I suppose you could think of it as testing "computability." If your proposition is understandable by the quantum system you set up, it will spit out an answer. And you'll always get that answer.
But if it is not understandable by the quantum system you set up, then no operation is performed, and whatever comes out is simply the result of quantum randomness.
Considering how often the AP hilariously augments their stories with badly 'shopped images, it's obvious at least some of them just do a google image search for something that looks like a related press photograph.
I think the best book for what you are asking (and I am 95% sure this is the right book, but I've lent it out so I had to look it up from dover) is "Vector Analysis" by Homer E. Nowell. It develops the theory of vector calculus using an intuitive approach and builds up the theory of electromagnetism simultaneously.
You might also look into the Feynman lectures. I do not normally recommend them as 'learning' material because, while excellent, I'm not aware that they come with any problem sets. But for you they may be a good supplement.
And, just to throw it out there, but it seems to me that most technical schools have enough overlap between physics degree requirements and math degree requirements that if you have a reasonable interest in the other it might not be out of the question to work that into your curriculum.
Your points may apply to mere users, and I might even go so far as to agree with you.
But don't insult our intelligence by saying drug dealers are just average joes.
First of all, there is a huge difference between skirting the law for an occasional high, and making your living off of entirely criminal activities. In the first case, you weigh the crime against the rest of the persons life, and figure the minor infraction is innocuous enough not to put a taint on everything else. In the second case, the person's life is defined by committing crime. I don't care if we all decide that even the worst aspects of dealing--like peddling to children--are 'victimless', that doesn't make an honorable living.
And this shows up in a more important way--the commission of auxiliary crimes. There are some quite horrible things done in association with the drug trade, especially where many originate south of the United States. The 'drug deal gone bad' is not some hollywood creation... that's real life, bro. Before you defend drug dealers as pursuing an intrinsically victimless activity I suggest you do a little research (www.criminalsearches.com) and see what else is their rap sheets. I personally refuse to do drugs not out of respect for the law, but because of the nature of the industry the money spent to procure them would ultimately help to finance.
Conclusion, drug users: some good some bad. Drug dealers: mostly bad.
The problem highlighted by TFA is that over a long enough timeline, the probability of things getting screwed up enough to allow a nuclear conflict to happen approach one.
Which just shows the absurdity of the model.
Over a long enough time frame, anything that you admit to the set of possible happenings approaches a probability of one. That is not a credible argument to live in paranoia of every conceivable doomsday scenario.
In as much as we are capable of making significant alterations to the system at any given moment, and beyond a twenty year time line or so are not capable of any practical strategic analysis, it really only makes sense to deal only with present and near future possibilities. Remote long term possibilities, such as Russia replacing its citizens with cyborgs bent on destroying all of humanity, are best left to the assumption that as that situation approaches we will be able to make better strategically responsive decisions then than we would possibly be able to make now. I'm not saying to ignore all future possibilities, but I am saying that even when you have a big boogeyman like "nuclear war" to talk about, you have to be pragmatic and not wetting your pants about it.
You are hoping that in some future conflict one or both sides will be willing to lose face in order to avoid nuclear war. I think that is a foolish assumption to make.
I call that "pessimism" masquerading as "fact."
It's really hard to understand how you think citing an example of Russia actively choosing to lose face rather than exercise their nuclear option provides evidence of the opposite? I think that supports my case.
If you want to press the point, I think you're the one who is going to have to present some quite significant evidence that these world powers would rather be blown to smithereens than lose international credibility. Hell, if that's true, when the Iraq war went to pieces, why didn't America just nuke all of its criticizers?
Second, apparently a number of nuclear armed subs were in place on the USSR side with orders to use their weapons if certain circumstances occured. I understand they were escorting freighters to Cuba and were ordered to launch local strikes, if the freighter were attacked or boarded. If someone is able to use a nuclear weapons on the field, then that greatly increases the chances of a nuclear war.
Before I respond concerning very specific policies of the (now defunct) Soviet Union, I would like to have some more substantial corroboration than what you understand to be the case.
Or the nuclear weapons might be in the hands of third parties, say terrorist groups who could build and use nuclear weapons. They probably would not be concerned over what escalation might follow a surprise nuclear attack on a city.
That I will cede handily. But it's not really relevant to my observations concerning the nature of conventional assaults and escalation between Russia and American allies.
