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  1. Written with a straight face? on When On the Moon and Mars, Move Underground · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...ready-made underground bunkers could provide ideal shelter..."

    said ideal shelters detected by collapsed roofs.

    Exogeologist: "Look at that collapsed cave! We could live in there."
    Pilot: "Sure, you go in first perfesser."

    This beats the astronauts' old "built by the lowest bidder" grumbles all to hell.

  2. It's for 'Statistical' computing on R In a Nutshell · · Score: 1

    Serious question here.

    I do a lot of statistical analyses, including some I've authored. The book is for the programmer, but R is for statistics and that means someone who actually uses the numbers for something.

    SAS has it's own language as well as GUI with menus and can interchange data structures with many common programs.

    SPSS has all these, plus is can record what's pulled down from the menus and generate code in its own language, which is easy to understand, comes as a text file, and can be edited and cut-and-pasted into batch files.

    Why should I care about R?

    And for the Matlab users, it was never meant to be a stats program, the stats add-on package requires you learn to write M code first, then learn the package, months of learning to get through it all, and you have to bring a full compliment of statistical know-how with you. If someone made you use Matlab for stats and the two weren't already your bent, someone needs spanked.

  3. Not News and News on China Shoots Down Another Satellite · · Score: 1

    Not News: China shoots down a satellite using ICBM scale hardware (the speculative fiction and barely, if at all, relevant details padding TFA not withstanding).

    News: US shoots down a satellite using a missile built from off the shelf components,
    News: launched from a fighter jet,
    News: 25 years ago. OK, not strictly 'news' but darn sure puts perspective on China's 'accomplishment' as well as the DoD FUD poured over it to try to make it sound newsworthy.

    No offense meant to the poster. It's good to keep track of what non-news the FUDmongers are aping from government propa^H^H^H^H^Hpress releases. The only real news here is what kind of verbal bilge the government is trying to get you to dance to.

  4. READ THE CONTRACT FIRST on RIAA Accounting — How Labels Avoid Paying Musicians · · Score: 3, Informative

    Educate yourself with something like http://musicians.about.com/od/musiccontracts/bb/producercontract.htm

    Then get a lawyer to go over the contract. They only "still own the royalties" if you assigned them all rights. Keep your rights but assign them one time plus compilation rights but keep others and specify your desired pay-off rate. If they don't go for it, take the contact as you want it worded to other producers until you find one that will take it.

    Or do it yourself. There are not only self-producing musicians online, there are self-producing bands that are also online collaborations. They can live on different continents and never meet. Music production has left the building and gone to everyone's homes. The MafIAA was the first against the wall when the revolution came, but they were too brain dead to realize it.

  5. So Dr. Arroway... Wanna Code? on SETI Institute Is Looking For a Few Good Algorithms · · Score: 1

    I dream up, test and use signal analyses, but don't code (not since AppleSoft). I rely on others for that, but they have to have a grip on time series, especially oscillatory/pseudo-periodic signals. My source of study material in the brain, but I've readily adopted techniques from things like radio astronomy, and others have adopted some of mine.

    I've got a set of algorithms in mind that'd detect interesting signals for later examination. Two of three already have open source variants. The third is mine, and isn't open source because it's not code, it's a set of instructions to follow when using most any commercially available research EEG software package. I would expect to make it open source once coded.

    The set of tests would probably go:

    1. continuous wavelet transform, for time/frequency analysis, finding signals in small frequency bins that persist or come and go within a time series

    2. synchronization, testing for multiple signals in a narrow band that may shift in phase or near freq

    3. blind source separation, pulls apart multiple signals convolved into a single one. Does it whether or not they're there, so s/n ratio is used to determine probability of being real

    If needed: 2 recursive back to 1, 3 recursive back to 2 or 1, 2 or 3 may trade places

    The middle one's mine. I've used all 3, so I know they work and what they can do. Others have used the first and third for various reasons. Each adds benefits where others have failings. Each can and probably would do more than I describe here. Statistical analyses can and would be developed from them. My paper of my technique stays mine until publication, any code developed would be open but frankly is easier to do as common steps built into existing packages, as far as my field is concerned. But that only means the validity is at least as good as the software I developed the process under, and it's very good.

