Ah, the old slashdot-popular canard that Dems and Repubs are the same party. That's akin, in slashdot analogy style, to saying Windows and Linux are the same, since they're not BeOS.
Lieberman is the right-most leaning Democrat in Congress, comparing the rest of Democrats to him is ridiculous. Especially considering that Connecticut Democrats voted him out for being too conservative. If you really think D's and R's are the same, then you think Tom Delay and John Conyers really have the same policies and voting record?
Go right now and compare, say, Daily Kos, a Democratic blog with Red State, A Republican blog. See the opinions and voices of the people there.
Long story short, if you think Democrats and Republicans are really one and the same, you're either trolling or utterly clueless.
Bzzt, sorry, by not voting you're JUST AS GUILTY of any wars the elected government initiates as if you did vote because YOU DID NOT DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY by voting. Take some responsibility for your life, man.
The Democrats didn't give Lieberman the finger, Connecticut Democrat voters gave him the finger by voting for an alternate Senate Democratic candidate (Ned Lamont) in the primary. Joe was being a whiny sore loser and then ran on his own independent ticket, with tacit endorsement by the White House and Republicans. He was elected by basically being a Republican running on an independent ticket, as the Republican candidate in CT only got 10% off the vote, while most registered Republicans voted for him, along with some Democrats.
He's probably going to give Democrats the finger and now ally himself more closely with the Republicans. There's been rumors of Rumsfeld resigning with Lieberman taking the position, or other rumors of him switching parties to Republican.
But in any case, it's certain that he's not a Democrat now, considering he pissed on the Democrat voters in his state that chose someone else for the primary.
Hi, in my first response I wasn't responding to you per se but to people that might opt to stay home since they don't like the two major parties, and don't want to "throw their vote away" with a 3rd party candidate. Or even those (like my girlfriend's officemate) that apparently never even considered voting for a 3rd party.
And just to beat this analgy to death, running away from the chair would be like moving to another country. If you want the person hitting you to be nice, you better vote. Staying silent and not voting is not an option if you don't like how they're treating you.
Yeah, I really don't like the plurality system, as it feedsthis whole concept of people thinking they're "throwing their vote away" if they don't vote for D or R. And then leads people who mindless follow Trey Parker and Matt Stone and refuse to vote since they don't want to eat a shit sandwich (without realizing that even if they don't vote they'll still have to eat that shit sandwich if it wins).
I really like Parliamentary systems, eg the Israeli Knesset, where if you get 6% of the vote you get 6% of the seats. Sure it makes for lots of fractured parties, but that way you fully vote your conscience.
What's even better is that it encourages parties working together to maintain a majority coalitions to get anything done, so there are lots of compromises between the parties, to better represent the views of the people. Unlike the US system, where the Republican party basically has done whatever the hell it wanted in the past 6 years and the Dems could barely do anything except try to filibuster.
And that at any time they can vote 'No Confidence' at any time and force new elections if there's majority opinion.
Bullshit, if you stay at home it implies you're perfectly happy with everything going on in the world. In most cases, people are repeatedly pissed at government.
If you want to send a message to the government that it's time to change, then get your lazy ass to the polls and vote, even if it's for a 3rd party or write-in. If someone is going to win the election, you have to power to make their mandate less strong by acknowledging that you didn't want to vote for them.
If enough people start doing this, candidates will start reaching out to more than just their base.
If someone ties you down to a chair and asks me if I prefer to be beaten with the steel or metal bat, I answer that I prefer to be let go without harm.
In your silly analogy, not voting at all is akin to silently sitting in the chair and taking the abuse willingly, instead of trying to stop it. Not voting implies you don't give a shit that you're getting hit by a bat.
Yeah, this is my 2nd response to your comment, but I think it more aptly sums up the situation.
Not voting for Democrats or Republicans in the election is saying what you want to be said. But not voting at all is not saying anything at all, and thereby letting everyone else do the talking for you.
There's a shitload at stake, just look at the madness Bush has done in the past 6 years. If you don't go to the ballot box today, don't complain about the bad bad government in the future.
I can understand if you don't like the Democrats policies. But avoiding the elections entirely just because you don't like the Democratic Party's policies is ridiculously idiotic. In your analogy example it would be like not complaining whatsoever if you're getting hit in the face with a bat.
Who modded this insightful? Where is this "two-choice" nonsense coming from, you have more than two choices, vote Green or Libertarian if you want a chance to make your voice heard.
I agree with others upthread, though, that really if you think the current government is akin to getting hit with a bat, Vote Democratic this time to get the thugs out of office, and Green/Libertarian/whatever in future elections. Get the thugs out NOW so that Bush's insane policies can be stopped immediately, then we'll get around to getting more greens into office later(or your other 3rd party of choice), or fixing up the Democratic party, etc. But in any case, vote 3rd party instead of not voting, that's just idiotic to avoid the ballot box purposefully because you don't like Democrats.
