slashdot account and posted a message as me. I use easy to guess passwords intentionally. This way, if I ever post something I regret, I can just say my password was stolen.
This opens up a whole new realm of moderation. In addition to Troll, Redundant, Flamebait, etc., we could have a 'Hacked' option for those comments which we feel should have been posted by an Anonymous Coward, but have somehow been ascribed to a real account. (and just for the mod-down...) You know, for those posts coming from that Jon Katz fellow? (God, what was his password?/.4ever?)
The most annoying thing about most people's casualness with passwords is that they not only do not know even the most basic rules of etiquette, but they actually get offended when you try to enforce them. When I'm at a friend's computer and I need him to type in his password, I get up and move away. When someone is at an ATM in front of me, I stand back and stare at the wall.
But when I ask people to back off when entering my password/PIN, they stare at me as if I'm a madman! Then they grumble something about 'paranoia' as they finally back away.
It would appear that their own lax security affects how they think everyone else should act. I don't much mind their own obliviousness, which is what this article is about, so much as the creation of social norms around it.
Graham Smith, a member of Project-ARK conservation team which aims to preserve endangered species, warned that the spiders could attack.
"The species is certainly venomous and the jaws are strong enough to penetrate the human skin."
Really now, it's almost as if he wants to sound like some scientist from a MST3K reject. A concerned "member of the scientific community" warns that, though there might be some danger to humankind, and though they could theoretically "attack" at any moment, he is part of a group dedicated to preserving and understanding this facinating new species. And besides, fumigation wouldn't work anyway. I'll bet he even has a cool line like "beautiful creatures" already made up so he can stoically meet his death when they turn on him, despite his personal responsibility in preventing their extinction by sabotaging the heroes' attempt to lure them into a trap using super-strong queen spider pheromones...
I have three points to make. The first is: that was damn cool.
The second is a bit more bitter: the Washington Post article cited talks more about the scientific issues surrounding the nebula than the movie; the movie is just an excuse to talk about the nebula. Indeed, the movie itself seems to have been created only as a ploy to get media attention for recent findings regarding the nebula (and the formation of stars in general). Even here, on/., we are directed to the movie rather than to the science by the title and story. Given, we have already discussed the impact of recent discoveries here, so our sin is not so great, but it sad when even the cool sciences must stoop to such whoredom to get an audience.
"I've discovered the Secret of Everything!"
"So?"
"It flashes a lot [for reasons I can explain]..."
"Why didn't you say so? Commence with the flashing stuff, and be sure to include some talking in the background about the flashing stuff, so the new-age music doesn't grate on my conscious mind..."
And after that rant, my third point: I kept expecting to see a starship piloted by Scott Bakula cutting through the incredibly dense nebula (remember, this is before the original Star Trek, when glass domes were still standard), but alas, the music never turned for the hipper.
Since the moderators seem to be ignoring this thread (a lotofexcellentreplies are still at 1), I guess I can go off on my rant here.
I don't know about "secret of life" stuff, but I do find this article to be damnably cool. We (living stuff) take a random series of interactions, and act on them as if we perceived some pattern in them, all the while lacking the mental capacities to perceive such a pattern. Sure, natural selection suggests that anything that acts as if it had perceived this pattern will outbreed and thus outsurvive anything that doesn't, so long as this pattern facilitates reproduction, but actually identifying this pattern (why the seemingly random Brownian motion actually produces recognizable pattern of acceptable interactions) is kind of neat. It's like watching a Foucault pendulum in action for the first time: anyone can explain the theory behind it (in this case, natural selection), but there's still something indescribable about watching the blocks of wood fall (ATP moving along microtubule).
The popup ads may cycle, but but I found the one attached to What Makes a Superrace? hilarious. What makes a superrace, you might ask? How shall we all become equal by all becoming superior? The answer --- Russian Girls.
Since this seems to be the only post by someone who's read the article, I'll ask this question here.
It's a little like observing that the sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening everyday.
The example of Cygnus X-2 given in the article listed the constant by which the whole number is multiplied as 9.8 days, equal to its orbital period, which would suggest that it is tied to a certain spot in its orbit. The possible reason offered, a "clump" in a tilted accretion disk, seems to suggest the same thing.
Yet nowhere do they say that the constant for Cygnus X-3 and LMC X-3 is equal to their orbital period: indeed they seem to actively avoid saying it ("Long term variations in LMC X-3 and Cygnus X-3 follow the same general rule: the lengths of the variations are always a whole number multiplied by a constant", immediately after linking Cygnus X-2's constant to its orbital period). Does anyone have any information on this? Do we know the orbital periods for these? This bears directly on whether the possible explanation is convincing (3/3 is one thing, 1/1 is something else).