It seemed evident to me from reading the article that his basic premise was to rationalize the existence of nuclear possibilities, not to derive whether or not they do in fact exist.
Probably his most flawed conception was that conflict between NATO/Russia would automatically result in nuclear escalation.
That is quite absurd. Neither Russia nor America has ever considered the use of nuclear arms as a blanket protection for their strategic assets. If Russia invaded Germany tomorrow America would be all over it with bombers and cruise missiles, and America'd be sure to mention its nuclear possibilities quite a bit, but no way would they write off X hundred million of their own citizens to render assistance to another country, treaty or no treaty. And it's not like the two countries haven't already had a series of proxy wars in the middle east and south america.
The fact is, even with plenty of saber-rattling, if Russia does ever attack NATO, as long as they don't use nukes (which they won't) everyone is still going to play it out with conventional weapons until either it de-escalates or somebody gets desperate--at which point the winner will back off, take their winnings, maybe make a few concessions to smooth things over, definitely not push it to the point that everything they just gained gets blown up (along with everything they started with).
Inside jokes are still funnier, IMHO. The best jokes are those that have the most surprising punchlines, or engage the maximum of brain activity (while still being decipherable). Personally, I think an unfamiliar academic context goes a long way toward supporting both of those concepts. Actually, a lot of my esoteric science knowledge originally came from researching jokes at the infamous http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/index.html and I remember a lot of those being hilarious well before I had proper context for wholly understanding them. And nowadays I find Dinosaur Comics brilliant, seemingly component to my utter unfamiliarity with the field of linguistics, which Ryan North frequently refers to.
Admittedly, maybe that isn't true for everyone. But for me, anyway, the least funny humorists are always those that condescend or use humorous tropes that have already been done to death. I'd always rather have someone joking way over my head than at the level where I can figure out the punchline before I even hear it.
Your point is taken, but sometimes it is still significant to ensure that it is the stupid user trick that breaks your system.
Don't you think the CIA, for example, would like to be extra special certain whether the reason the Russians are breaking all their codes is because they have inserted operatives in high-places, or because they have broken large-prime algorithms?
There is also the problem that, yes, the user is the weakest link, but it is not uniformly so. Tricking one guy will get you one encryption key. And then you'll have to do the same work to get the next one. BUT, if you figured out how to break any key, then you compromise the entire world, not just that one company.
And do you think all the banks, investment agencies, governments, ISPS, could deploy a new system overnight?
Until you can *prove* that there is no low order algorithm for factoring prime numbers, it might not be a bad idea to invest a little in quantum cryptography.
Fill up the rest of your drive with
dd if="/dev/random" of="secretstuff.iso"
so that if they copy your drive they at least have something they can work on decrypting.
Don't forget to bring your extra harddrives, too! I'd pay you to take some of my crashed ones... I would love for somebody to get the data off of them.
Other than that, all I can think of is for you to laugh maniacally.
As yet another not-quite-sure libertarian, I am receptive to the argument with one big reservation: it seems to be getting ahead of ourselves.
So far none of the theoretical problems with the free market version have developed yet. And at this point no one can truly say anything definite about how it may wind up sorting itself out.
I don't think it would be such a problem to sit on the issue for a while until it *actually* needs addressing, rather than trying to pre-empt it. It would be much more difficult to go the other way, and try to mobilize voters on "these involved economic analysis show that net neutrality is slightly less optimal" to get the law repealed.
One major point is that, yeah, not a lot of companies are in a position to lay more fiberoptic to everyone, but wireless may make that kind of moot.
Mathematicians are somewhere between drunk lemurs and 7th grade drop outs when it comes to basic arithmetic. They can do complex partial differential equations and algebraic topology without any problems, sure. But the problem with a column of numbers is that they tend to add up to a reasonable sum even if you forget a few, and being a computational monster doesn't necessarily dispel absent-mindedness.
If you ever attend higher level math/physics courses you will learn that the last step of solving any problem is to go back and fix all the coefficients.:p
Yeah, all you smart overachievers and concerned parents can whinge about it.
But for us smart underachievers, this is a promise that if we work hard the first 9 weeks, we can totally not do anything the next 9 weeks and still fly through with a C average. AWESOME!
And if you think students won't do that, you have never met 4/5 of my friends.
"A scientist who commits a serious blunder has to face reprisals such as this. If a mathematician claims that he found a method to trisect an angle he should be fired."