Bush is around for 2 more years, and if you want to keep letting these guys go on trampling over your rights then please sit out but also don't whine about the bad government later. But if you get your ass to the ballot box you are making one small part of a difference. But there is ALOT at stake now, and if you don't vote you really don't have much right to complain since this is your biyearly chance to make a difference by voting in somebody else.
Bush and his gang have been destroying our civil rights, shitting on the Constitution, and pissing off the world and the country in the process. So
if you wind up getting drafted to fight in Iraq or North Korea, don't complain about it if you don't vote today.
If the government decides it can monitor all your emails and web browses for signs of naughtiness, don't complain about it if you don't vote today.
If the government decides you're not towing the party line and locks you away under terrorist behavior suspicions, don't complain about it if you don't vote today.
Those reasons right there better knock some sense into you right now as to why you better get your lazy ass to the ballot box, even if you're voting for a 3rd party. Every vote that the Republicans don't get is another vote to diminish their so-called "political capital". And if you really want to stop the madness now, vote Democratic for this election and then we'll work on improving Democrats/third parties in the future.
Especially considering that the vast majority of people that vote do so either because someone (eg their pastor) tells them to vote for a certain party, or because their friend has a lawn sign with that candidate, or even because they were push-polled, etc. In all these cases the candidates are taking advantage of voter misinformation. So why is someone that considers themselves uninformed bad?
If we are supposed to represent the will of the people, and some people are uninformed, doesn't that still require their voice be heard? And I'm sure that however uninformed you think you are, you have some idea about what Bush has done, what he stands for, what Republicans and Democrats generally stand for, etc.
Just get out and vote, if you don't vote you really have no place to complain if you get drafted to fight in Iraq or North Korea, or if your taxes are raised, of if Congress decides your playstation is too violent and won't let you buy more games for it, etc.
Just vote, based on what you know. You're really no less informed than most other people that just vote republican down the line because they've been brainwashed into believing that Democrats automatically raise taxes, etc.
I think it's also very important to consider the history of the vote. Wars have been fought, people have been killed, even recently in our country's history, to ensure that everybody would have the right to vote. Eg, huge efforts were exerted, in the face of adversity, when women and blacks demanded they have the right to vote. And that means the same rights as everybody else, without the discriminatory grandfathering clauses that were originally allowed in the Jim Crow laws, etc.
So if you're too lazy to vote, or to research at least some of the candidates positions, you're really shitting all over the efforts and lives lost of people that DID fight for the right to make sure that you have the right to vote.
Anyway, IMHO if you don't vote you really don't have any leg to stand on to complain about any governmental laws. If Congress decides to attack Iraq or invade North Korea, and you get drafted, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. If Congress decides to massively raise your taxes, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. If Congress passes laws allowing eavesdropping on all your emails and web browses, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. Etc, etc.
Nobody knows all the issues of the candidates themselves, their opponents have teams of staffers who can dig through mounds of legislation to find some obscure clause in some prior vote to say "Candidate X voted AGAINST clean forests" or something like that.
In a nutshell, GET OUT AND VOTE!, regardless of whether you consider yourself informed or not. Democracy (yada yada, representative republic yada yada) is the people's voice, and some percentage of uninformed people would still be representative of the populace.
But if you consider yourself uninformed, ask yourself if you like how things are going in the country. Consider Iraq, Social Security, Geek Issues that are brought up on Slashdot, etc. If you like how things are going, then vote for the same party in power. If you want change, vote for someone else.
One final comment - Voting breeds more informed voters. Meaning that once you start to vote you'll start paying more attention to issues that matter. Hell, you might even start writing to your Congressman about issues you care about (they really listen to their constituency, especially when they're up for re-election). It's kind of like if you're in the market for a pickup truck, you start to notice all the kinds of pickup trucks around your neighborhood that you never would have seen before.
politics.slashdot.org did not exist in the clinton days. Point me to one truly negative article (not an opinion column) from a major news source when clinton was president.
Stop dodging the point. While the SlashDot Politics section may not have existed in those days, if you don't think there were several political articles then you're entirely mistaken.
Off the top of my head there were discussions on the Clinton impeachment itself, the MSFT anti-trust hearings, stories about Eschelon and other governmental sniffing of emails and web traffic, governmental usage of OSS (although I don't recall the OSS acronym being popular in those days) vs closed-source software, stories on government spending levels for science research etc. I've also seen lots of Clinton bashing for shutting down the SSC (although that action happened prior to the creation of SlashDot it was brought up in later comments). Basically, there was quite a large amount of negative sentiment against Clinton, because he was the face of the American government at the time. Just like Bush is now, the primary difference is that Bush has his own party controlling both houses, and therefore no scapegoats when his policies don't work out.