I think it won't be long before the US Federal Trade Commission has a nice long talk with Sony management on what appears to be a violation of our Federal laws in regards to deceptive advertising.
I don't see how anything they did violated any laws. Possibly the trust of the people, but give me a break, who trusts commercials? Or movie reviews?
The FTC recently began cracking down on advertisements that feature "testimonials": although this sort of thing was accepted a few years ago, it has come under closer scrutiny nowadays. Moreover, they attributed their remarks to a real newspaper, and thus made blatantly false claims. They could even be subject to civil suits for their erroneously attributed remarks.
Damn, having never seen the name of this particular adesive product in written form I assumed it to be spelt "Duck Tape" and was designed for securing ducks whilst performing acts which would normally cause them to attempt rapid escape.
And to further confuse the matter, the first time I saw it in print, when I bought some all those years ago, it was spelled Duck Tape: Duck-brand Duct Tape.
Golf Manor, according to the article, is a subdivision of Commerce, MI, which does exist. It has postal codes 48382 and 48390, and appears to be a suburb of Detroit. Pinto Drive, also mentioned in the article, doesn't show up on Yahoo! maps, but this is hardly surprising, considering.
After having watched Flay on Chillin' and Grillin', I was so rooting against him. The show was basically Flay with his gas grill making fun of some poor Southern chef for being inbred (the real man used charcoal). The first match wasn't so embarrasing for me since I wholly expected him to make some off-color internment camp jokes; needless to say, I thought he carried himself with an unusual amount of dignity and decorum (for Flay, at least).
That would have been hilarious. And then we perhaps would get Iron Chef here in Scandinavia as well.
Kaga: Kyoo no tema wa kore desu... Chocolate Moose!
Fukui: Chocolate Moose, an interesting choice, and one of the Challenger's favorite ingredients. The Challenger has wisely chosen Iron Chef Japanese Masuharu Morimoto, who will have a difficult time fully integrating this difficult theme ingredient into Japanese cuisine. Will he prevail? Will the Challenger unseat the Iron Chef?
[Iron Chef Wipe]
Kaga: Allez cuisine!
Swedish Chef: Furst veet zee chuculete-a, und zeen veet zee muuse-a. Heer Muuse-a. Heer Muusey Muusey Muusey.
Ota: Fukui-san.
Fukui: Go ahead Ota.
Ota: The Iron Chef is mixing chocolate, seaweed, soy sauce and ginger in a small bowl, but he seems to be at a loss as to what to do with the Moose.
Kuzuko: Is the challenger just coating the moose in chocolate? [giggle] Excuse me, but that looks, well [giggle] awful. I'm sorry.
Fukui: Actually I'm told by the Challenger that this is quite common in Nordic cuisine, and I imagine it's quite tasty.
Kuzuko: You mean with salt that he's added.
Fukui: Yeah, I think that's the direction he's headed...
There are also protocol to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified as a nuclear explosion or missile launch at the USA has taken place.
Actually, there are protocols to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified that POTUS has authorized a launch. There is nothing in U.S. law, U.S. protocols, or U.S. policy that prevents a first strike. While the implimentation of these protocols gives some time between order and launch, in which time the launch order may be recinded, they do not at all prevent, nor are they intended to prevent, a launch in the absence of a previous strike. The presence of a nuclear attack is necessary only if the commander is to launch upon his own authority; the commander may be ordered to launch at any time.
Remember that the Soviets had 100+ divisions facing Western Europe; NATO, at its height, had 16. U.S. policy has always been to threaten possible escalation to nuclear exchange if an attack were underway, and no President has seen fit to alter our nuclear stance. We operate under strategic ambiguity for a reason.
That is, in essence, exactly what he ruled. You can't enter evidence that was illegally obtained, therefore the judge considers this legal. Since they did violate a Russian law, they must not be subject.
The exclusionary rule is not as broad as you make it out to be. Evidence gained by a government agent or someone acting on its behalf (e.g., informants) in a way that violates U.S. Constitutional protection is inadmissible. While the FBI agents were most certainly government agents, non-citizens outside of U.S. sovereignty have no claim to Constitutional protection, and thus their Constitutional rights cannot be violated. If you are in an area in which the Constitution does not apply, you cannot claim the applicability of the U.S. Constitution.
While the FBI agents may have broken some Russian law, or what would have been an American law had it occurred on U.S. soil, they did not violate any Constitutional protections. Therefore, any evidence obtained, legal or not, is not subject to the exclusionary rule.
Several people have brought that up... I don't see what that has to do with anything (other than that it was mentioned in the article.) So they have no expectation, fine. The FBI knows what their password is. That gives them no right to *use* it, though. You can bet that if I shoulder-surf someone's password when they are using my machine, and then use their password to get into their account, I'd be arrested.