Well, you should certainly be forbidden to hold any mathematics related position, apparently, because what you said is absolutely untrue. It is possible to trisect an angle--any angle--or do you think division by three is impossible? Perhaps what you meant to say was that it is impossible to trisect an arbitrary angle by geometric construction. But that's not what you said, and it's not even misquoted like Reiss's statement--it's just flatout wrong.
And while we're persecuting you for being dumb, maybe we should focus our efforts on history and denounce any mathematician who claims to have found a geometry of many dimensions. I suppose Gauss was right to hold off in his discovery, fearing confrontation with Kant's argument that any more than 3 dimensions was impossible. Or we may go against Isaac Newton/Leibniz in the theory of infinitesimals (which was not only thoroughly criticized by rigorous mathematicians, but has only recently been given a solid mathematical basis). Or maybe we will go after those who propose the existence of negative or imaginary numbers--an obvious impossibility! Who could conceive of a negative apple!?
No, sir, science has no room for an inquisition of its own, and your desire to purge the heretics is best kept to yourself. A good scientist is any scientist who can perform well in the context of modern scientific theory, which he knows by heart. Not believes in--that is religion--knows. It doesn't matter at all what he believes, whether it is in the FSM or negative numbers. If a man knows every rule of calculus, every proof, every theorem, and can solve any problem that is tractible, then that is faultless. His other bizarre ideas should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. It is what is called "hypothesis" which is absolutely integral to the scientific process, even, and especially, when it contradicts known rules.
What's so significant about 1978 that you choose to use it to benchmark 3/4 of your statistics? Aren't trying to overlook L.B.J.'s Great Society, are you? And why don't you cite government spending etc. from 1933 onward--only job growth? Not trying to dodge out on FDR's "New Deal" perhaps?
And maybe we should do it by economic liberal/conservative, which would put JFK and (to lesser extent) Bill Clinton in the conservative camp, and George Bush in the liberal camp.
It's just as easy to cook the books the other way around. Or, if you don't think these statistics accomplish that, then you must agree that "Ronald Reagan's record of fiscal responsibility continues to stand as the most successful economic policy of the 20th century."
The simple fact of the matter is that "who was president" is a ridiculous metric. First of all, economic policies have much longer term effects than whatever the remainder of the President's term is--even if the next president immediately rescinds them. The market is subject to all sorts of things which the president has no control over (hence why economists and financial analysts have jobs) and it's absurd to think that presidents will be held accountable for things like the Asian Financial Crisis. And it's not like the party platforms--and basic economic theory--haven't changes over the course of the last 3/4 century.
It's just non-sensical. You could just as well compare to the well-being of the economy whether Michigan elects (D) or (R) senators.
Now, if you want to draw up a correspondence between certain economic policies of a U.S. president, and account for time-lag and the various multitude of other economic effects which are always impacting things, then you may have a point (and a thesis).
Right now you're just playing silly-buggers with the fact that any suitably chosen "Since 19xx" date will benefit nicely from having GWB in the equation.
Lower gas prices this time around would help the democrats--the ones who (a) are in charge right now (b) oppose drilling. And, while you can lead prices down, you can't lead them up without widespread collusion. (otherwise your neighbors will be only too happy to undercut you and take all of your business)
Anyway, I admire your cynicism, but it kind of all falls to pieces given that most of these companies contribute to the campaigns of both parties.
Actually, it is fairly simple to create a device for which unlimited physical access cannot find the key. You just make entropy part of the fabrication process.
For example, maybe I swirl together some microscopic impurities in a bit of glass, and the precise x-ray diffraction pattern or whatever forms the key. It is very easy to make such a unique object, but the process of replication is infinitely more complex than the process of manufacture. Assuming it is even possible you would have to spend millions to accurately determine the location and substance of each impurity and then create a new object atom by atom.
There are obviously countless such methods. However, it does not seem very purposeful to me to unite this with RFID. Digital radio is of course very easy to replicate, so to avoid replay attacks you would need the object to generate rolling keycodes. But the only way you could have a reader for the rolling codes would be to have capped your use complexity to where you object can be reverse-engineered.
Really, you just need a more comprehensive diagnostic of the object than the radio signal it emits.
But, paranoia aside, you don't actualy need to complexify RFID to the point of being unbreakable. You just need to complexify it to where the cost of breaking it exceeds the expected payoff to your potential thief, such that, even if he can theoretically break it, he just isn't going to bother with the trouble.
