I've been to Mt. Graham where the Vatican Observatory is. An astronomer is an astronomer, Jesuit or Atheist, both pursuing the truth of the magnificence of the universe.
The offended fundamentalists probably should be called idiots, often, loudly, where lots of people can here. This isn't a matter of respecting beliefs. This is a matter of setting things straight where it comes to lies and delusions.
I'm a professional astronomer and I teach astronomy at a state university. This ticks me off. I don't complain about The Passion of the Christ, or barge into churches to tell them what science has to say. Ignorant fundamentalists shouldn't have any power over what is available for the rest of the country to see, especially when it is educational. Cosmic Voyages is a wonderful film, and I could probably be driven to punch someone in the face if they were stopping it from being shown.
No. Copyright doesn't apply in the case of your example.
But if Tony the Boss wrote poetry in which he put in details of crimes he'd committed or ordered, then we're getting closer to a hypothetical that would be meaningful. In this case, xeroxing Tony's poetry for the FBI would also not violate copyright, but if Jimmy Mashed Potatoes took the poetry and published it in some public way, then yes, he could be prosecuted for copyright infringement.
Let me say where I'm coming from, some of the concerns I have. The Chinese, for instance, have not historically respected copyright. I've got Chinese friends who have a thousand dollars worth of physics textbooks they paid about twenty bucks for (and the authors got none of that $20 either). My own novel is online under a creative commons license, and that would make it even easier to illegally copy. Giving away the book is actually supposed to be advertising to help paperback sales. It's happened a lot in science fiction that books will be stolen and reprinted internationally, or just posted online somewhere without the author's permission. With the internet, with international markets, it's a different world. I had a friend in Singapore tell me he'd seen my book in a store there -- my publisher has world English rights.
My point is simply that the internet, as far as publishing goes, is a big step to making the world effectively a single nation. There's good and bad to come from that development.
Most countries do have a "fair use" doctrine. If I wanted to criticize Scientology, I could legally quote passages I was criticizing. I could not post the entire document. I could also probably paint Scientologists into a corner where they would be the ones obliged to produce the entire document in order to defend themselves.
Copyright laws aren't crazy. The lawmakers have had a long time to consider these issues.
Yes, even if those documents expose wrongdoing. If that's the case, they can be taken to legal authorities, yes? The contents of said documents can still be discussed.
And besides, from what I gather, the documents posted in various quarters that have brought legal cases have been just more of L. Ron's science fiction. Really.
Don't get me wrong -- anyone should have to face critcism in a public forum as long as it didn't rise to slander or libel.
In the past, Scientology has had their acutal documents posted word for word online, in violation of copyright. They should win those cases. They should lose any case where they just complain of criticism.
Not flamebait. I'm a writer. I believe in copyright. Scientology sucks, but they have the right to keep people from posting their stuff verbatim on the web -- it's theirs after all, no matter how stupid it is. And if someone does post it, I think you should be able to link to it.
As an aside, which is also not flamebait, I'll plug the L. Ron Hubbard Writer's of the Future contest for new sf/f writers. It's kept very separate from scientology and is a net good in promoting new writers. L. Ron gave back to the community that spawned him, for what it is worth.
Most of the scientology copyright cases I'm aware of in the past involved their actual documents, word for word, posted on websites. I've got my novel available for free download on my own website, but hey, I want people to read it. I want to spread the word of Mike.
Scientology apparently doesn't. At least without a large fee.
Scientology, as messed up as it is, has the right to their copyright. However, I see no problem with linking to illegally posted copyrighted materials. Otherwise what would we do with search engines? Have them check every link? Of course not.
We probably need real international copyright laws now in the internet age.
Yes, you're right that the Viking experiments on Mars were not unanimous about not detecting life. At least one of them did, but in the absence of the other experiments supporting the result, consensus drifted toward "unusual chemistry" to explain it. But that's not a complete consensus by any means.
Here's one link about on the pro-life side: http://mars.spherix.com/
Re:Or maybe they do fail on intelligence
on
MSN Sponsors Mensa
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· Score: 1
Only part right.
There are plenty of really smart people out there. They're not the ones in Mensa. They're too smart to fall into a shallow, navel-contemplating self-congratulatory group like that.
Marilyn vos Savant, "smartest person in the world," writes a fluff column. What an idiotic waste if she's so smart. What an idiotic waste for the whole lot of them. Why not work on puzzles that have some productive end?