Seriously, though, are you actually claiming that anti-Bush rhetoric on forums like SlashDot are more indicative of general slashdot bias instead of actual REAL CRITICISM of the policies the Bush Administration has implemented to begin with? Would you prefer a SlashDot comment author criticize a Democrat every time he/she criticizes one of Bush's policies?
In an elementary analysis, if you define one item which dominated Clinton's presidency (IMHO, at least) it was "It's the economy, stupid", and that defined the major crux of his policies, for better or worse. Bush's one item would be "The War on Terror", which for better or worse, has led to some seriously questionable activities and legislation which are of importance to slashdotters. So yeah, there are ALOT of things Bush is doing now that Clinton never tried to do, many of which slashdotters are quite sensitive to. So why should they not complain if they feel that strongly about such issues?
Ah, a Republican calling me a shill and then trying to take the moral high ground, fun. Regarding your first quote, do you actually believe the Iraq war is worth fighting? If yes, then why are you here on Slashdot and not serving in active duty in Iraq (like most pro-war Republican leaders today who dodged military duty during Viet Nam) ? If no, then why are you voting for the party that rushed recklessly to launch this war on shoddy advice in the first place?
Regarding your 2nd quote, show me any major Democrat up for re-election that said such a quote. Now if you toned down your knee-jerk reaction into a rational critique of Bush misleading the American public, akin to actual real quotes which many Democratic, Green, and Libertarian candidates have said, yes, I have reason to believe such 'comments'.
Since you throw accusations of being a shill, that leads to the question - Do you NOT believe GWB has misled the American public on several issues? If you actually don't believe he did, may I sell you a few bridges over the Hudson tributary waters?
Normally this would be just dirty politics as usual. But what makes it especially atrocious is the fact that the Republicans are constantly trying to spin the War in Iraq in a positive light, and they say things like "we've given the Iraqis free elections", and "people just want to live free". And they go and do these things that would have made Saddam Hussein proud.
Seriously, I know there are many people here on Slashdot that vote Republican. Do you SERIOUSLY believe this tripe your party is spewing out, or are you just voting for other reasons? I mean, I can at least see someone wanting to vote Republican for one of those reasons, but dammit, I can't imagine anyone actually believing this nonsense.
Here's an article from the DailyKos, which lists at least 24 districts (as of this post) from which people have reported getting the robo-calls. Has anybody here on slashdot received such calls AND in regards to a district not mentioned in that article?
This section has become nothing but a Republican/convervative/US bashfest from day one.
Let's see, Republicans have controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for the past six years, so why should most political problems from the past six years NOT be biased towards Republicans? When slashdotters gripe about political problems who should their frustration be vented to, the 'obstructionist' Democratic minority?
You obviously haven't been around here very long, because back in the Clinton days, even though Republicans had majority rule in both houses, there was a Democratic presidency, and there were MANY articles and comments griping about Clinton and Democrats in general.
It's just that now the GOP has been in full rule, and has no more scapegoating except itself. And apparently you're getting your panties in a knot when the citizens actually try holding the ruling powers responsible for their own political actions.
Particle physics has nothing to do with it, it's just straight old electrodynamics (E&M). Your assumption is correct, they specically say it's the electric field, and the slashdot blurb incorrectly inserts the word 'electron' there.
The electric field is merely the negative gradient of the scalar potential (ie, voltage)*. So in SI it will have units of Volts/Meter.
* (Just in case any E&M sticklers want to point that my electric field definition here ignores the contribution from vector potential, just assume a time-independent gauge).
Most astronomers I rub elbows with are not too supportive of the Hubble program.
Interesting, which institution's astronomers are you "rubbing elbows" with? I'm a physicst, not an astronomer, but of all the astronomy faculty, post-docs, and grad students at my institution I know of only a single professional astronomer (out of dozens, maybe even approaching 100+) that favors phasing out Hubble, and that's only because he is a PI in a Hubble replacement proposal. And this includes astronomers that primarily study UV w/ Chandra, and radio at other telescopes and don't even use Hubble, people studying universe structure with ground-based Sloan surveys, theorists not even using any telescopes at all, they all still support Hubble 100%.
Adaptive optics are nice for ground-based imaging, but most of the actual astrophysical research makes use of spectra, identifying things like atomic emissions and absorptions, temperatures, redshifts/blueshifts, etc. Eg, finding hints of iron in black holes, discovering that galaxy arms are moving faster than allowed for by galactic mass (hints of dark matter), studying Zeeman splitting for measuring magnetic fields of distant objects, etc. Atmospheric artifacts may be alleviated with adaptive optics, but spectras are still fundamentally important and are vastly superior with space-based telescopes. Especially so for looking at IR and UV wavelengths, where the atmospheric attenuation is prohibitively large.
Additionally, imaging is superior in space when looking at faint objects that need very long acquisition times. The atmospheric noise floor (due to scattered light) is too high for ground-based observatories doing reasonably long-term acquisitions (days) to compete with space-based observatories.