    I'm fairly free to work on this, maybe even travel if it'd help. If anyone wants to dig into the details of what's being made available by SETI to see if they can develop, and wants to try this, threesigma at rocketmail dot com

  6. Re:Blast (Off) From The Past on ScienceBlogs.com Deals With Community Backlash Over PepsiCo Column · · Score: 1

    Exactly how was this a troll? I was honest and dead serious:

    My father's cousin was food scientist for Armour. He developed some of the dehydrated items that went into astronauts' meals as far back as the Mercury program, things you find in sporting goods stores and catalogs today. Dehydrated ice cream and banana chips are two I recall eating close to 50 years ago. Of course there'd have been so such backlash back then, as anything NASA related was some of our national heroism. But if he were working today and this occurred I can only imagine him saying "What do you mean you don't want to eat pig anuses? If you don't like pig anuses, why do you eat so many hot dogs?" The people that are complaining about the science don't really care as much about the science as some of the other concerns like using up other countries' water reserves by running reverse osmosis plants to make water for soda or bottled water which they sell back at enormous profit. These social concerns are valid. Attacking the scientists who developed it might get a few people to question their professional ethics but won't do a damn thing to or about the corporation. The corporation, from root words that mean 'to make into a body', may be a body, but when it comes to saber rattling and commoners at the gates with torches, has no head, much less eyes with which to notice them.

  7. Chu and Minsky on The Hobby of Energy Secretary Steven Chu · · Score: 1

    Chu's leap in optical resolution using existing technology almost mirrors Marvin Minsky's first major invention, the confocal microscope (1957).

    We got ourselves a good one kids.

  8. Just In Case on Dell Says 90% of Recorded Business Data Is Never Read · · Score: 1

    As with White House emails, to cite a prominent example, business keeps as much as it does Just In Case they get audited/investigated/sued. They want to be able to provide a (non-)paper trail.

    90% is probably high for most. In my experience 50% is probably low. I'd figure they crank out twice as much digital effluvia as they use. And nothing makes the other side sit back like telling them 'You want an audit? Fine, we've got elevnty jigglebytes to go through, conservative estimate to go through it, twentyteen months'. Such occurences aren't common except in knowledge, so they're saving the trash for a rainy day.

  9. Blast (Off) From The Past on ScienceBlogs.com Deals With Community Backlash Over PepsiCo Column · · Score: 0, Troll

    My father's cousin was food scientist for Armour. He developed some of the dehydrated items that went into astronauts' meals as far back as the Mercury program, things you find in sporting goods stores and catalogs today. Dehydrated ice cream and banana chips are two I recall eating close to 50 years ago. Of course there'd have been so such backlash back then, as anything NASA related was some of our national heroism. But if he were working today and this occurred I can only imagine him saying "What do you mean you don't want to eat pig anuses? If you don't like pig anuses, why do you eat so many hot dogs?" The people that are complaining about the science don't really care as much about the science as some of the other concerns like using up other countries' water reserves by running reverse osmosis plants to make water for soda or bottled water which they sell back at enormous profit. These social concerns are valid. Attacking the scientists who developed it might get a few people to question their professional ethics but won't do a damn thing to or about the corporation. The corporation, from root words that mean 'to make into a body', may be a body, but when it comes to saber rattling and commoners at the gates with torches, has no head, much less eyes with which to notice them.

  10. Re:Effect on Normal Eyes? on Implantable Eye Telescope Finally FDA Approved · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The visual field would soon 'look' fairly normal as neural plasticity made the peripheral visual system do the job of the central and integrate that into visual processing. There would be loss of visual and color acuity since the peripheral retina isn't as densely populated, and had very little chromatic visual receptors. Within weeks any differences noted would fade as what's being presented became to seem normal.

  11. The Effects on Study Hints Ambient Radio Waves May Affect Plant Growth · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once it's shown that radio waves are detrimental to aspen seedlings, there will be:

    1. Signs posted around transmitter towers saying "WARNING -- Radio waves can be detrimental to your leaf area development". In both English as Aspenic.

    B. Pictograph version of the same for Aspens that read yet.

    Three. Non-animal subjects committees at arboreal research centers defining then testing for proper and ethical treatment of seedlings, such informed consent.

    IV. Radical vegans, rejected Greenpeace applicants and overly sensitive hippie hangers-on 'rescuing' seedlings from Torture Hothouses because they're being tested 24 hours a day and not allowed to sleep.

    Cinco. Smarmy, crooning, sexy but aloof modern folk singers moaning out a somewhat relevant lyric while you see pictures of abused seedlings, then their eyes tearing up as they beg you "Won't you please help? Think of the seedlings."