First of all, your analogy goes "a scientific process is to a field of science as an object of study is to its own field of science." It does not succeed from the perspective of grammar, much less from a perspective of comparativeness.
It always interests me how over-emphasized the academic importance of evolution becomes in this debate. Presumably because the same elements of fanaticism distort things whether or not you are on the mystical side of things.
If you will just pause to consider this dispassionately for a moment, it's clear that evolution is nothing like molecules are in chemistry--the object of study. Flipping through my AP bio notes, evolution is the 8th section taught, with 6 coming thereafter. So apparently at least half of high school biology has nothing to do with evolution. Those sections are chemistry, cells, cellular respiration, cell division, heredity, molecular genetics, and then after evolution, biological diversity, plants, animal form and function, animal reproduction and development, animal behavior, and ecology.
Evolution is admittedly nice context for that latter half, and creationism--if it is exclusively "subbed in"--is going to mess about how you associate various hierarchies. But it would have zero impact on anything mechanic--kreb cycle, photosynthesis, phenotypes, etc.--not be all that debilitating on the rest--and if you were to hold your nose and compromise at "intelligent design," you'd be getting pretty much the exact same education. (Isn't that why ID is repeatedly accused of not being science--it produces no testably distinguishable results from "evolution unguided"?)
And, furthermore, I don't know where everyone else went to public school, but my distinct experience was that teachers could not be uniformly relied on in *any* subject, irrespective of religious or philosophical interests. Is there to be no similar outcry to how teachers are crippling students with bad science when they teach that the sky is blue because light reflects off the ocean? Or when calculus books refer to invalid proofs? Or any of a myriad of other fictions which often work their way into the public education?
My own assessment is that the objections are warranted, but the outcry is not. It's just not as huge of deal as slashdot makes it out to be.
And how is Obama's bulletproof aura doing? President is not exactly the safest vocation, you know--not to mention that there are also other ways to arrive at a vacancy in the executive office.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose you could think of it as testing "computability." If your proposition is understandable by the quantum system you set up, it will spit out an answer. And you'll always get that answer.
But if it is not understandable by the quantum system you set up, then no operation is performed, and whatever comes out is simply the result of quantum randomness.
Considering how often the AP hilariously augments their stories with badly 'shopped images, it's obvious at least some of them just do a google image search for something that looks like a related press photograph.
Do you think Reuters ever got blacklisted?
I think the best book for what you are asking (and I am 95% sure this is the right book, but I've lent it out so I had to look it up from dover) is "Vector Analysis" by Homer E. Nowell. It develops the theory of vector calculus using an intuitive approach and builds up the theory of electromagnetism simultaneously.
You might also look into the Feynman lectures. I do not normally recommend them as 'learning' material because, while excellent, I'm not aware that they come with any problem sets. But for you they may be a good supplement.
And, just to throw it out there, but it seems to me that most technical schools have enough overlap between physics degree requirements and math degree requirements that if you have a reasonable interest in the other it might not be out of the question to work that into your curriculum.
species
noun
1. a class of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities; distinct sort or kind.
Personally, my plan is to supply the zombies/raptors with weapons and tactical advice.
Your points may apply to mere users, and I might even go so far as to agree with you.
But don't insult our intelligence by saying drug dealers are just average joes.
First of all, there is a huge difference between skirting the law for an occasional high, and making your living off of entirely criminal activities. In the first case, you weigh the crime against the rest of the persons life, and figure the minor infraction is innocuous enough not to put a taint on everything else. In the second case, the person's life is defined by committing crime. I don't care if we all decide that even the worst aspects of dealing--like peddling to children--are 'victimless', that doesn't make an honorable living.
And this shows up in a more important way--the commission of auxiliary crimes. There are some quite horrible things done in association with the drug trade, especially where many originate south of the United States. The 'drug deal gone bad' is not some hollywood creation... that's real life, bro. Before you defend drug dealers as pursuing an intrinsically victimless activity I suggest you do a little research (www.criminalsearches.com) and see what else is their rap sheets. I personally refuse to do drugs not out of respect for the law, but because of the nature of the industry the money spent to procure them would ultimately help to finance.
Conclusion, drug users: some good some bad. Drug dealers: mostly bad.
Wait, I though all their stuff was free? All their software said "CC" on it. That means "Creative Commons," right?
The problem highlighted by TFA is that over a long enough timeline, the probability of things getting screwed up enough to allow a nuclear conflict to happen approach one.