If all you need to do is pop in a faster CPU and swap out a busted fan, with existing technology that's built and debugged, why not upgrade the 386? Especially since buying a new computer (in this stupid analogy anyway) will take at least a decade or more before it's built, debugged, and working. And besides, the current Hubble successor (JWST) is near IR and loses the visible. And ground-based telescopes don't provide the same quality of spectra that space-based telescopes can, nor can they provide as quiet long-time (many-orbit) acquisitions.
No one is saying not to develop new instruemnts (ie, JWST is in progress, but also Chandra and SIRTF have been launched recently and others are also on the drawing board), but Hubble is responsible for HUGE amounts of scientific research, all of which will all be brought to an abrupt halt if funding is cut off.
No can do. Hubble's orbit will eventually degrade and it will burn up on re-entry, if left unattended. Space Shuttle Columbia was the only shuttle with the cargo bay large enough to carry Hubble (either up or down). Hence all that talk about building a robotic thruster to launch Hubble to a higher orbit, or to allow for a controlled re-entry away from populated areas.
Actually, several astronauts have spoken out in the past few years saying they were willing to go service Hubble again, despite the risks. Ie, they understand the huge scientific output that are at stake should Hubble be shut down. Additionally, the risks aren't greater than previous Hubble servicing missions, it's just that there are problems of which we were blissfully unaware previously.
Oops, seemingly-minor correction, but in the 2nd paragraph I should have said : "A mode will oscillate at a specific frequency, however. If you write the 'equations of motion' for all atoms in the crystal in 'matrix' form, the modes would correspond to the 'eigenvectors' of that matrix."
Eigenvalues are scalars, eigenvectors are vectors. In this case the eigenvectors would describe the motion of each of the atoms in the crystal.
It's not as useful think about the electron's or hole's location, but much more useful to talk about its momentum (or other useful 'good quantum number'). If you think of the electrons as a gas, without strong interactions between each other, they form a a continum of states, each state has momentum (hbar*k) and energy (p^2/2m) where k is the wavevector, which is quantized as a function of your sample's size. (you hopefully recognize that expression as the kinetic energy, where we're assuming the lattice potential energy, as well as electron interaction potential energies are weak and can be ignored.) In simple models for a semiconductor, this is a valid-enough approximation except the potential energy contributions are significant at the Brillouin Zone edges, where the quadratic energy dependence on 'k' flattens out, to form the so-called energy gap separating valence and conduction bands.
In a 3-D crystal, your momentum is a 3-D vector, and therefore 'k' is a vector. Electrons have two available spins, up and down (denote spin by quantum number s=+1 and s=-1). So in the ground state, no two electrons in the system can have the same set of quantum numbers. This means each of the 10E23 electrons has a different 'k' and 's'. The ground state can be thought of as adding electrons to the system by applying the quantum 'creation operator', adding an electron of momentum 'k' and spin 's'. So the Fermi Sea is the state producted by applying the creation operator over ALL allowable k (zero to the 'k' associated w/ the Fermi energy), and over all spins. Now if you want to keep doing this integral from the vacuum state just for simple excitations of a few electrons, you are being ridiculous. Especially when you deal with non-trivial lattice potentials as well as strong electron interactions, the integrals become VERY difficult to solve. But you can always think of small excitations from the ground state in the standard electron-hole picture, which gets quite easy, especially since you can model things as Taylor expansions about the ground state where gaps can be modelled as quadratic, etc.
A thermal or other excitation above this ground state will consist of BOTH annihilating an electron with some given 'k' and 's', and then creating it with some other 'k' and 's'. Each of these operations is done with the quantum-mechanical creation and annhilation operator, which don't necessarily commute with each other (just like position and momentum operators don't commute). This leads to nontrivial quantum phenomena.
Due to the periodic lattice structure (and hence periodicity in momentum space, along with the various Brillouin Zones), there are different allowable energies for a given 'k'. So it's MUCH EASIER to model interactions from the Fermi Sea ground state as both exciting a hole and also exciting an electron, each with their associated 'k' and 's'. Such excitations can come from a variety of sources, such as magnetic interactions, lattice interactions, etc, and become very interesting and difficult to capture. Eg, it took about 50 years to get the BCS model of superconductivity at this level after discovery of superconductivity in 1911.
But anyway, this is why it's highly useful, and thus important, to consider holes. When you run through the details in this way you see holes have an effective mass, momentum, spin, etc. And they certainly can and will interact with the excited electrons as well.
Anyway, I hope this helps, and that you don't get so accusatory when people talk about holes, because physically and mathematically it makes much sense to talk about holes as excitations. Now I have to get to work, I'm spending too much time writing these things out.
I am getting so sick of hearing people talk about a hole as if it was a particle.[snip] I just don't understand how they call something an electron-hole pair, and say that it isn't just an electron.