    === 100 years pass ===

    99. Members of the Poplar* Peoples' Front forming a picket line around the Deciduous Students Union, carrying signs made of rock (no living material was harmed in the making of these signs) in their branches, demanding representation of their own kind among elected officials (Vote Yeast, Not Beast) and protesting the deplorable treatment of some of the more 'culturally mature due to greater experience evolving' and 'third forest' species (Smile Mold Is People Too) while Jefferson Floodplain sings "Up against the wall... Up against the wall, Carbonizers" from their hit album 'Nothing Can Stop The Shape of Leaves To Come and then giggle when you start to turn blue and gasp because you have cyclic respiration and can't read sentences this long without stopping for air whereas their constant bidirectional respiration means they can talk for hours straight without stopping once.

    * Not misspelled, you meat chauvinist pig.

  12. Re:No mathematical background? on Quantum Physics For Everybody · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.

    I call bullshit, politely though. Not only can it be done, you've got to understand what you're doing well enough to step out of the higher level math. One of the most spectacular instances teaching I ever witnessed was at Purdue, where a class on relativity for non-science students was held, using nothing more than F = ma and a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Anyone can become an expert and talk expert to other experts and future experts. The higher the level the more jargonized and incomprehensible it becomes to everyone else. Worse, it becomes a sign of rite-of-passage, a badge of membership and a competition among its adherents, who constantly push the envelope on this. In doing so they become more and more isolated and insulated, viewing others as outsiders, people to stay away from if not look down on. They become socialized to not speaking outside their box, and pressure is applied from the group ion any member who does try to talk outside.

    Anyone who can understand a field at the expert level but can explain it in non-specialized language without polysyballic words probably understands it far better than those in the specialists' club. An often misstated (but flexible enough to still work) quote from Ernest Rutherford is "An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid." There's people out there doing this thing which 'can't' be done. Go listen to them.

  13. Re:Counting Psychologists on Toesies on Finding a Research Mentor? · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Clinical is a treatment oriented field, not a research oriented.

    I am a professor of psychology (but not clinical psychology) at a research university. Parent poster does not know what s/he is talking about.

    Again, this is completely wrong. Any APA-accredited program in clinical psychology will require you to study neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, etc. in addition to more practice-oriented training in assessment, treatment, etc.

    Moreover, clinical scientists do basic research in pretty much every area of psychology. My department has clinical psychologists who do neuroimaging, endocrinology, electrophysiology, as well as all manner of behavioral methods, etc. as part of their basic research toolkits. They difference between them and the rest of us is that they are typically focused on understanding psychopathology, whereas (say) a non-clinical cognitive neuroscientist might be studying attention without necessarily working toward understanding its role in ADHD etc.

    What complete bullshit. This is a fucking troll, and a bad one. If you were for real and paid any attention to the subject matter at hand, you'd have recognized APA's latest assessment of the demographics of the field from Monitor. And even a half assed troll would have noticed I said I was quoting APA. I knew what I was talking about, I knew where it came from, and if you have a problem with it that just proves you're so deficient in clue receptors that you can't possibly be real.

    Sure, the arrangements you suggest are possible but by no means common. The arrangement of departments and programs are more different than similar, and vary at each place over time, because they're based on the people, not a predetermined structure. And when people come and go the arrangement changes more or less according to their contribution to the department's structure and functioning. And in case your dipstick still shows a quart low on your attention neurotransmitters you do realize I am talking about department structure and not program requirements imposed from outside, right? You see, I said that but I've said other things you completely failed to notice.

    And don't try to give me that shit about they "study" all those fields. They get one 3 hour class only in most of them. That's not studying a field, that's familiarization. It's so they can recognize it as something they've seen and not just stare blankly and drool like some dizzy twit sitting around white knuckling a ten year tenure at some little 4 year paper mill with 7th year students.

    You know why you're such a bad troll? Because you don't realize you are one. You probably think you're not. You're wrong.

