This is about inconveniencing people so badly that they'll gladly say "Yes please" when the TSA demand the budget for newer equipment - equipment that would allow laptops back onto the planes.
Some equipment manufacturers are about to make a lot of money off the government.
There are endless studies where girls are quoted directly complaining about how they are put off STEM because of their gender.
I'm not very familiar with sociology methodology, so excuse me if this is a stupid question - but is there any better evidence than self-reporting? People feeling a certain way may or may not equate to them being justified in feeling that way. For example, men are much more likely to suffer violent crime on the street than women are, but women self-report as being much more apprehensive of said crime. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029265).
I'm not claiming a feeling of apprehension has anything to do with self-selection for STEM subjects, just that I am wary of studies that rely on self-reporting to make objective claims about what is going on.
Well let's see... the IRA/English's battle over Northern Ireland (largely drawn across Catholic/Protestant religious lines) cease fire was just over 20 years ago. And the final peace accord was only 17 years ago. That marked the end of 30 years of assassinations, murders, bombings, and attacks all of which were surrounded by religious fervor.
I realise that's the narrative that many people believe around the world, but it's also a complete misunderstanding of Irish history. The warring parties *were* divided across religious lines, but that was an historical accident. English colonists happened to be protestant, native Irish happened to be Catholic. They were fighting over many things - land, self-determination, equal rights, republicanism, loyalism, etc. - but religion was *not* one of them. To the best of my knowledge (I lived in Ireland during the troubles, as I do now) no-one was killed during the troubles over a theological difference of opinion. Their religious identities became convenient labels, but nobody was under any illusion that the conflict was actually about religion.
If our Oort cloud extends so far that it is nearer to the next-nearest star than to our own sun, does that mean that Oort clouds from multiple stars intersect?
A flawed, but illustrative example that should explain why this is so: imagine you have a friend who is flipping a coin... if it comes up heads, he writes an X on two sheets of paper, if it comes up tails, he writes a checkmark on both instead. Both are immediately sealed inside envelopes and mailed to opposites sides of the planet. If you open one letter and see an X, you instantly know the other has an X also. That doesn't require any communication.
Isn't that just the 'hidden variables' interpretation of quantum physics, which from my limited knowledge I think was eperimentally proven false?
From my understanding, there really is nothing in the envelope until you look inside it - that's what makes the in-sync states of the atoms, even when seperated by distances greater than c*t, 'spooky'. Communication may not be possible, but it is still very weird from our classical perspective.
Insightful. Brilliant. Stroke of genius. With one sentence you have dismantled the work of thousands of scientists the world over.
Have you told them yet? Please don't keep this knowledge to yourself - they have much better things to be doing with their time besides investigating blind alleys that are so easily refuted.
For example I would like them to figure out why otherwise intelligent people will only accept a scientific consensus if it already fits with their world-view. You know the type who happily use the fruits of the scientific establishment when it suits them, but when confronted with a deduction they'd rather not face they do the mental equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and assume that the same scientists have missed some simple yet vital piece of evidence.
Well then it's a pity that the majority of the economists that appear on mass-media to enlighten us with their opinions are of the bullshit armchair types.
Advanced enconomics may win Nobel Prizes, but it seems that those running the actual show prefer the bullshitters when making their decisions.
There are people who claim that these individual steps are necessary to protect the people, and that no one step is anything that's enough to worry about in the grand scheme of things.
However I think that society is something that moves in a partcular direction, and has momentum (for want of better metaphors). Each individually harmless step gives it a push in a particular direction, and from the news we've been seeing over the last number of years I'd say American society is now travelling at a pretty fast clip in the wrong direction (last stop 1984?). I know people are hoping that the new guy in the White House will know how to find the brakes, but momentum in the wrong direction has built up by now as well, and it'll take a lot to turn this thing around, assuming it's even possible at this stage.
Yep. However, most of those conspiracies were found out. It's incredibly hard to keep a conspiracy quiet for any amount of time. These conspiracies usually fall apart as soon as they've enacted their plans. People are incompetent.
By definition surely a successful conspiracy theory is one which isn't found out? How could you possibly know most were found out? Sounds like a fact made up on the spot to counter the original poster's argument.