You say you're an EE, but it seems apparent have you taken any solid-state physics classes yet. That's where you'll see the real utility in talking about holes. When you look at the band structure in the vicinity of an energy gap, from the quantum-mechanical point of view, excitations above the ground zero-temperature state are most easily expressable in terms of electron-occupations and hole occupations.
For example, in a direct-gap semiconductor, at zero temperature the valence band is fully occupied, and the conduction band is fully unoccupied. If you consider this system at finite temperatures, states in the conduction band can be occupied with finite probability, provided that a corresponding momentum-conserving state in the valence band becomes unoccupied. So sure, you can always write the ground state as the sum of all occupied states up to the fermi energy (the Fermi sea), but this gets mathematically very cumbersome. Especially for complicated materials with anisotropic band structures, etc.
It makes much more sense to redefine the ground state (the filled fermi sea) as being the vacuum state (ie, no occupations). Mathematically this makes calculations MUCH easier, as then an excitation will consist of exciting BOTH an electron (in the conduction band) and a hole (forcing a vacancy in the fermi sea). This is highly necessary for making calculations (such as conductivity, magnetization, specific heat, etc) actually possible to do. Now when you consider momentum and spin-dependent phenomena (magnetism, superconductivity, spintronics, etc) you have to carefully consider the excitations of the hole (what is it's momentum and spin). So yes, holes do map exactly to quasiparticles.
When you finally take some solid-state courses you'll see that holes DO HAVE an an effective mass (quite often not the same as the mass of the electron). They also have charge (-e), momentum, energy, and spin. Now regarding the polarons, if you're talking about complex quantum interactions, since any excitation into the conduction band requires similar 'excitation' of a hole, there is no reason to assume these two will act independently, they are of course highly coupled (conserving total momentum, spin, etc). In fact, creation of a particle-hole pair are somtimes called excitons. Now in the BEC systems under study, what reasons do you have a priori to assume that such quantized excitations would NOT consist of particle-hole pairs?
The concept of your post implies that you are intuitively understanding holes only as the lack of the electrons in a classical system. But when you consider the microscopic interactions with proper accounting for quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, your classical view falls far short of being feasibly workable. It becomes much MUCH MUCH easier to talk about holes as excitations of the Fermi sea.
And on one final note that's outside my element, by considering holes as excitations of the Fermi sea, Dirac made similar propositions in the burgeoning field of quantum-electrodynamics to propose the existence of a similar anti-electron (to the vacuum ground state being like the Fermi sea) which is the positron.
Slashdot Mirror
Lieberman is the right-most leaning Democrat in Congress, comparing the rest of Democrats to him is ridiculous. Especially considering that Connecticut Democrats voted him out for being too conservative. If you really think D's and R's are the same, then you think Tom Delay and John Conyers really have the same policies and voting record?
Go right now and compare, say, Daily Kos, a Democratic blog with Red State, A Republican blog. See the opinions and voices of the people there.
Long story short, if you think Democrats and Republicans are really one and the same, you're either trolling or utterly clueless.
Bzzt, sorry, by not voting you're JUST AS GUILTY of any wars the elected government initiates as if you did vote because YOU DID NOT DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY by voting. Take some responsibility for your life, man.
He's probably going to give Democrats the finger and now ally himself more closely with the Republicans. There's been rumors of Rumsfeld resigning with Lieberman taking the position, or other rumors of him switching parties to Republican.
But in any case, it's certain that he's not a Democrat now, considering he pissed on the Democrat voters in his state that chose someone else for the primary.
And just to beat this analgy to death, running away from the chair would be like moving to another country. If you want the person hitting you to be nice, you better vote. Staying silent and not voting is not an option if you don't like how they're treating you.
I really like Parliamentary systems, eg the Israeli Knesset, where if you get 6% of the vote you get 6% of the seats. Sure it makes for lots of fractured parties, but that way you fully vote your conscience.
What's even better is that it encourages parties working together to maintain a majority coalitions to get anything done, so there are lots of compromises between the parties, to better represent the views of the people. Unlike the US system, where the Republican party basically has done whatever the hell it wanted in the past 6 years and the Dems could barely do anything except try to filibuster.
And that at any time they can vote 'No Confidence' at any time and force new elections if there's majority opinion.
Bullshit, if you stay at home it implies you're perfectly happy with everything going on in the world. In most cases, people are repeatedly pissed at government.
If you want to send a message to the government that it's time to change, then get your lazy ass to the polls and vote, even if it's for a 3rd party or write-in. If someone is going to win the election, you have to power to make their mandate less strong by acknowledging that you didn't want to vote for them.
If enough people start doing this, candidates will start reaching out to more than just their base.
In your silly analogy, not voting at all is akin to silently sitting in the chair and taking the abuse willingly, instead of trying to stop it. Not voting implies you don't give a shit that you're getting hit by a bat.
Yeah, this is my 2nd response to your comment, but I think it more aptly sums up the situation.