I tell my students that to become a scientist requires brain power, but it's only part of the equation, and while a necessary part, isn't the most important. The other two key parts are dedication and communication skills. You have to work hard, pay attention to details, over an extended period, and then be able to communicate the results to the world before it counts.
No sour grapes here. I qualify for Mensa. They just don't qualify for me. I've got more important things to do.
I'm a professional astronomer and with expertise in quasar spectra, the basis for the claims and counter claims for a time-variable fine structure constant. I am more qualified than the article writer on this topic. Count me on the side of Patrick Petitjean and other skeptical astronomers who think the case unproven.
Is it wrong for me to share my expert opinion here? Should people only agree with articles or make jokes about them?
If there was consensus that alpha had changed, this should be on this list, because there would then indeed be a big gap in our understanding. Right now the gap seems more likely to me to be one of techniques of data analysis. If the Australian group is right, we'll get there, but we're not there yet.
The last test I saw for a time-variable alpha was John Bahcall looking at the ratio of [O III] 4959 to 5007 emission in Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars, which found no change. The high-z absorption line studies by the Australian group failed to convince me anything was really going on. Shouldn't have been one of the 13.
A few items are great, truly important problems. A few are dumb, not in the sense that they're bad science, but just that their importance is overhyped.
A few examples of each. Dark matter is an important problems. Seems like the real explanation, but we don't know what it is, although we know how it behaves. Dark energy is even more important, and more unknown. Good ones tagged there.
The horizon problem isn't so great. Why not hit on inflation directly, which also solves other problems as...problematic...as the horizon problem . Also the pioneer anomoly. There are a number of rather mundane explanations for it that should be tested before this issue rises to one of the top 13.
Still, fun stuff to think about. As a scientist, you get so caught up in details of your own research it is important to step back and look at the big picture every so often.
Gee, my first novel is up on my website and anyone can just click on my web URL above and get it without paying! And I haven't talked to my webmaster to take it down yet. Woe is me...I'm going to lose a paperback sale for every download (but I'll actually claim a hardback sale if it ever comes to court). I'll get no attention from this, no buzz, just lost sales.
I really feel for Dr. Who. I feel so much, I admit I've already watched the episode. I've even talked to several people about it. But that's not buzz, I guess, a few guys in Laramie, WY talking about Dr. Who for the first time in many years, is it?
My first novel is available for free download under a CC license at my website above. Sure, at some level this is a gimmick, free advertising, that I hope will help paperback sales. But it is there.
It's a problem, sure, but an engineering/physics problem that will have solutions. One such solution is dramatized in Kim Stanley Robinson's well researched Red Mars.
I'm glad to see this, too. I was giving up hope. The Hubble is still a great facility, and I don't see any compelling reason to change plans to keep it flying for a few more years until the James Webb Space Telescope is up. Basically, Hubble has been sacrificed in the current budget to manned Moon/Mars planning. While I think manned spaceflight is a cool and worthy thing to do, the current funding climate makes it compete directly with Hubble.
The Hubble Space Telescope review panel meets next week to determine what Hubble will look at next year. Hubble failure has to weigh on their minds, and each proposal will receive an extra measure of scrutiny: will I feel satisfied if this observation is Hubble's last?
Hubble time, like most space telescopes, is allocated on an annual basis by a peer-reviewed proposal process. On Hubble in a tough year, only about 1 in 7 or 8 proposals gets time -- and the other six or seven are usually good proposals worth carrying out. I've served on the review committee before as well as proposing many times (with a slightly better than average success rate).
Of course it makes sense for NASA to fund analysis. That part of the money is chicken-feed compared to other costs, and is very efficient in maximizing science return. Where are researchers supposed to get the money to "license" the telescope time? From government grant money, which funds 95% of all astronomy research. Handing out some money with the telescope time cuts out an entire extra beuacratic step and actually saves money over all.
I agree with much of what you said, but NASA doesn't charge for the use of the Hubble Space Telescope. They PAY people to use it. People like me. I've had a few Hubble projects, and NASA has given me about $5k per HST orbit to make sure the data are analyzed and published in a timely manner. That analysis money is one of the reasons Hubble is so productive.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sure, but kind of petty to point out. How many novels have you published? ;-)
I've been to Mt. Graham where the Vatican Observatory is. An astronomer is an astronomer, Jesuit or Atheist, both pursuing the truth of the magnificence of the universe.