You're right: in this instance, reasonable expectation does not apply. A reasonable expectation of privacy is only relevent when there is a Fourth Amendment issue: one only needs a warrant to search areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy -- public spaces where such expectation is unreasonable are not so protected. In this case, however, there is no Fourth Amendment issue because the Constitution has no operative authority in Russia; hence reasonable expectation is not relevent.
Your example, however, is not so clear. Since you are not a government agent, reasonable expectation is not at issue, but let's assume you were. I don't believe the courts have ruled that I have a reasonable expectation to privacy when working on a public machine, but I don't think they've ruled that I haven't, either. You are correct, however, to note that the FBI would need to obtain a warrant to perform such an operation here; the court simply ruled that they aren't required to do so over there.
The feds can hack the Russian computers because the Russian laws don't apply to them. They were after the Russian hackers because they had broken into US computers. Their laws don't apply to us, but ours apply to them.
The judge did not rule that the FBI is not subject to Russian law, only that the evidence could not be excluded. Not being in the United States or operating on the private property of a U.S. citizen, they had no reasonable expectation to Fourth Amendment privacy. While they may have had some expectation of privacy according to Russian law, violation of an other nation's search and siezure regulations does not trigger the exclusionary rule (nor should it, since the exclusionary rule is meant to protect the integrity of the U.S. Constitution. Where the Constitution has no integrity, e.g., beyond U.S. sovereignty, such protection is unwarranted).
FBI agents could of course be arrested for their activities oversees, provided that said activities are not allowed by treaty or previous agreement, but this ruling says that the fruit of such activities is admissible as evidence in a U.S. court.
While it is nice to know that the site got hacked, aren't we rewarding the hacked by posting all to info in a public forum?
This is the problem that was faced with the airline hijackings a decade ago. Eventually, the major news organizations agreed to report only that a plane had been hijacked: they refused to disclose by whom or their demands. Of course, with a more distributed news apparatus in the internet, this sort of thing might be more difficult today (especially considering responses like comment #33). I suppose the only option available to us is increased airport security, so to speak.
When I first read the title for this ("Making Babies on the Assembly Line"), I thought that I'd have to get a job at that factory, or at least buy their products (a happy worker is a good worker...). Then I read the article.
Well, i got in with mozila 0.9 (albeit running under w98) when i enabled javascript and cookies. So i guess (if the story is not totally bogus) that someone reacted very fast and disabled that IE-Hurdle at the entrance (that's a cheap one). I even got into the secure site (https://secure....) and for people who couldn't use the certificate to log in there seemed to be a possibility to get a userid and password via mail. I also got to the inlandrevenue-site from there.
From What do I need before I register? section (it's javascript activiated, so I can't post the URL: its off the main site):
What do I need before I can register?
Before you register with the Government Gateway, check the requirements below to make sure you have everything you need:
Hardware
PC or Macintosh
A working Internet connection
Software
PC Users
Microsoft Windows (Windows 95 and above or Windows NT 4 and above)
Internet browser. Either Microsoft Internet Explorer (v4.01 or later) or Netscape Navigator (v4.08 or later).
Please note that if you wish to enrol for services that require a digital certificate, you may not be able to use the full range of browsers listed above. For example, Equifax certificates can currently only be used with Internet Explorer 5.01 or later (they do not work on any version of the Netscape browser); ChamberSign certificates can be used with both Nestcape Navigator and Internet Explorer, except they are not currently supported on version 6 of the Netscape browser. Please check your certificate provider's web site for more information about which browsers they support.
Your browser must have Javascript and Cookies enabled, and be capable of supporting 128bit SSL.
Apple Macintosh Users
Mac OS version 7.5 or later
Internet browser. Either Microsoft Internet Explorer (v5.0 or later) or Netscape Navigator (v4.08 or later). Please note that although you can access the Government Gateway web site with these browsers, ChamberSign and Equifax digital certificates are not supported on the Macintosh. Macintosh users can currently only register for Government services that require a User ID and Password, not services that require a digital certificate (such as the Electronic VAT Return or MAFF IACS Area Aid Application).
Your browser must have Javascript and Cookies enabled, and be capable of supporting 128bit SSL.
So basically, this story is only true if you have an Equifax certificate.
I think the big problem with this symbolism is the fact that it's inconsistent. One thing in 2001 may stand for different things in the Odyssey and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but it ought to stand for the same thing in both works. Let me explain.