There's a shitload at stake, just look at the madness Bush has done in the past 6 years. If you don't go to the ballot box today, don't complain about the bad bad government in the future.
I can understand if you don't like the Democrats policies. But avoiding the elections entirely just because you don't like the Democratic Party's policies is ridiculously idiotic. In your analogy example it would be like not complaining whatsoever if you're getting hit in the face with a bat.
I agree with others upthread, though, that really if you think the current government is akin to getting hit with a bat, Vote Democratic this time to get the thugs out of office, and Green/Libertarian/whatever in future elections. Get the thugs out NOW so that Bush's insane policies can be stopped immediately, then we'll get around to getting more greens into office later(or your other 3rd party of choice), or fixing up the Democratic party, etc. But in any case, vote 3rd party instead of not voting, that's just idiotic to avoid the ballot box purposefully because you don't like Democrats.
Bush is around for 2 more years, and if you want to keep letting these guys go on trampling over your rights then please sit out but also don't whine about the bad government later. But if you get your ass to the ballot box you are making one small part of a difference. But there is ALOT at stake now, and if you don't vote you really don't have much right to complain since this is your biyearly chance to make a difference by voting in somebody else.
Bush and his gang have been destroying our civil rights, shitting on the Constitution, and pissing off the world and the country in the process. So
Those reasons right there better knock some sense into you right now as to why you better get your lazy ass to the ballot box, even if you're voting for a 3rd party. Every vote that the Republicans don't get is another vote to diminish their so-called "political capital". And if you really want to stop the madness now, vote Democratic for this election and then we'll work on improving Democrats/third parties in the future.
If we are supposed to represent the will of the people, and some people are uninformed, doesn't that still require their voice be heard? And I'm sure that however uninformed you think you are, you have some idea about what Bush has done, what he stands for, what Republicans and Democrats generally stand for, etc.
Just get out and vote, if you don't vote you really have no place to complain if you get drafted to fight in Iraq or North Korea, or if your taxes are raised, of if Congress decides your playstation is too violent and won't let you buy more games for it, etc.
Just vote, based on what you know. You're really no less informed than most other people that just vote republican down the line because they've been brainwashed into believing that Democrats automatically raise taxes, etc.
So if you're too lazy to vote, or to research at least some of the candidates positions, you're really shitting all over the efforts and lives lost of people that DID fight for the right to make sure that you have the right to vote.
Anyway, IMHO if you don't vote you really don't have any leg to stand on to complain about any governmental laws. If Congress decides to attack Iraq or invade North Korea, and you get drafted, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. If Congress decides to massively raise your taxes, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. If Congress passes laws allowing eavesdropping on all your emails and web browses, DON'T COMPLAIN if you didn't vote. Etc, etc.
Nobody knows all the issues of the candidates themselves, their opponents have teams of staffers who can dig through mounds of legislation to find some obscure clause in some prior vote to say "Candidate X voted AGAINST clean forests" or something like that.
In a nutshell, GET OUT AND VOTE!, regardless of whether you consider yourself informed or not. Democracy (yada yada, representative republic yada yada) is the people's voice, and some percentage of uninformed people would still be representative of the populace.
But if you consider yourself uninformed, ask yourself if you like how things are going in the country. Consider Iraq, Social Security, Geek Issues that are brought up on Slashdot, etc. If you like how things are going, then vote for the same party in power. If you want change, vote for someone else.
One final comment - Voting breeds more informed voters. Meaning that once you start to vote you'll start paying more attention to issues that matter. Hell, you might even start writing to your Congressman about issues you care about (they really listen to their constituency, especially when they're up for re-election). It's kind of like if you're in the market for a pickup truck, you start to notice all the kinds of pickup trucks around your neighborhood that you never would have seen before.
Stop dodging the point. While the SlashDot Politics section may not have existed in those days, if you don't think there were several political articles then you're entirely mistaken.
Off the top of my head there were discussions on the Clinton impeachment itself, the MSFT anti-trust hearings, stories about Eschelon and other governmental sniffing of emails and web traffic, governmental usage of OSS (although I don't recall the OSS acronym being popular in those days) vs closed-source software, stories on government spending levels for science research etc. I've also seen lots of Clinton bashing for shutting down the SSC (although that action happened prior to the creation of SlashDot it was brought up in later comments). Basically, there was quite a large amount of negative sentiment against Clinton, because he was the face of the American government at the time. Just like Bush is now, the primary difference is that Bush has his own party controlling both houses, and therefore no scapegoats when his policies don't work out.
Seriously, though, are you actually claiming that anti-Bush rhetoric on forums like SlashDot are more indicative of general slashdot bias instead of actual REAL CRITICISM of the policies the Bush Administration has implemented to begin with? Would you prefer a SlashDot comment author criticize a Democrat every time he/she criticizes one of Bush's policies?