The offended fundamentalists probably should be called idiots, often, loudly, where lots of people can here. This isn't a matter of respecting beliefs. This is a matter of setting things straight where it comes to lies and delusions.
I'm a professional astronomer and I teach astronomy at a state university. This ticks me off. I don't complain about The Passion of the Christ, or barge into churches to tell them what science has to say. Ignorant fundamentalists shouldn't have any power over what is available for the rest of the country to see, especially when it is educational. Cosmic Voyages is a wonderful film, and I could probably be driven to punch someone in the face if they were stopping it from being shown.
Flabbergasted.
Giving a copy of anything to a federal judge isn't violating a copyright, not in the US anyway.
No. Copyright doesn't apply in the case of your example.
But if Tony the Boss wrote poetry in which he put in details of crimes he'd committed or ordered, then we're getting closer to a hypothetical that would be meaningful. In this case, xeroxing Tony's poetry for the FBI would also not violate copyright, but if Jimmy Mashed Potatoes took the poetry and published it in some public way, then yes, he could be prosecuted for copyright infringement.
Let me say where I'm coming from, some of the concerns I have. The Chinese, for instance, have not historically respected copyright. I've got Chinese friends who have a thousand dollars worth of physics textbooks they paid about twenty bucks for (and the authors got none of that $20 either). My own novel is online under a creative commons license, and that would make it even easier to illegally copy. Giving away the book is actually supposed to be advertising to help paperback sales. It's happened a lot in science fiction that books will be stolen and reprinted internationally, or just posted online somewhere without the author's permission. With the internet, with international markets, it's a different world. I had a friend in Singapore tell me he'd seen my book in a store there -- my publisher has world English rights.
My point is simply that the internet, as far as publishing goes, is a big step to making the world effectively a single nation. There's good and bad to come from that development.
Sorry, rambling. Too early in the day for me.
Most countries do have a "fair use" doctrine. If I wanted to criticize Scientology, I could legally quote passages I was criticizing. I could not post the entire document. I could also probably paint Scientologists into a corner where they would be the ones obliged to produce the entire document in order to defend themselves.
Copyright laws aren't crazy. The lawmakers have had a long time to consider these issues.
Yes, even if those documents expose wrongdoing. If that's the case, they can be taken to legal authorities, yes? The contents of said documents can still be discussed.
And besides, from what I gather, the documents posted in various quarters that have brought legal cases have been just more of L. Ron's science fiction. Really.
Don't get me wrong -- anyone should have to face critcism in a public forum as long as it didn't rise to slander or libel.
In the past, Scientology has had their acutal documents posted word for word online, in violation of copyright. They should win those cases. They should lose any case where they just complain of criticism.
Not flamebait. I'm a writer. I believe in copyright. Scientology sucks, but they have the right to keep people from posting their stuff verbatim on the web -- it's theirs after all, no matter how stupid it is. And if someone does post it, I think you should be able to link to it.
As an aside, which is also not flamebait, I'll plug the L. Ron Hubbard Writer's of the Future contest for new sf/f writers. It's kept very separate from scientology and is a net good in promoting new writers. L. Ron gave back to the community that spawned him, for what it is worth.
Most of the scientology copyright cases I'm aware of in the past involved their actual documents, word for word, posted on websites. I've got my novel available for free download on my own website, but hey, I want people to read it. I want to spread the word of Mike.
Scientology apparently doesn't. At least without a large fee.
Scientology, as messed up as it is, has the right to their copyright. However, I see no problem with linking to illegally posted copyrighted materials. Otherwise what would we do with search engines? Have them check every link? Of course not.
We probably need real international copyright laws now in the internet age.
Yes, you're right that the Viking experiments on Mars were not unanimous about not detecting life. At least one of them did, but in the absence of the other experiments supporting the result, consensus drifted toward "unusual chemistry" to explain it. But that's not a complete consensus by any means. Here's one link about on the pro-life side: http://mars.spherix.com/
Only part right.
There are plenty of really smart people out there. They're not the ones in Mensa. They're too smart to fall into a shallow, navel-contemplating self-congratulatory group like that.
Marilyn vos Savant, "smartest person in the world," writes a fluff column. What an idiotic waste if she's so smart. What an idiotic waste for the whole lot of them. Why not work on puzzles that have some productive end?