If Bowman is Odysseus, a reasonable connection, and his crew is Odysseus' crew, then they ought to perform this function throughout. But when the author tries to tie the Monolith into his imagery, the crewman (and the Monolith) have to start pulling double-duty. When the Monolith is the Trojan Horse, the Achaean crewman become Trojans (in order to be hurt by it), but in all other places, the author refers to them as Odysseus's crew (e.g., the attack on Ismarus): in the same sequence, they are both Achaeans and Trojans. When the three disabled crewmen are put into hibernation, the Monolith ceases to be the Trojan Horse and becomes the lotus flower. So the Monolith loses its commonly-accepted interpretation (i.e., the cause of Bowman's transformation), and becomes the lotus and the Trojan Horse. Bowman's crew become Achaeans and Trojans. Tycho crater becomes Troy and Ismarus. It seems that only Bowman/Odysseus retains his identity in this interpretation.
His discussion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is more coherent, but I've already lodged my problems with that interpretation the first time around. I must say that the identification HAL with the jester and God seems tortured. There is no hint in TSZ that the jester is God; he appears throughout as a showman (I.12), an unworthy companion (III.8.1, III.12.4, IV.18.2) (except in the prologue, where he appears as a possible equal to Zarathustra).
But be that as it may, combining the two allegories produces some odd results. Unless you're a Straussian or Protagorean, the Odyssey is not an anti-God story; Odysseus does not kill God. While his return home is against the will of Poseidon, he makes it home because His wrath relents, not because Odysseus defeats him in any way. And so on.
While I see the Odyssey analogy, I think the attempt to tie it intimately to Zarathustra leads the author down a number of blind alleys, corrupting the former without convincing regarding the latter. While there is of course a story about Bowman's transformation into... what?, and the song Thus Spoke Zarathustra is definitely meant to draw our attention to Nietzsche, this appears to have been an afterthought (the Nietzscheanism, not the transformation). It seems pretty obvious that Bowman is transformed by the Monolith -- that which has caused all previous transformation. But if we hold to a strict Zarathustrian allegory, the Monolith can no longer play this role; the author is therefore forced to make the Monolith into everything but this catalyst. A strict Zarathustrian allegory produces too many problems.
Let me digress a bit and then return. I balk at saying that Kubrick put a great deal of thought into the Nietzschean aspects of the film because these aspects are so simplistic. It is as if he read Part I of TSZ, and then Shaw's Man and Superman: where's the soothsayer? the willing of the eternal recurrence? the spirit[s] of gravity and revenge? In the hope that Kubrick actually had a firmer grasp of Nietzsche, I am inclined to think that any Zarathustrian references are meant to serve metaphorically for the real theme of transformation: references to TSZ would serve only to highlight the transformation, not to run throughout as an allegory.
That having been said, one could read the Monolith in a Zarathustrian manner. If we take the Monolith as God in TSZ and the lotus in the Odyssey, we could say that belief in God prevents one from progressing further by dulling one's senses (Od.) or turning one toward Otherworlds (TSZ). But this seems incompatible with the Monolith as catalyst. I may be missing something that blocks me from taking this thought to a successful conclusion, but I think any attempt to read deep Nietzschean and Homeric symbolism into 2001 would have to start with the Monolith (seeing as it plays a central role in the film). My major reservation with the author's interpretation is that it turns the Monolith into nothing more than a black tub of conflicting symbolisms.
Single photons do not produce interference patterns.
Statistics used to evaluate the behavior of large groups of particles cannot be used to determine the behavior of individual particles.
But... single electrons do produce interference patterns... The dual slit experiment is not an inference based on a large number of particles, but something various people have actually done. It works: each particle appears to interfere with itself, meaning that each particle must pass through both slits at once, meaning that it does not have a single definite position at any given time.
Actually, I'd say the solution (and not only to this, but to most things in gov't I disagree with) is to vote 3rd party, and educate others why this is a good idea, too. Think "outside the box" to use a tired cliche. Trying to "reform" an existing political party will do you about as much good as spitting into the wind.
Unfortunately, the system is heavily stacked against third-party candidacy, as recent Presidental elections have shown. The modern President is powerful enough that you can't be a real party without fielding a reasonably popular Presidential candidate every election for a number of elections in a row. The unit rule prevents real third-party Presidential candidacies, and thus third-parties tend to be single issue (e.g., Green), or attract members that detract from its seriousness (e.g., the current Reform and Libertarian parties).
The unit rule is governed by the state legislatures, and cannot be reasonably abolished in one state if the others do not follow suit. (Washington put one Ford vote for Reagan in 1976, West Virginia put one Dukakis vote for Bensten in 1988, but these were within the same party. The last time an elector bolted parties was 1972, and the last good third-party showing was in 1968.) Getting the states to abolish the unit rule would require either a constitutional amendment or a control of most state legislatures: both are major undertakings. Both would require the support of at least one major party, and so would require working within the system until at least that time.
Sen. McCain gets more done in Washington, DC, because he is a Republican rather than an Independent/Reform/etc.