In an elementary analysis, if you define one item which dominated Clinton's presidency (IMHO, at least) it was "It's the economy, stupid", and that defined the major crux of his policies, for better or worse. Bush's one item would be "The War on Terror", which for better or worse, has led to some seriously questionable activities and legislation which are of importance to slashdotters. So yeah, there are ALOT of things Bush is doing now that Clinton never tried to do, many of which slashdotters are quite sensitive to. So why should they not complain if they feel that strongly about such issues?
Regarding your 2nd quote, show me any major Democrat up for re-election that said such a quote. Now if you toned down your knee-jerk reaction into a rational critique of Bush misleading the American public, akin to actual real quotes which many Democratic, Green, and Libertarian candidates have said, yes, I have reason to believe such 'comments'.
Since you throw accusations of being a shill, that leads to the question - Do you NOT believe GWB has misled the American public on several issues? If you actually don't believe he did, may I sell you a few bridges over the Hudson tributary waters?
Seriously, I know there are many people here on Slashdot that vote Republican. Do you SERIOUSLY believe this tripe your party is spewing out, or are you just voting for other reasons? I mean, I can at least see someone wanting to vote Republican for one of those reasons, but dammit, I can't imagine anyone actually believing this nonsense.
Here's an article from the DailyKos, which lists at least 24 districts (as of this post) from which people have reported getting the robo-calls. Has anybody here on slashdot received such calls AND in regards to a district not mentioned in that article?
Let's see, Republicans have controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for the past six years, so why should most political problems from the past six years NOT be biased towards Republicans? When slashdotters gripe about political problems who should their frustration be vented to, the 'obstructionist' Democratic minority?
You obviously haven't been around here very long, because back in the Clinton days, even though Republicans had majority rule in both houses, there was a Democratic presidency, and there were MANY articles and comments griping about Clinton and Democrats in general.
It's just that now the GOP has been in full rule, and has no more scapegoating except itself. And apparently you're getting your panties in a knot when the citizens actually try holding the ruling powers responsible for their own political actions.
The electric field is merely the negative gradient of the scalar potential (ie, voltage)*. So in SI it will have units of Volts/Meter.
* (Just in case any E&M sticklers want to point that my electric field definition here ignores the contribution from vector potential, just assume a time-independent gauge).
Interesting, which institution's astronomers are you "rubbing elbows" with? I'm a physicst, not an astronomer, but of all the astronomy faculty, post-docs, and grad students at my institution I know of only a single professional astronomer (out of dozens, maybe even approaching 100+) that favors phasing out Hubble, and that's only because he is a PI in a Hubble replacement proposal. And this includes astronomers that primarily study UV w/ Chandra, and radio at other telescopes and don't even use Hubble, people studying universe structure with ground-based Sloan surveys, theorists not even using any telescopes at all, they all still support Hubble 100%.
Adaptive optics are nice for ground-based imaging, but most of the actual astrophysical research makes use of spectra, identifying things like atomic emissions and absorptions, temperatures, redshifts/blueshifts, etc. Eg, finding hints of iron in black holes, discovering that galaxy arms are moving faster than allowed for by galactic mass (hints of dark matter), studying Zeeman splitting for measuring magnetic fields of distant objects, etc. Atmospheric artifacts may be alleviated with adaptive optics, but spectras are still fundamentally important and are vastly superior with space-based telescopes. Especially so for looking at IR and UV wavelengths, where the atmospheric attenuation is prohibitively large.
Additionally, imaging is superior in space when looking at faint objects that need very long acquisition times. The atmospheric noise floor (due to scattered light) is too high for ground-based observatories doing reasonably long-term acquisitions (days) to compete with space-based observatories.
Ummm, did you fail to notice the mentioning of CPU was only in terms of an analogy about repairing an older thing versus building a newer thing?
No one is saying not to develop new instruemnts (ie, JWST is in progress, but also Chandra and SIRTF have been launched recently and others are also on the drawing board), but Hubble is responsible for HUGE amounts of scientific research, all of which will all be brought to an abrupt halt if funding is cut off.
No can do. Hubble's orbit will eventually degrade and it will burn up on re-entry, if left unattended. Space Shuttle Columbia was the only shuttle with the cargo bay large enough to carry Hubble (either up or down). Hence all that talk about building a robotic thruster to launch Hubble to a higher orbit, or to allow for a controlled re-entry away from populated areas.
Actually, several astronauts have spoken out in the past few years saying they were willing to go service Hubble again, despite the risks. Ie, they understand the huge scientific output that are at stake should Hubble be shut down. Additionally, the risks aren't greater than previous Hubble servicing missions, it's just that there are problems of which we were blissfully unaware previously.
Oops, seemingly-minor correction, but in the 2nd paragraph I should have said : "A mode will oscillate at a specific frequency, however. If you write the 'equations of motion' for all atoms in the crystal in 'matrix' form, the modes would correspond to the 'eigenvectors' of that matrix."