I tell my students that to become a scientist requires brain power, but it's only part of the equation, and while a necessary part, isn't the most important. The other two key parts are dedication and communication skills. You have to work hard, pay attention to details, over an extended period, and then be able to communicate the results to the world before it counts.
No sour grapes here. I qualify for Mensa. They just don't qualify for me. I've got more important things to do.
I'm a professional astronomer and with expertise in quasar spectra, the basis for the claims and counter claims for a time-variable fine structure constant. I am more qualified than the article writer on this topic. Count me on the side of Patrick Petitjean and other skeptical astronomers who think the case unproven.
Is it wrong for me to share my expert opinion here? Should people only agree with articles or make jokes about them?
If there was consensus that alpha had changed, this should be on this list, because there would then indeed be a big gap in our understanding. Right now the gap seems more likely to me to be one of techniques of data analysis. If the Australian group is right, we'll get there, but we're not there yet.
Here is the URL to the Bahcall paper: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0301507
The last test I saw for a time-variable alpha was John Bahcall looking at the ratio of [O III] 4959 to 5007 emission in Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars, which found no change. The high-z absorption line studies by the Australian group failed to convince me anything was really going on. Shouldn't have been one of the 13.
"1050" should be "10^50" I think, and no one pointed that out yet?
And "God" isn't exactly a testable hypothesis, is it? Science isn't about popularity, it is about what is testable.
A few items are great, truly important problems. A few are dumb, not in the sense that they're bad science, but just that their importance is overhyped.
A few examples of each. Dark matter is an important problems. Seems like the real explanation, but we don't know what it is, although we know how it behaves. Dark energy is even more important, and more unknown. Good ones tagged there.
The horizon problem isn't so great. Why not hit on inflation directly, which also solves other problems as...problematic...as the horizon problem . Also the pioneer anomoly. There are a number of rather mundane explanations for it that should be tested before this issue rises to one of the top 13.
Still, fun stuff to think about. As a scientist, you get so caught up in details of your own research it is important to step back and look at the big picture every so often.
Gee, my first novel is up on my website and anyone can just click on my web URL above and get it without paying! And I haven't talked to my webmaster to take it down yet. Woe is me...I'm going to lose a paperback sale for every download (but I'll actually claim a hardback sale if it ever comes to court). I'll get no attention from this, no buzz, just lost sales.
I really feel for Dr. Who. I feel so much, I admit I've already watched the episode. I've even talked to several people about it. But that's not buzz, I guess, a few guys in Laramie, WY talking about Dr. Who for the first time in many years, is it?
My first novel is available for free download under a CC license at my website above. Sure, at some level this is a gimmick, free advertising, that I hope will help paperback sales. But it is there.
It's a problem, sure, but an engineering/physics problem that will have solutions. One such solution is dramatized in Kim Stanley Robinson's well researched Red Mars.
I'm glad to see this, too. I was giving up hope. The Hubble is still a great facility, and I don't see any compelling reason to change plans to keep it flying for a few more years until the James Webb Space Telescope is up. Basically, Hubble has been sacrificed in the current budget to manned Moon/Mars planning. While I think manned spaceflight is a cool and worthy thing to do, the current funding climate makes it compete directly with Hubble.
The Hubble Space Telescope review panel meets next week to determine what Hubble will look at next year. Hubble failure has to weigh on their minds, and each proposal will receive an extra measure of scrutiny: will I feel satisfied if this observation is Hubble's last?
Hubble time, like most space telescopes, is allocated on an annual basis by a peer-reviewed proposal process. On Hubble in a tough year, only about 1 in 7 or 8 proposals gets time -- and the other six or seven are usually good proposals worth carrying out. I've served on the review committee before as well as proposing many times (with a slightly better than average success rate).
Of course it makes sense for NASA to fund analysis. That part of the money is chicken-feed compared to other costs, and is very efficient in maximizing science return. Where are researchers supposed to get the money to "license" the telescope time? From government grant money, which funds 95% of all astronomy research. Handing out some money with the telescope time cuts out an entire extra beuacratic step and actually saves money over all.
I agree with much of what you said, but NASA doesn't charge for the use of the Hubble Space Telescope. They PAY people to use it. People like me. I've had a few Hubble projects, and NASA has given me about $5k per HST orbit to make sure the data are analyzed and published in a timely manner. That analysis money is one of the reasons Hubble is so productive.