    You know, maybe I did miss out on seeing some of the possibilities of departmental and program structure because I didn't spend all my time in academia. For a while I did intra-opertive neural monitoring. Me and my programmable electrophys amps because a whole different set of eyes in the OR. The neurosurgeon relied on me tell him where and when to cut or not cut. But hey, I could have been a perfesser of psychology at a "research university". There's no such thing. There's places where you teach and places where you teach and do research, and they're all schools and there's virtually none of the former. "Research university" is a bumper sticker for your vita and ego so you can hear yourself sound like you're a step beyond your plain vanilla garden variety university, when the truth that even your podunk, backwoods, just crawled out from under the community college rock and managed to get two whole departments running, home grown outfit requires its people to do research too, just like a "research university". It may be Stroop cards and reaction times rather than dipole localization using 128 channels each of concurrent MEG and EEG, but it gets done and it gets printed. And if you ask someone from a "research university" exactly what criteria must be met, you'll get vague, mumbled weasel words as they try to wiggle away, thinking "aw shit, they're not supposed to ask, they're just supposed to be impressed."

  14. Translating on HSBC Bank Sends Activated Debit Cards Through Mail · · Score: 1

    'Through our systems and analytics, we focus on the greatest and most active threats in an effort to avoid negatively impacting customer experience.'

    Translating through booblefish gives "Through our posture and orientation of our balance within Earth's gravity field, we focus on our experience that when our cranial crown is applied to our rectal region with sufficient impact, the former can be forced into a state of mechanical immobility, and an extended distance, within the latter."

    Naw, I'm just kidding. They can't tell their rectal region from a position on the Earth's surface with an accumulation of topsoil which when measured in height produces a negative number, the ability to differentiate between them being a prerequisite for the assertion above.

  15. Counting Psychologists on Toesies on Finding a Research Mentor? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Although more than half of all psychologists are clinical, the following explains why it's hard to find them:

    * 65 percent worked in independent practices (46 percent in individual private practices and 19 percent in group private practices)
    * 14 percent worked in hospitals
    * Five percent worked in clinics
    * Three percent worked in elementary / secondary schools
    * Two percent or less worked in other settings, such as university counseling centers, criminal justice systems, rehabilitation facilities or other human service settings

    Clinical is a treatment oriented field, not a research oriented. Other fields develop the tools that the clinicians use to fix b0rken br@nes. For instance, ADD is attentional, which is a subfield of cognitive psychology. They do research in order to uncover the underlying processes. To treat it with drugs requires research in psychopharmacology. To measure it requires training in methodology and imaging technology such as electrophysiology. You can work in any of those fields and contribute some meaningful work for clinicians to use, and that's just one example from the pages of the DSM.

    You can go for a PhD in neuroscience and get training on many of the subfields. This probably opens up more doors than any other branch.

    Most PsyD programs are clinical in nature. A n exception is (was?) the consortium to which Eastern Virginia Medical School belongs. It was intended to be research oriented, and at least was.

    Clinicians are the ones who make the big bucks treating people. That would be the reason to stay in that field. If you intend to do research you're going to get paid about the same no matter what you're called, but researchers doing hiring assume clinicians are treatment oriented which is for the most part true, and so less likely to take you on in a research slot.

    If you want to do research don't go looking at clinical programs (or at a particular location for that matter) and then for people within them. Go looking for people who are doing work you find exciting and go work for one of them regardless of what the program is called, even something other than psychology. Or go looking
    at the research that interests you and then the people doing it and then the other stuff

    I went the neuroscience route although there wasn't a neuroscience program in place there, only a 'psychological sciences' subfield that covered a lot of ground, and only the clinicians' dissertation said anything other than 'psychology (something or other focus)'. But we put together a program that required a chemistry professor on my committee. When they saw what I'd done in training, I was offered and walked into a job at NIH (non-competitive, just invited) and then Yale (same).

    If you try to stick with clinical, when time comes to get a job they'll take one look, see 'clinical' and expect you to fill a slot that requires licensing as well as serving as a clinician where ever you're at. And that means a lot of face-to-face and a lot less research.

    Still, Virginia Tech's clinical program requires a research project on par with the practicum in terms of effort and knowledge required. Something like that would help prepare you for doing research but wouldn't fix the problems about others' assumptions.

    Most beginning psychology undergrads answer these two question thusly:
    What kind of psychologist do you want to be?
    Clinical.
    Why?
    To help people.
    Somewhere between then and dissertation, almost half decide otherwise.
    You think it's time to consider this?

    "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe." [And some things that I was the first to see, ever.] "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark

  16. Read TFA on TSA Internally Blocking Websites With 'Controversial Opinions' · · Score: 1

    The point is not about controlling access to controversial opinions, it's about controlling access to things that people tend to waste a lot of time on.