I'm kinda surprised that NASA is using a human to do this. I didn't read the article yet, so perhaps this is a waste. Aren't we, as humans, one of the more under-developed species when it comes to olafactory senses?
Why would we need anything more than a human with a rather sensitive sense of smell? We aren't interested in making sure that no dog gags at the odor: we want the poor humans to feel OK.
Isn't it amazing that the generation that campaigned for youth rights in the 60's when THEY were teenagers are now voting republican, trying to censor the internet (the "free love" communes), strip-mining the environment (flower power), fighting a war on drugs (they're upset they didn't use the next generation's supply back in the 60's?) and generally being the same hypcritical pricks their parents were? (No real suprise here, although finding them retroactively defending nixon is kind of amusing.)
I've found that the shift in Boomer politics isn't really as great as commonly thought. It's not that they're voting Republican in greater numbers, but that the Democrats among them are just as much in favor of government control as they (the Democrats) were in the 1960s. Republicans vote for anti-pornography laws because they find the "artform" offensive; they vote for them at the federal level because local restrictions have been ruled unconstitutional. Democrats vote for anti-pornography laws because they find the act exploitative, and they want the government to take the lead in molding society into the egalitarian commune with which they're still enamored.
The Boomers have always been for the creation of a hippie commune. In the 1960s, this manifested itself in a withdrawal from government-run society because they did not control the government; now that they can use the power of government to create their perfect world, they are not opposed to it. The hippie revolt, culminating in the sexual revolution and legal drugs, was never about freedom (their rhetorical protests to the contrary notwithstanding); freedom was a means to achieving their end; the end has remained the same: the creation of a society in which they would say what was right and wrong, right and wrong being defined morally in terms of their own personal gratification.
Your post seems to suggest that voting Democrat is the answer, for it is the Republicans who are pushing this legislation. In the end, the only solution is to wrest control of one of the parties from the Boomers.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the discovery can be put more precisely without too much confusion. I don't doubt that you understand all that is meant by the universe being "on overage" flat, but the experiment has broader implications than this post makes clear.
A flat universe is flat in the absense of something that curves it, while a curved universe is curved even in such absense. That is, mass is responsible for all (?) of the curvature (one effect of which is gravity) which we see, in a flat universe. In a curved universe, space is warped even in the absense of a mass (travelling objects appear to be deflected by the gravity of a mass which isn't there).
We've of course already heard this news about a year ago when the most powerful instruments we had at the time said that the curvature was as close to zero as we could measure. This experiment uses more powerful instruments, confirming that the curvature is even closer to zero than we could accurately say before.
This is actually one of the few experiments which says that the universe is not as wierd as the wierdest imaginable possibility. A flat universe is what most people expect: things go in straight lines unless something (in this case, gravity) interferes with them. If any of the wierdness that Einstein proposed (trajectories bent by nothing but space itself) actually occurs, it is too small for us to measure.
It's actually amazing how often password changes of this sort actually occur. I used to work for a (now-all-but-defunct) software (later hardware) retail company that required the managers to change their passwords every month: the password was changed simply my incrementing the last number of the previous password. What is really amazing is that we retained the same system even after firing the guy upon whose name the original system (incrementation and all) was based; he was the one who introduced the system.
Oddly enough, at the time the company abandoned all retail operations, this was not the thing that made me decide that it was headed for disaster. Although, now that I think on it, I do remember receiving an email that their customer database had been hacked...
This opens up a whole new realm of moderation. In addition to Troll, Redundant, Flamebait, etc., we could have a 'Hacked' option for those comments which we feel should have been posted by an Anonymous Coward, but have somehow been ascribed to a real account. (and just for the mod-down ...) You know, for those posts coming from that Jon Katz fellow? (God, what was his password? /.4ever?)
But when I ask people to back off when entering my password/PIN, they stare at me as if I'm a madman! Then they grumble something about 'paranoia' as they finally back away.
It would appear that their own lax security affects how they think everyone else should act. I don't much mind their own obliviousness, which is what this article is about, so much as the creation of social norms around it.
Really now, it's almost as if he wants to sound like some scientist from a MST3K reject. A concerned "member of the scientific community" warns that, though there might be some danger to humankind, and though they could theoretically "attack" at any moment, he is part of a group dedicated to preserving and understanding this facinating new species. And besides, fumigation wouldn't work anyway. I'll bet he even has a cool line like "beautiful creatures" already made up so he can stoically meet his death when they turn on him, despite his personal responsibility in preventing their extinction by sabotaging the heroes' attempt to lure them into a trap using super-strong queen spider pheromones...