It's not bollocks. Try installing a wireless network card on Ubuntu. After two failed attempts with two different cards I went for one that was specifically advertised as 'linux-ready', which worked first-time.
Maybe there was some esoteric combination of chipsets and drivers that could have worked with the first two, but that's outside my range of knowledge, and I have better things to worry about.
Let's go further: imagine the Commission (that you describe as unelected bureaucrats) was in fact composed of politicians chosen by the member states and confirmed by the Parliament and the Parliament could dismiss it anytime: would that be OK for you?
Sorry, but have to hold you there. Having politicians nominated by other politicians you voted for does not make the commission in any way democratic, despite what their apologists claim. We all know that national elections are fought on the basis of whatever immediate national concerns are prevalent at that point - not about what commissioner is going to be chosen.
McCreevy is a case in point - he was shipped off to Europe by Bertie because he became a liability to Fianna Fail on the domestic front - hardly ideal qualifications for the European post.
The Lisbon treaty went some way towards re-balancing powers between the commission and the parliament, it's a pity it didn't (at the least) revamp the commission entirely.
Just one question: Being as obviously correct as you are, why in the world do you have to be such a completely obnoxious prick about it?
Your abusive and ad hominem attacks do nothing to advance your argument, and indeed only make it appear that it is you, and not your opponent, that holds beliefs that cannot stand to a challenge.
"Dowsing simply does NOT work." Ah, there it is. Hardly a scientific view is it? I would have thought that something along the lines of "No controlled experiment has yet shown any evidence to support the practice of dowsing" might be better. But then again I lack your absolute certainty, or your obvious need for it. Luckily for me that's how the scientific method works.
Pipes and other artefacts buried by man are all well and good but...
Every family where I live (in a rural area obviously) has their own well. And every one of those wells was found by the same old man who used a forked stick from a tree as his dowsing rod.
I believe there's a rational explanation to it, and maybe it was him subconsciously 'reading' the land and understanding where the buried water sources were, but still, that's some gift.
You make a good point - current scientific consensus changes throughout history. That doesn't alter the fact that human-induced climate-change is currently the best explanation we have. Beating strawmen like "Well they thought the earth was flat once you know!" isn't good enough - you have to show why all those scientists who agree with the IPCC findings are wrong, and why the minority of scientists who disagree with them have better theories.
They once thought that light was composed of particles, then we find out it's not, and now we find out it kind of is again. Does that make my case any stronger? Of course not - and neither does pointing out the once-assumed flatness of the Earth make my case any weaker.
The fact that this idiotic rant gets modded +5 insightful says more about the current state of slashdot than it does about the original poster.
The IPCC report states that it is 95% certain that humanity is influencing global climate change and this guy thinks it's some sort of global conspiracy? Slashdot what the fuck has happened to you?
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will.
No, it doesn't. As an analogy, the decimal representation of any irrational number goes on to infinity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every possible number combination will appear in it.
Here in Ireland we currently use manual counting, with paper ballots that are marked by the voter with a pencil or pen. The government wants to introduce e-voting, for no other reason than for its own sake. Thankfully they have not (yet) succeeded.
As far as I can see manual counting of paper ballots should sit very comfortably with anyone who advocates open source projects - they seem to have the same advantages:
Many eyes: In the Irish system at least, many people watch the official counters counting the ballots. This makes it difficult for the official counters to mess up, unintentionally or otherwise.
Low barrier to entry: Any citizen with an interest can watch the count. Not just those with access to the machines - and even they can't really watch the count as it occurs in the machine.
Low cost: The Irish government spent 50 million euro on our machines, and there's very little change from another million every year just to keep them in storage. I'm not sure how much a paper election costs, but surely it can't be as much as that (for a country the size of ours).
Avoiding vendor lock-in: What happens if we use electronic voting and in a few years time we decide to tweak our election process? With electronic voting you have the choice of either paying for a whole new system (another 50 million?) or else go back to the original vendor, who certainly knows that they have you over a barrel.