Which just shows the absurdity of the model.
Over a long enough time frame, anything that you admit to the set of possible happenings approaches a probability of one. That is not a credible argument to live in paranoia of every conceivable doomsday scenario.
In as much as we are capable of making significant alterations to the system at any given moment, and beyond a twenty year time line or so are not capable of any practical strategic analysis, it really only makes sense to deal only with present and near future possibilities. Remote long term possibilities, such as Russia replacing its citizens with cyborgs bent on destroying all of humanity, are best left to the assumption that as that situation approaches we will be able to make better strategically responsive decisions then than we would possibly be able to make now. I'm not saying to ignore all future possibilities, but I am saying that even when you have a big boogeyman like "nuclear war" to talk about, you have to be pragmatic and not wetting your pants about it.
You are hoping that in some future conflict one or both sides will be willing to lose face in order to avoid nuclear war. I think that is a foolish assumption to make.
I call that "pessimism" masquerading as "fact."
It's really hard to understand how you think citing an example of Russia actively choosing to lose face rather than exercise their nuclear option provides evidence of the opposite? I think that supports my case.
If you want to press the point, I think you're the one who is going to have to present some quite significant evidence that these world powers would rather be blown to smithereens than lose international credibility. Hell, if that's true, when the Iraq war went to pieces, why didn't America just nuke all of its criticizers?
Second, apparently a number of nuclear armed subs were in place on the USSR side with orders to use their weapons if certain circumstances occured. I understand they were escorting freighters to Cuba and were ordered to launch local strikes, if the freighter were attacked or boarded. If someone is able to use a nuclear weapons on the field, then that greatly increases the chances of a nuclear war.
Before I respond concerning very specific policies of the (now defunct) Soviet Union, I would like to have some more substantial corroboration than what you understand to be the case.
Or the nuclear weapons might be in the hands of third parties, say terrorist groups who could build and use nuclear weapons. They probably would not be concerned over what escalation might follow a surprise nuclear attack on a city.
That I will cede handily. But it's not really relevant to my observations concerning the nature of conventional assaults and escalation between Russia and American allies.
It seemed evident to me from reading the article that his basic premise was to rationalize the existence of nuclear possibilities, not to derive whether or not they do in fact exist.
Probably his most flawed conception was that conflict between NATO/Russia would automatically result in nuclear escalation.
That is quite absurd. Neither Russia nor America has ever considered the use of nuclear arms as a blanket protection for their strategic assets. If Russia invaded Germany tomorrow America would be all over it with bombers and cruise missiles, and America'd be sure to mention its nuclear possibilities quite a bit, but no way would they write off X hundred million of their own citizens to render assistance to another country, treaty or no treaty. And it's not like the two countries haven't already had a series of proxy wars in the middle east and south america.
The fact is, even with plenty of saber-rattling, if Russia does ever attack NATO, as long as they don't use nukes (which they won't) everyone is still going to play it out with conventional weapons until either it de-escalates or somebody gets desperate--at which point the winner will back off, take their winnings, maybe make a few concessions to smooth things over, definitely not push it to the point that everything they just gained gets blown up (along with everything they started with).
Inside jokes are still funnier, IMHO. The best jokes are those that have the most surprising punchlines, or engage the maximum of brain activity (while still being decipherable). Personally, I think an unfamiliar academic context goes a long way toward supporting both of those concepts. Actually, a lot of my esoteric science knowledge originally came from researching jokes at the infamous http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/index.html and I remember a lot of those being hilarious well before I had proper context for wholly understanding them. And nowadays I find Dinosaur Comics brilliant, seemingly component to my utter unfamiliarity with the field of linguistics, which Ryan North frequently refers to.
Admittedly, maybe that isn't true for everyone. But for me, anyway, the least funny humorists are always those that condescend or use humorous tropes that have already been done to death. I'd always rather have someone joking way over my head than at the level where I can figure out the punchline before I even hear it.
"A Brief History of People Apple Has Killed"?
I thought this was going to be a warning... a warning to us all....
Your point is taken, but sometimes it is still significant to ensure that it is the stupid user trick that breaks your system.
Don't you think the CIA, for example, would like to be extra special certain whether the reason the Russians are breaking all their codes is because they have inserted operatives in high-places, or because they have broken large-prime algorithms?