    The categories being blocked are:
      Chat/Messaging
      Controversial opinion
      Criminal activity
      Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content
      Gaming

    I'll take a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious for $500, Alex.

    (The answer is, "They're busy playing around on the web at work.")

    That would be "Why hasn't the TSA caught many bad guys," Alex.

    As to why CBS felt it needed to focus on the 'controversial opinion' point, it's probably because they thought they'd get more attention going with the censorship slant rather than the wasting-billions-of-dollars-playing-games slant. But once it's in context, the responses probably fall into the 'you mean they haven't yet?' and 'well, DUH!' categories. And as far as 'obtaining an internal email' there's a whole lot of TSABroadcast publically available on the web. It's almost certainly the channel of choice for 'All Employees' traffic such as TFA.

  17. Science Eats Its Own Offspring on Do Scientists Understand the Public? · · Score: 1

    From James "Wormrunner" McConnell through Brian Greene, whenever a scientist tries to talk normal human, they get chastised, criticized, all but blacklisted for their efforts. It's a fairly mystifying social response that has little to do with what's being said, or the qualifications of the speaker. Even Carl Sagan started to catch flack, but he escaped by dying at them. The problem is more scientists fearing for their professional future than anything else. The fact that many utterly suck at trying to explain what they do in common terms runs second to the fact that even more of them are afraid to even attempt it. Those who manage to do a decent job of science outreach and avoid this reaction are often scientists principle but not profession, such as Hugh Downs. Professional scientists are cowed into talking highly technical and specialized jargon, with enough prevarication to avoid being cornered into saying something someone could disagree with and therefore criticize them, a method of communication that the non-specialist listener quite rightly calls "gibberish".

    Still, it's better than it used to be. When Hypatia tried to teach algebra and astronomy to the commoners of Alexandria, her skin was ripped off. Yeah, that was Christians, not scientists, but the reaction and a lot of the reasons are similar.

  18. Been There, Fixed That on Best Format For OS X and Linux HDD? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We had almost exactly the same problem. Our fMRI work was done at University of Virginia on a Linux machine. naturally you don't want to tie up a $1500/hour data collection machine doing analysis. Our data was transferred immediately to the Neurological Institute to a multiboot machine. No patient data included at this point, so no HIPPA problems. The receiving box ran Linux initially since the analysis programs from NIH (primarily AFNI) were Linux based. Patient data got added here so HIPPA became an issue. The machine had multiple hard drive bays, all of which were removable, plug-and-play drives made from a kit that provided slide-in rails and a locking mechanism, otherwise were common, commercial drives. Externals would have been easier, but the guy who devised this had a rilly rilly good reason. I remember it was good, but not what it was. Anyway, the machine could boot other OSs, prep the drives, go back to the native Linux HFS+ and transfer/translate to the , it was transferred, the drive removed, packaged, and FedEx'd to the other analysis sites at Virginia Tech, NIH, and U.Va Wise. We were strictly experimental, no direct medical treatment, and so time was not an issue. With OS X being *nix, there's not a lot of reasons to go with one over the other except for convenience when it comes to what your data collection and analysis are running under. Unless yours run fine under OS X, I'd say stick with HFS+, and of course moderate that according to whether you have to share out the data and what those people are running. I wouldn't bother with supporting Windows, as they continually find new problems to have with large files. One comparison test showed no difference in analysis results, but they did have problems with Windows choking on the data files. Their test files were only 1.5 GB. ref: J Med Dent Sci. 2004 Sep;51(3):147-54. Comparison of fMRI data analysis by SPM99 on different operating systems. PMID: 15597820. My experience agreed with their results. As I said we had little call for Macs, so we didn't run enough of that to give a good test of whether it had the same kind of problems. Bottom line, we used what we needed to according to where it was going and what they needed it to be, but for our own use it made no sense to transfer it out of the OS that collection and analysis used, HFS. The system met with the approval of the biophysicist we worked with at U.Va, and he had been a grad student under Peter Fox when the latter developed SPM. OH YEAH: the good reason. If anyone else wanted to work with us, they didn't have to dig too deeply into techie stuff either hardware or software. We could send them a removable-drive kit to install, and send them a drive with bootable Linux, AFNI and data, all plug and play. If that might be useful to you (using externals instead of removables doesn't matter here) that's probably be another vote for HFS.