Eigenvalues are scalars, eigenvectors are vectors. In this case the eigenvectors would describe the motion of each of the atoms in the crystal.
In a 3-D crystal, your momentum is a 3-D vector, and therefore 'k' is a vector. Electrons have two available spins, up and down (denote spin by quantum number s=+1 and s=-1). So in the ground state, no two electrons in the system can have the same set of quantum numbers. This means each of the 10E23 electrons has a different 'k' and 's'. The ground state can be thought of as adding electrons to the system by applying the quantum 'creation operator', adding an electron of momentum 'k' and spin 's'. So the Fermi Sea is the state producted by applying the creation operator over ALL allowable k (zero to the 'k' associated w/ the Fermi energy), and over all spins. Now if you want to keep doing this integral from the vacuum state just for simple excitations of a few electrons, you are being ridiculous. Especially when you deal with non-trivial lattice potentials as well as strong electron interactions, the integrals become VERY difficult to solve. But you can always think of small excitations from the ground state in the standard electron-hole picture, which gets quite easy, especially since you can model things as Taylor expansions about the ground state where gaps can be modelled as quadratic, etc.
A thermal or other excitation above this ground state will consist of BOTH annihilating an electron with some given 'k' and 's', and then creating it with some other 'k' and 's'. Each of these operations is done with the quantum-mechanical creation and annhilation operator, which don't necessarily commute with each other (just like position and momentum operators don't commute). This leads to nontrivial quantum phenomena.
Due to the periodic lattice structure (and hence periodicity in momentum space, along with the various Brillouin Zones), there are different allowable energies for a given 'k'. So it's MUCH EASIER to model interactions from the Fermi Sea ground state as both exciting a hole and also exciting an electron, each with their associated 'k' and 's'. Such excitations can come from a variety of sources, such as magnetic interactions, lattice interactions, etc, and become very interesting and difficult to capture. Eg, it took about 50 years to get the BCS model of superconductivity at this level after discovery of superconductivity in 1911.
But anyway, this is why it's highly useful, and thus important, to consider holes. When you run through the details in this way you see holes have an effective mass, momentum, spin, etc. And they certainly can and will interact with the excited electrons as well.
Anyway, I hope this helps, and that you don't get so accusatory when people talk about holes, because physically and mathematically it makes much sense to talk about holes as excitations. Now I have to get to work, I'm spending too much time writing these things out.
You say you're an EE, but it seems apparent have you taken any solid-state physics classes yet. That's where you'll see the real utility in talking about holes. When you look at the band structure in the vicinity of an energy gap, from the quantum-mechanical point of view, excitations above the ground zero-temperature state are most easily expressable in terms of electron-occupations and hole occupations.
For example, in a direct-gap semiconductor, at zero temperature the valence band is fully occupied, and the conduction band is fully unoccupied. If you consider this system at finite temperatures, states in the conduction band can be occupied with finite probability, provided that a corresponding momentum-conserving state in the valence band becomes unoccupied. So sure, you can always write the ground state as the sum of all occupied states up to the fermi energy (the Fermi sea), but this gets mathematically very cumbersome. Especially for complicated materials with anisotropic band structures, etc.
It makes much more sense to redefine the ground state (the filled fermi sea) as being the vacuum state (ie, no occupations). Mathematically this makes calculations MUCH easier, as then an excitation will consist of exciting BOTH an electron (in the conduction band) and a hole (forcing a vacancy in the fermi sea). This is highly necessary for making calculations (such as conductivity, magnetization, specific heat, etc) actually possible to do. Now when you consider momentum and spin-dependent phenomena (magnetism, superconductivity, spintronics, etc) you have to carefully consider the excitations of the hole (what is it's momentum and spin). So yes, holes do map exactly to quasiparticles.
When you finally take some solid-state courses you'll see that holes DO HAVE an an effective mass (quite often not the same as the mass of the electron). They also have charge (-e), momentum, energy, and spin. Now regarding the polarons, if you're talking about complex quantum interactions, since any excitation into the conduction band requires similar 'excitation' of a hole, there is no reason to assume these two will act independently, they are of course highly coupled (conserving total momentum, spin, etc). In fact, creation of a particle-hole pair are somtimes called excitons. Now in the BEC systems under study, what reasons do you have a priori to assume that such quantized excitations would NOT consist of particle-hole pairs?
The concept of your post implies that you are intuitively understanding holes only as the lack of the electrons in a classical system. But when you consider the microscopic interactions with proper accounting for quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, your classical view falls far short of being feasibly workable. It becomes much MUCH MUCH easier to talk about holes as excitations of the Fermi sea.
And on one final note that's outside my element, by considering holes as excitations of the Fermi sea, Dirac made similar propositions in the burgeoning field of quantum-electrodynamics to propose the existence of a similar anti-electron (to the vacuum ground state being like the Fermi sea) which is the positron.