The second is a bit more bitter: the Washington Post article cited talks more about the scientific issues surrounding the nebula than the movie; the movie is just an excuse to talk about the nebula. Indeed, the movie itself seems to have been created only as a ploy to get media attention for recent findings regarding the nebula (and the formation of stars in general). Even here, on /., we are directed to the movie rather than to the science by the title and story. Given, we have already discussed the impact of recent discoveries here, so our sin is not so great, but it sad when even the cool sciences must stoop to such whoredom to get an audience.
And after that rant, my third point: I kept expecting to see a starship piloted by Scott Bakula cutting through the incredibly dense nebula (remember, this is before the original Star Trek, when glass domes were still standard), but alas, the music never turned for the hipper.
I don't know about "secret of life" stuff, but I do find this article to be damnably cool. We (living stuff) take a random series of interactions, and act on them as if we perceived some pattern in them, all the while lacking the mental capacities to perceive such a pattern. Sure, natural selection suggests that anything that acts as if it had perceived this pattern will outbreed and thus outsurvive anything that doesn't, so long as this pattern facilitates reproduction, but actually identifying this pattern (why the seemingly random Brownian motion actually produces recognizable pattern of acceptable interactions) is kind of neat. It's like watching a Foucault pendulum in action for the first time: anyone can explain the theory behind it (in this case, natural selection), but there's still something indescribable about watching the blocks of wood fall (ATP moving along microtubule).
The popup ads may cycle, but but I found the one attached to What Makes a Superrace? hilarious. What makes a superrace, you might ask? How shall we all become equal by all becoming superior? The answer --- Russian Girls.
The example of Cygnus X-2 given in the article listed the constant by which the whole number is multiplied as 9.8 days, equal to its orbital period, which would suggest that it is tied to a certain spot in its orbit. The possible reason offered, a "clump" in a tilted accretion disk, seems to suggest the same thing.
Yet nowhere do they say that the constant for Cygnus X-3 and LMC X-3 is equal to their orbital period: indeed they seem to actively avoid saying it ("Long term variations in LMC X-3 and Cygnus X-3 follow the same general rule: the lengths of the variations are always a whole number multiplied by a constant", immediately after linking Cygnus X-2's constant to its orbital period). Does anyone have any information on this? Do we know the orbital periods for these? This bears directly on whether the possible explanation is convincing (3/3 is one thing, 1/1 is something else).
The FTC recently began cracking down on advertisements that feature "testimonials": although this sort of thing was accepted a few years ago, it has come under closer scrutiny nowadays. Moreover, they attributed their remarks to a real newspaper, and thus made blatantly false claims. They could even be subject to civil suits for their erroneously attributed remarks.
And to further confuse the matter, the first time I saw it in print, when I bought some all those years ago, it was spelled Duck Tape: Duck-brand Duct Tape.
Golf Manor, according to the article, is a subdivision of Commerce, MI, which does exist. It has postal codes 48382 and 48390, and appears to be a suburb of Detroit. Pinto Drive, also mentioned in the article, doesn't show up on Yahoo! maps, but this is hardly surprising, considering.
After having watched Flay on Chillin' and Grillin', I was so rooting against him. The show was basically Flay with his gas grill making fun of some poor Southern chef for being inbred (the real man used charcoal). The first match wasn't so embarrasing for me since I wholly expected him to make some off-color internment camp jokes; needless to say, I thought he carried himself with an unusual amount of dignity and decorum (for Flay, at least).
Kaga: Kyoo no tema wa kore desu ... Chocolate Moose!
Fukui: Chocolate Moose, an interesting choice, and one of the Challenger's favorite ingredients. The Challenger has wisely chosen Iron Chef Japanese Masuharu Morimoto, who will have a difficult time fully integrating this difficult theme ingredient into Japanese cuisine. Will he prevail? Will the Challenger unseat the Iron Chef?
Kaga: Allez cuisine!
Swedish Chef: Furst veet zee chuculete-a, und zeen veet zee muuse-a. Heer Muuse-a. Heer Muusey Muusey Muusey.
Ota: Fukui-san.
Fukui: Go ahead Ota.
Ota: The Iron Chef is mixing chocolate, seaweed, soy sauce and ginger in a small bowl, but he seems to be at a loss as to what to do with the Moose.
Kuzuko: Is the challenger just coating the moose in chocolate? [giggle] Excuse me, but that looks, well [giggle] awful. I'm sorry.
Fukui: Actually I'm told by the Challenger that this is quite common in Nordic cuisine, and I imagine it's quite tasty.
Kuzuko: You mean with salt that he's added.
Fukui: Yeah, I think that's the direction he's headed ...
Actually, there are protocols to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified that POTUS has authorized a launch. There is nothing in U.S. law, U.S. protocols, or U.S. policy that prevents a first strike. While the implimentation of these protocols gives some time between order and launch, in which time the launch order may be recinded, they do not at all prevent, nor are they intended to prevent, a launch in the absence of a previous strike. The presence of a nuclear attack is necessary only if the commander is to launch upon his own authority; the commander may be ordered to launch at any time.