Slashdot Mirror
This is about inconveniencing people so badly that they'll gladly say "Yes please" when the TSA demand the budget for newer equipment - equipment that would allow laptops back onto the planes. Some equipment manufacturers are about to make a lot of money off the government.
There are endless studies where girls are quoted directly complaining about how they are put off STEM because of their gender.
I'm not very familiar with sociology methodology, so excuse me if this is a stupid question - but is there any better evidence than self-reporting? People feeling a certain way may or may not equate to them being justified in feeling that way. For example, men are much more likely to suffer violent crime on the street than women are, but women self-report as being much more apprehensive of said crime. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029265). I'm not claiming a feeling of apprehension has anything to do with self-selection for STEM subjects, just that I am wary of studies that rely on self-reporting to make objective claims about what is going on.
Sexism based on unfounded nonsense is detrimental to all involved..
I agree wholeheartedly. Which is why I have to ask...
There is no biological reason for females to not perform as well in these subjects....
How do you know this?
Well let's see... the IRA/English's battle over Northern Ireland (largely drawn across Catholic/Protestant religious lines) cease fire was just over 20 years ago. And the final peace accord was only 17 years ago. That marked the end of 30 years of assassinations, murders, bombings, and attacks all of which were surrounded by religious fervor.
I realise that's the narrative that many people believe around the world, but it's also a complete misunderstanding of Irish history. The warring parties *were* divided across religious lines, but that was an historical accident. English colonists happened to be protestant, native Irish happened to be Catholic. They were fighting over many things - land, self-determination, equal rights, republicanism, loyalism, etc. - but religion was *not* one of them. To the best of my knowledge (I lived in Ireland during the troubles, as I do now) no-one was killed during the troubles over a theological difference of opinion. Their religious identities became convenient labels, but nobody was under any illusion that the conflict was actually about religion.
If our Oort cloud extends so far that it is nearer to the next-nearest star than to our own sun, does that mean that Oort clouds from multiple stars intersect?
A flawed, but illustrative example that should explain why this is so: imagine you have a friend who is flipping a coin... if it comes up heads, he writes an X on two sheets of paper, if it comes up tails, he writes a checkmark on both instead. Both are immediately sealed inside envelopes and mailed to opposites sides of the planet. If you open one letter and see an X, you instantly know the other has an X also. That doesn't require any communication.
Isn't that just the 'hidden variables' interpretation of quantum physics, which from my limited knowledge I think was eperimentally proven false?
From my understanding, there really is nothing in the envelope until you look inside it - that's what makes the in-sync states of the atoms, even when seperated by distances greater than c*t, 'spooky'. Communication may not be possible, but it is still very weird from our classical perspective.
Robert Strange McNamara is that you? Aren't you supposed to be dead?
capitalism (ie freedom)...
The worst kind of slavery is the one you choose for yourself.
That would be the most hilarious example of unintentional irony ever - if only it wasn't so tragic.
Insightful. Brilliant. Stroke of genius. With one sentence you have dismantled the work of thousands of scientists the world over.
Have you told them yet? Please don't keep this knowledge to yourself - they have much better things to be doing with their time besides investigating blind alleys that are so easily refuted.
For example I would like them to figure out why otherwise intelligent people will only accept a scientific consensus if it already fits with their world-view. You know the type who happily use the fruits of the scientific establishment when it suits them, but when confronted with a deduction they'd rather not face they do the mental equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and assume that the same scientists have missed some simple yet vital piece of evidence.
Well then it's a pity that the majority of the economists that appear on mass-media to enlighten us with their opinions are of the bullshit armchair types.
Advanced enconomics may win Nobel Prizes, but it seems that those running the actual show prefer the bullshitters when making their decisions.
There are people who claim that these individual steps are necessary to protect the people, and that no one step is anything that's enough to worry about in the grand scheme of things.
However I think that society is something that moves in a partcular direction, and has momentum (for want of better metaphors). Each individually harmless step gives it a push in a particular direction, and from the news we've been seeing over the last number of years I'd say American society is now travelling at a pretty fast clip in the wrong direction (last stop 1984?). I know people are hoping that the new guy in the White House will know how to find the brakes, but momentum in the wrong direction has built up by now as well, and it'll take a lot to turn this thing around, assuming it's even possible at this stage.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith.