There is also the problem that, yes, the user is the weakest link, but it is not uniformly so. Tricking one guy will get you one encryption key. And then you'll have to do the same work to get the next one. BUT, if you figured out how to break any key, then you compromise the entire world, not just that one company.
And do you think all the banks, investment agencies, governments, ISPS, could deploy a new system overnight?
Until you can *prove* that there is no low order algorithm for factoring prime numbers, it might not be a bad idea to invest a little in quantum cryptography.
It would be even worse after Marmite on toast :-)
Incorrect.
After you've been forced to eat Marmite on toast, nothing is worse.
What's "Osama" hiding underneath that beard, anyway?
Insist on showing them every picture!
Also, backup the gutenberg project.
Fill up the rest of your drive with dd if="/dev/random" of="secretstuff.iso" so that if they copy your drive they at least have something they can work on decrypting.
Don't forget to bring your extra harddrives, too! I'd pay you to take some of my crashed ones... I would love for somebody to get the data off of them.
Other than that, all I can think of is for you to laugh maniacally.
As yet another not-quite-sure libertarian, I am receptive to the argument with one big reservation: it seems to be getting ahead of ourselves.
So far none of the theoretical problems with the free market version have developed yet. And at this point no one can truly say anything definite about how it may wind up sorting itself out.
I don't think it would be such a problem to sit on the issue for a while until it *actually* needs addressing, rather than trying to pre-empt it. It would be much more difficult to go the other way, and try to mobilize voters on "these involved economic analysis show that net neutrality is slightly less optimal" to get the law repealed.
One major point is that, yeah, not a lot of companies are in a position to lay more fiberoptic to everyone, but wireless may make that kind of moot.
Mathematicians are somewhere between drunk lemurs and 7th grade drop outs when it comes to basic arithmetic. They can do complex partial differential equations and algebraic topology without any problems, sure. But the problem with a column of numbers is that they tend to add up to a reasonable sum even if you forget a few, and being a computational monster doesn't necessarily dispel absent-mindedness. If you ever attend higher level math/physics courses you will learn that the last step of solving any problem is to go back and fix all the coefficients. :p
Yeah, all you smart overachievers and concerned parents can whinge about it.
But for us smart underachievers, this is a promise that if we work hard the first 9 weeks, we can totally not do anything the next 9 weeks and still fly through with a C average. AWESOME!
And if you think students won't do that, you have never met 4/5 of my friends.
"A scientist who commits a serious blunder has to face reprisals such as this. If a mathematician claims that he found a method to trisect an angle he should be fired."
Well, you should certainly be forbidden to hold any mathematics related position, apparently, because what you said is absolutely untrue. It is possible to trisect an angle--any angle--or do you think division by three is impossible? Perhaps what you meant to say was that it is impossible to trisect an arbitrary angle by geometric construction. But that's not what you said, and it's not even misquoted like Reiss's statement--it's just flatout wrong.
And while we're persecuting you for being dumb, maybe we should focus our efforts on history and denounce any mathematician who claims to have found a geometry of many dimensions. I suppose Gauss was right to hold off in his discovery, fearing confrontation with Kant's argument that any more than 3 dimensions was impossible. Or we may go against Isaac Newton/Leibniz in the theory of infinitesimals (which was not only thoroughly criticized by rigorous mathematicians, but has only recently been given a solid mathematical basis). Or maybe we will go after those who propose the existence of negative or imaginary numbers--an obvious impossibility! Who could conceive of a negative apple!?
No, sir, science has no room for an inquisition of its own, and your desire to purge the heretics is best kept to yourself. A good scientist is any scientist who can perform well in the context of modern scientific theory, which he knows by heart. Not believes in--that is religion--knows. It doesn't matter at all what he believes, whether it is in the FSM or negative numbers. If a man knows every rule of calculus, every proof, every theorem, and can solve any problem that is tractible, then that is faultless. His other bizarre ideas should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. It is what is called "hypothesis" which is absolutely integral to the scientific process, even, and especially, when it contradicts known rules.
What's so significant about 1978 that you choose to use it to benchmark 3/4 of your statistics? Aren't trying to overlook L.B.J.'s Great Society, are you? And why don't you cite government spending etc. from 1933 onward--only job growth? Not trying to dodge out on FDR's "New Deal" perhaps?
And maybe we should do it by economic liberal/conservative, which would put JFK and (to lesser extent) Bill Clinton in the conservative camp, and George Bush in the liberal camp.