Remember that the Soviets had 100+ divisions facing Western Europe; NATO, at its height, had 16. U.S. policy has always been to threaten possible escalation to nuclear exchange if an attack were underway, and no President has seen fit to alter our nuclear stance. We operate under strategic ambiguity for a reason.
The exclusionary rule is not as broad as you make it out to be. Evidence gained by a government agent or someone acting on its behalf (e.g., informants) in a way that violates U.S. Constitutional protection is inadmissible. While the FBI agents were most certainly government agents, non-citizens outside of U.S. sovereignty have no claim to Constitutional protection, and thus their Constitutional rights cannot be violated. If you are in an area in which the Constitution does not apply, you cannot claim the applicability of the U.S. Constitution.
While the FBI agents may have broken some Russian law, or what would have been an American law had it occurred on U.S. soil, they did not violate any Constitutional protections. Therefore, any evidence obtained, legal or not, is not subject to the exclusionary rule.
You're right: in this instance, reasonable expectation does not apply. A reasonable expectation of privacy is only relevent when there is a Fourth Amendment issue: one only needs a warrant to search areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy -- public spaces where such expectation is unreasonable are not so protected. In this case, however, there is no Fourth Amendment issue because the Constitution has no operative authority in Russia; hence reasonable expectation is not relevent.
Your example, however, is not so clear. Since you are not a government agent, reasonable expectation is not at issue, but let's assume you were. I don't believe the courts have ruled that I have a reasonable expectation to privacy when working on a public machine, but I don't think they've ruled that I haven't, either. You are correct, however, to note that the FBI would need to obtain a warrant to perform such an operation here; the court simply ruled that they aren't required to do so over there.
The judge did not rule that the FBI is not subject to Russian law, only that the evidence could not be excluded. Not being in the United States or operating on the private property of a U.S. citizen, they had no reasonable expectation to Fourth Amendment privacy. While they may have had some expectation of privacy according to Russian law, violation of an other nation's search and siezure regulations does not trigger the exclusionary rule (nor should it, since the exclusionary rule is meant to protect the integrity of the U.S. Constitution. Where the Constitution has no integrity, e.g., beyond U.S. sovereignty, such protection is unwarranted).
FBI agents could of course be arrested for their activities oversees, provided that said activities are not allowed by treaty or previous agreement, but this ruling says that the fruit of such activities is admissible as evidence in a U.S. court.
This is the problem that was faced with the airline hijackings a decade ago. Eventually, the major news organizations agreed to report only that a plane had been hijacked: they refused to disclose by whom or their demands. Of course, with a more distributed news apparatus in the internet, this sort of thing might be more difficult today (especially considering responses like comment #33). I suppose the only option available to us is increased airport security, so to speak.
Damn.
From What do I need before I register? section (it's javascript activiated, so I can't post the URL: its off the main site):
What do I need before I can register?
Before you register with the Government Gateway, check the requirements below to make sure you have everything you need:
Hardware
Software
Please note that if you wish to enrol for services that require a digital certificate, you may not be able to use the full range of browsers listed above. For example, Equifax certificates can currently only be used with Internet Explorer 5.01 or later (they do not work on any version of the Netscape browser); ChamberSign certificates can be used with both Nestcape Navigator and Internet Explorer, except they are not currently supported on version 6 of the Netscape browser. Please check your certificate provider's web site for more information about which browsers they support.
So basically, this story is only true if you have an Equifax certificate.
If Bowman is Odysseus, a reasonable connection, and his crew is Odysseus' crew, then they ought to perform this function throughout. But when the author tries to tie the Monolith into his imagery, the crewman (and the Monolith) have to start pulling double-duty. When the Monolith is the Trojan Horse, the Achaean crewman become Trojans (in order to be hurt by it), but in all other places, the author refers to them as Odysseus's crew (e.g., the attack on Ismarus): in the same sequence, they are both Achaeans and Trojans. When the three disabled crewmen are put into hibernation, the Monolith ceases to be the Trojan Horse and becomes the lotus flower. So the Monolith loses its commonly-accepted interpretation (i.e., the cause of Bowman's transformation), and becomes the lotus and the Trojan Horse. Bowman's crew become Achaeans and Trojans. Tycho crater becomes Troy and Ismarus. It seems that only Bowman/Odysseus retains his identity in this interpretation.
His discussion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is more coherent, but I've already lodged my problems with that interpretation the first time around. I must say that the identification HAL with the jester and God seems tortured. There is no hint in TSZ that the jester is God; he appears throughout as a showman (I.12), an unworthy companion (III.8.1, III.12.4, IV.18.2) (except in the prologue, where he appears as a possible equal to Zarathustra).