Shouldn't that be "between the Republic and the Sith"? Or was there an Empire before the Republic before the Empire we came to know and love? Thanks.
Yep. However, most of those conspiracies were found out. It's incredibly hard to keep a conspiracy quiet for any amount of time. These conspiracies usually fall apart as soon as they've enacted their plans. People are incompetent.
By definition surely a successful conspiracy theory is one which isn't found out? How could you possibly know most were found out? Sounds like a fact made up on the spot to counter the original poster's argument.
It's not bollocks. Try installing a wireless network card on Ubuntu. After two failed attempts with two different cards I went for one that was specifically advertised as 'linux-ready', which worked first-time.
Maybe there was some esoteric combination of chipsets and drivers that could have worked with the first two, but that's outside my range of knowledge, and I have better things to worry about.
Let's go further: imagine the Commission (that you describe as unelected bureaucrats) was in fact composed of politicians chosen by the member states and confirmed by the Parliament and the Parliament could dismiss it anytime: would that be OK for you?
Sorry, but have to hold you there. Having politicians nominated by other politicians you voted for does not make the commission in any way democratic, despite what their apologists claim. We all know that national elections are fought on the basis of whatever immediate national concerns are prevalent at that point - not about what commissioner is going to be chosen.
McCreevy is a case in point - he was shipped off to Europe by Bertie because he became a liability to Fianna Fail on the domestic front - hardly ideal qualifications for the European post.
The Lisbon treaty went some way towards re-balancing powers between the commission and the parliament, it's a pity it didn't (at the least) revamp the commission entirely.
We've had a few boards sent back that reeked so strongly of ants
As a matter of interest, what do ants smell like?
If the first (and possibly last) man on Mars isn't top TV ratings I don't know what would be.
When Celebrities Attack VI?
I'm not kidding. Take a look around you.
Wow.
Just one question: Being as obviously correct as you are, why in the world do you have to be such a completely obnoxious prick about it?
Your abusive and ad hominem attacks do nothing to advance your argument, and indeed only make it appear that it is you, and not your opponent, that holds beliefs that cannot stand to a challenge.
"Dowsing simply does NOT work." Ah, there it is. Hardly a scientific view is it? I would have thought that something along the lines of "No controlled experiment has yet shown any evidence to support the practice of dowsing" might be better. But then again I lack your absolute certainty, or your obvious need for it. Luckily for me that's how the scientific method works.
Pipes and other artefacts buried by man are all well and good but... Every family where I live (in a rural area obviously) has their own well. And every one of those wells was found by the same old man who used a forked stick from a tree as his dowsing rod.
I believe there's a rational explanation to it, and maybe it was him subconsciously 'reading' the land and understanding where the buried water sources were, but still, that's some gift.
"This study is great ... instead of operating on 1000's of rabbits ... they can do heaps of studies on just one rabbit"
Unless you're that one rabbit!
You make a good point - current scientific consensus changes throughout history. That doesn't alter the fact that human-induced climate-change is currently the best explanation we have. Beating strawmen like "Well they thought the earth was flat once you know!" isn't good enough - you have to show why all those scientists who agree with the IPCC findings are wrong, and why the minority of scientists who disagree with them have better theories.
They once thought that light was composed of particles, then we find out it's not, and now we find out it kind of is again. Does that make my case any stronger? Of course not - and neither does pointing out the once-assumed flatness of the Earth make my case any weaker.
The fact that this idiotic rant gets modded +5 insightful says more about the current state of slashdot than it does about the original poster.
The IPCC report states that it is 95% certain that humanity is influencing global climate change and this guy thinks it's some sort of global conspiracy? Slashdot what the fuck has happened to you?
Whose government is an international joke for the wars it starts?
I don't see anyone else laughing...
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will.
No, it doesn't. As an analogy, the decimal representation of any irrational number goes on to infinity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every possible number combination will appear in it.
Are All Digit Strings in Pi?
As far as I can see manual counting of paper ballots should sit very comfortably with anyone who advocates open source projects - they seem to have the same advantages:
I'm sure there's more, but you get the idea.