  19. Must We? on "Music" Of the Sun Recorded By Astronomers · · Score: 1

    Any pseudo-oscillatory time series data can have the X axis stretched or compressed to make it able to be used as an audible signal. That's trivial in terms of both technique and result. It was interesting that someone thought of it decades ago, but the result wasn't. This isn't interesting in either sense, despite the harmonics which might make it sounds more like what we consider music. It's not going to sound like music, it's going to sound like noise with harmonics just like the last dozen data sets to be mistreated this way. Why doesn't someone boost it to the GHz region and drive a klystron with it. At least it would be a novel way to cook lunch, though it wouldn't change the taste one bit.

  20. Re:To Be Fair... on SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New Pad · · Score: 1

    > So, stop crowing about how much better SpaceX is than NASA when SpaceX is just reusing
    > NASA's leftover tech from 30 years ago.
    >
    > They can put years into "simplifying the systems to improve reliability while reducing
    > costs" but the fact is they are not doing anything new or groundbreaking. They are simply
    > riding NASA's coattails.

    SpaceX built a rocket that put something in orbit. What rocket did NASA build? Not contractors, NASA. Speaking on 30 years old, NASA's 'new' rocket is recycled old tech they were prepared to pay full, new rocket price for. Are you clear on which one is NASA and which is SpaceX?

    SpaceX lists their inventions. Their patents can be searched for via Google.

    Just the efforts at simplification are groundbreaking. NASA only did/allowed it when they needed to and refused it the rest of the time.

    Since these have been pointed out to you and you refuse to face facts I'll assume you're not a troll, nor do you have your head up your ass as evidenced by the large volume of smoke you continually blow from it. OK, so maybe you are just a troll. The smoke remains.

  21. Heuristics on Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Shulz is precise, just not quite accurate in her descriptions, assertions and conclusions.

    It's not (just) inductive reasoning that produces the humans' results, it's heuristics. We create the fastest good enough result rather than the best possible result more slowly. The former proved conclusions that are correct enough but very fast, which evolution favors over slower but more accurate decision making. You can be right as god, but if you get ate you're just very right poop.

    Heuristics works in all directions, top-down, bottom-up and side-to-side. Inductive, deductive and all the rest is labels we developed much later to try to describe what we could figure out about what's really going on in our heads. We can do those things because they're all part of how we work, but on the fly we never work in only one direction. Heuristics develops chains of thought according to associations, and so can fill in the chain (more often, the tree)

    There are some things that defy logical reasoning, such as language. We can use reasoning to figure out how to talk about the arrangement in memory of the items we can recall and so talk about, but learning to communicate happens far faster than learning can account for. Hence "generative grammar" and the utterly arbitrary nature of language production. Such things are predetermined in the way of species specific behaviors. We are genetically predisposed for these, and no logic could possibly keep up. This could be hardwired heuristics, though nobody can prove that as yet, but it certainly acts like it.

    So, heuristics, not induction, plus hardwired exceptions. Thus, we're never right, but we're right enough (to varying degrees) fast enough to survive.

    Top Shulz's cake with that frosting, and her precision becomes accurate also when it comes to our (neuroscientists) present best picture of how we think.

    It's not in the article above, but thinking that's always completely right has the major failing of being unable to produce novel responses. Heuristics allow the adaptability which novel situations require (another ability favored by evolution as well as Dr. Chandra), and which allows for creativity.

    Sounds like a very good book. Adequately correct too. Must have been written heuristically.

  22. Re:To Be Fair... on SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New Pad · · Score: 1

    You forgot the part where SpaceX didn't do any R&D. Instead, they used old technologies developed by... wait for it... NASA.

    And, SpaceX didn't build a launch facility, instead they used.... NASA's.

    No wonder SpaceX didn't spend much, they didn't do anything new.

    You forgot the part where NASA is not only supposed to develop new technologies on behalf of its citizens who pay for it with their taxes, for use by them and their commercial ventures, but has a technology office to facilitate this. You also forgot the part where NASA is supposed to make its facilities available to qualified users who've paid for them.