But be that as it may, combining the two allegories produces some odd results. Unless you're a Straussian or Protagorean, the Odyssey is not an anti-God story; Odysseus does not kill God. While his return home is against the will of Poseidon, he makes it home because His wrath relents, not because Odysseus defeats him in any way. And so on.
While I see the Odyssey analogy, I think the attempt to tie it intimately to Zarathustra leads the author down a number of blind alleys, corrupting the former without convincing regarding the latter. While there is of course a story about Bowman's transformation into ... what?, and the song Thus Spoke Zarathustra is definitely meant to draw our attention to Nietzsche, this appears to have been an afterthought (the Nietzscheanism, not the transformation). It seems pretty obvious that Bowman is transformed by the Monolith -- that which has caused all previous transformation. But if we hold to a strict Zarathustrian allegory, the Monolith can no longer play this role; the author is therefore forced to make the Monolith into everything but this catalyst. A strict Zarathustrian allegory produces too many problems.
Let me digress a bit and then return. I balk at saying that Kubrick put a great deal of thought into the Nietzschean aspects of the film because these aspects are so simplistic. It is as if he read Part I of TSZ, and then Shaw's Man and Superman: where's the soothsayer? the willing of the eternal recurrence? the spirit[s] of gravity and revenge? In the hope that Kubrick actually had a firmer grasp of Nietzsche, I am inclined to think that any Zarathustrian references are meant to serve metaphorically for the real theme of transformation: references to TSZ would serve only to highlight the transformation, not to run throughout as an allegory.
That having been said, one could read the Monolith in a Zarathustrian manner. If we take the Monolith as God in TSZ and the lotus in the Odyssey, we could say that belief in God prevents one from progressing further by dulling one's senses (Od.) or turning one toward Otherworlds (TSZ). But this seems incompatible with the Monolith as catalyst. I may be missing something that blocks me from taking this thought to a successful conclusion, but I think any attempt to read deep Nietzschean and Homeric symbolism into 2001 would have to start with the Monolith (seeing as it plays a central role in the film). My major reservation with the author's interpretation is that it turns the Monolith into nothing more than a black tub of conflicting symbolisms.
But ... single electrons do produce interference patterns ... The dual slit experiment is not an inference based on a large number of particles, but something various people have actually done. It works: each particle appears to interfere with itself, meaning that each particle must pass through both slits at once, meaning that it does not have a single definite position at any given time.
Unfortunately, the system is heavily stacked against third-party candidacy, as recent Presidental elections have shown. The modern President is powerful enough that you can't be a real party without fielding a reasonably popular Presidential candidate every election for a number of elections in a row. The unit rule prevents real third-party Presidential candidacies, and thus third-parties tend to be single issue (e.g., Green), or attract members that detract from its seriousness (e.g., the current Reform and Libertarian parties).
The unit rule is governed by the state legislatures, and cannot be reasonably abolished in one state if the others do not follow suit. (Washington put one Ford vote for Reagan in 1976, West Virginia put one Dukakis vote for Bensten in 1988, but these were within the same party. The last time an elector bolted parties was 1972, and the last good third-party showing was in 1968.) Getting the states to abolish the unit rule would require either a constitutional amendment or a control of most state legislatures: both are major undertakings. Both would require the support of at least one major party, and so would require working within the system until at least that time.
Sen. McCain gets more done in Washington, DC, because he is a Republican rather than an Independent/Reform/etc.
Why would we need anything more than a human with a rather sensitive sense of smell? We aren't interested in making sure that no dog gags at the odor: we want the poor humans to feel OK.
I've found that the shift in Boomer politics isn't really as great as commonly thought. It's not that they're voting Republican in greater numbers, but that the Democrats among them are just as much in favor of government control as they (the Democrats) were in the 1960s. Republicans vote for anti-pornography laws because they find the "artform" offensive; they vote for them at the federal level because local restrictions have been ruled unconstitutional. Democrats vote for anti-pornography laws because they find the act exploitative, and they want the government to take the lead in molding society into the egalitarian commune with which they're still enamored.
The Boomers have always been for the creation of a hippie commune. In the 1960s, this manifested itself in a withdrawal from government-run society because they did not control the government; now that they can use the power of government to create their perfect world, they are not opposed to it. The hippie revolt, culminating in the sexual revolution and legal drugs, was never about freedom (their rhetorical protests to the contrary notwithstanding); freedom was a means to achieving their end; the end has remained the same: the creation of a society in which they would say what was right and wrong, right and wrong being defined morally in terms of their own personal gratification.
Your post seems to suggest that voting Democrat is the answer, for it is the Republicans who are pushing this legislation. In the end, the only solution is to wrest control of one of the parties from the Boomers.