It's just as easy to cook the books the other way around. Or, if you don't think these statistics accomplish that, then you must agree that "Ronald Reagan's record of fiscal responsibility continues to stand as the most successful economic policy of the 20th century."
The simple fact of the matter is that "who was president" is a ridiculous metric. First of all, economic policies have much longer term effects than whatever the remainder of the President's term is--even if the next president immediately rescinds them. The market is subject to all sorts of things which the president has no control over (hence why economists and financial analysts have jobs) and it's absurd to think that presidents will be held accountable for things like the Asian Financial Crisis. And it's not like the party platforms--and basic economic theory--haven't changes over the course of the last 3/4 century.
It's just non-sensical. You could just as well compare to the well-being of the economy whether Michigan elects (D) or (R) senators.
Now, if you want to draw up a correspondence between certain economic policies of a U.S. president, and account for time-lag and the various multitude of other economic effects which are always impacting things, then you may have a point (and a thesis).
Right now you're just playing silly-buggers with the fact that any suitably chosen "Since 19xx" date will benefit nicely from having GWB in the equation.
Lower gas prices this time around would help the democrats--the ones who (a) are in charge right now (b) oppose drilling. And, while you can lead prices down, you can't lead them up without widespread collusion. (otherwise your neighbors will be only too happy to undercut you and take all of your business)
Anyway, I admire your cynicism, but it kind of all falls to pieces given that most of these companies contribute to the campaigns of both parties.
Actually, it is fairly simple to create a device for which unlimited physical access cannot find the key. You just make entropy part of the fabrication process.
For example, maybe I swirl together some microscopic impurities in a bit of glass, and the precise x-ray diffraction pattern or whatever forms the key. It is very easy to make such a unique object, but the process of replication is infinitely more complex than the process of manufacture. Assuming it is even possible you would have to spend millions to accurately determine the location and substance of each impurity and then create a new object atom by atom.
There are obviously countless such methods. However, it does not seem very purposeful to me to unite this with RFID. Digital radio is of course very easy to replicate, so to avoid replay attacks you would need the object to generate rolling keycodes. But the only way you could have a reader for the rolling codes would be to have capped your use complexity to where you object can be reverse-engineered.
Really, you just need a more comprehensive diagnostic of the object than the radio signal it emits.
But, paranoia aside, you don't actualy need to complexify RFID to the point of being unbreakable. You just need to complexify it to where the cost of breaking it exceeds the expected payoff to your potential thief, such that, even if he can theoretically break it, he just isn't going to bother with the trouble.
First of all, your analogy goes "a scientific process is to a field of science as an object of study is to its own field of science." It does not succeed from the perspective of grammar, much less from a perspective of comparativeness.
It always interests me how over-emphasized the academic importance of evolution becomes in this debate. Presumably because the same elements of fanaticism distort things whether or not you are on the mystical side of things.
If you will just pause to consider this dispassionately for a moment, it's clear that evolution is nothing like molecules are in chemistry--the object of study. Flipping through my AP bio notes, evolution is the 8th section taught, with 6 coming thereafter. So apparently at least half of high school biology has nothing to do with evolution. Those sections are chemistry, cells, cellular respiration, cell division, heredity, molecular genetics, and then after evolution, biological diversity, plants, animal form and function, animal reproduction and development, animal behavior, and ecology.
Evolution is admittedly nice context for that latter half, and creationism--if it is exclusively "subbed in"--is going to mess about how you associate various hierarchies. But it would have zero impact on anything mechanic--kreb cycle, photosynthesis, phenotypes, etc.--not be all that debilitating on the rest--and if you were to hold your nose and compromise at "intelligent design," you'd be getting pretty much the exact same education. (Isn't that why ID is repeatedly accused of not being science--it produces no testably distinguishable results from "evolution unguided"?)
And, furthermore, I don't know where everyone else went to public school, but my distinct experience was that teachers could not be uniformly relied on in *any* subject, irrespective of religious or philosophical interests. Is there to be no similar outcry to how teachers are crippling students with bad science when they teach that the sky is blue because light reflects off the ocean? Or when calculus books refer to invalid proofs? Or any of a myriad of other fictions which often work their way into the public education?
My own assessment is that the objections are warranted, but the outcry is not. It's just not as huge of deal as slashdot makes it out to be.
And how is Obama's bulletproof aura doing? President is not exactly the safest vocation, you know--not to mention that there are also other ways to arrive at a vacancy in the executive office.