    BigAero has all the same access, but SpaceX still built and flew a Falcon 9 for less than even Skunkworks could have only built it. That's new. SpaceX also used some technologies that had been developed or even just suggested, for scrapped projects and had never been used before. They had to perfect these. Those are new. SpaceX has made no secret of its own inventions from its R&D. Those are new, and obviously new to the point of complete surprise to you despite SpaceX's horn tooting website (or else, to quote the manufacturer of the largest solid rocket motors that can be purchased by amateurs, "you're just blowing smoke out your ass"). If you're going to credit originators of concepts despite later and much greater developments and refinements, what's not 'new' didn't come from NASA, it came from the likes of von Braun and Goddard.

    What's not new is the extensive efforts SpaceX put into simplifying the systems to improve reliability while reducing costs. That kind of thing was championed by Truax, but was turned down both as an engineering concept and as fully designed systems by ... wait for it ... NASA. And to be fair NASA did actually use a very simplified design at one time, for the LEM motors. Because they were under time pressure and nobody could make the more complicated designs work soon enough. Those would be the same LEM motors that saved Apollo 13 after the Beech Aircraft oxygen tanks blew the side off of the North American Rockwell built service module disabled the Aerojet General motor, because the subsubcontractor that made the cryo-thermostats never got told that the CSM's planned operating voltage was changed from 28 to 65 volts in 1962, and the contractor and subcontractor didn't bother to check them. Ah yes, avoiding Cluster Fuck. That's what else SpaceX did that was new.

  23. The Next Step on "Cumulative Voting" Method Gaining Attention · · Score: 1

    Cumulative Taxation. Taxpayers are 'given' a number of 'dollars' equal to the amount they owe the IRS, and on their tax form are allowed to specify how much of what they're paying goes to what agency or purpose. One possible outcome could be the rich, who often arrange tax havens, instead paying taxes to make sure they don't lose perks only they can afford to use but haven't had to subsidize. Another might be the realization of the bumper sticker favored by many educators and education supporters, where "textbooks are paid for by taxes and the Pentagon has to hold bake sales to buy bombs". Maybe more interesting to contemplate: what government departments or agencies would go bankrupt and have to close?

    Of mine, NASA would get every dime.

  24. Poor Control == Poor Result on Home Computers Equal Lower Test Scores · · Score: 1

    Give a kid paper and pencil homework and paper and pencil tests, and then give them a paper and pencil summary test. The last will give a decent approximation of ability as compared to scores from the first two.

    Give a kid a computer to use to do homework and take tests, then give them a paper and pencil summary test. The last will show a drop in scores, not because it's a different medium, but because they're dragging their feet, being passive-aggressive, just plain outright resenting having to go back to the stone age for this boring test when they could be piloting a PC.

    And among which kids will you see this effect most? The less privileged. Because the computer was a greater step forward to them as compared to their more privileged pals and so taking it away or denying its use is a greater loss.

    Computerize the end-of-grade tests and watch the scores bounce back up. Of courts that means standardizing them in that form, which means everyone has to use a computer, which means everyone gets access to a computer, and that'd be one giant leap for North Carolina-kind. No, it's far more economical and find faults so you can ask for more money for improvements than it is to spend money on things to make improvements so there's no problem any more. If they bought computers there wouldn't be money for raises for the teachers of the kids who do poorly because they have computers, when what they really need in order to improve is better paid teachers.

    And save the Teachers Deserve More rants. I'm a teacher. Fuck us. The kids deserve more but aren't getting it. Hell, they're not getting enough. And 5 to 1 what they'll get out of this Duke study when the NC legislature uses it to plus the hole in their purse is blamed.

  25. Elon's Penny Pinching on SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New Pad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not sure what they're doing for test sites now, but early on SpaceX tested (sometimes destructively though probably not intentionally) firing chambers and other hotloud technology on a cattle ranch a mile or so east of their McGregor TX site. I've seen (as well as not seen but tripped over) rusty pieces of kaboomage while hunting down my own far more modest but adequately errant rockets during Dallas Area Rocket Society high-power launches. It's obviously not a top dollar test range. I'm thinking they probably had to move elsewhere when stuff got big and bad enough that the vehicles and/or pieces could travel 5 miles downrange before doing some high speed post hole digging. It's 5 miles to Bush's ranch at Crawford.

    Not to be out-cheaped, DARS flies smaller stuff at a site that's loaned free, near Rockwall TX. On the land there's a cement pad that used to be a garage floor. On the pad there's marks that used to be some of early Armadillo's H2O2 exhaust. Of the source of the exhaust, I found no traces. Found plenty of my own though.

    Maybe that's why they and Blue Origins favor Texas. There's so much land that you can always find some cheap.