Wonderful. Thank you, Slashdot, for posting an article glorifying this human piece of garbage. I suppose this is supposed to make us forget that Putin has jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory? The man is nothing more than a bully, and these antics just show what a small, pathetic person he really is. The outlandish antics- tiger hunting, shooting whales, bare-chested horseback riding... he's doing it for the same reason as the guy who buys the really expensive, shiny, loud red pickup. He's compensating for deep insecurities. In his heart, he's nothing but a coward. If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass. A real leader wouldn't spend all his time glorifying himself. And a real man wouldn't be so terrified by a bunch of girls in a punk band that he'd have to send them to prison for standing up to him.
There's a reason why the same people who deny science also buy into the particular right-wing brand of free-market economics promoted by the Republican Party and libertarians, and the reason is that it's just another form of pseudoscience.
It's part of a pattern of thinking (or lack of thinking, to be more accurate) that we see on the right, where people refuse to acknowledge basic realities that don't fit their worldview.
Republicans argue that they can somehow manage to balance the budget. Yet they advocate more tax cuts for the rich, they've signed a pledge that they won't raise taxes, and they won't identify the spending cuts they'll make to bring it all in line. To top it all off, they want to increase military spending. At the end of the day, it somehow has to all add up, and it doesn't. They're denying the basic principles of arithmetic.
Meanwhile the libertarians argue that they can somehow create an economic utopia by unleashing a sociopathic social order in which corporations are free to do whatever they want without oversight by the government. But we've seen what happens without a strong government, and the result is Somalia. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. A strong economy and thriving corporations require a government to provide infrastructure, security, and the rule of law. And we've seen what happens when corporations are allowed to do whatever they want; the result is disasters like the 2008 financial meltdown perpetrated by Wall Street speculators. Their entire premise is that we can just ignore political and economic realities and build a better world by following ideas from a series of poorly written economic fantasy novels.
Healthy political discourse requires disagreement and different views. But one end of the political spectrum just seems to have taken a break from reason. It's not just that they're rejecting science, they have an increasingly shaky hold on reality.
human activity is the likely cause of the increase of CO2
There's no "likely" about it.
We know exactly where the C02 increase is coming from. Every year humans pull millions of barrels of oil out of the ground, billions of tons of coal, and trillions of cubic meters of natural gas. Then we burn them, and that releases carbon dioxide. Using the word "likely" implies that there's actually some uncertainty here or reasonable doubt. There are legitimate areas of debate (exactly how much it warm? how fast? what are the costs and benefits of various policies?) but when you question high-school chemistry and mathematics, you're engaging in precisely the kind of pseudoscience that the article is talking about. Implying that it's "likely" that human have added C02 suggests that it's likely humans haven't added C02. Which is an exercise in irrational, paranoid, conspiracy-theory type thinking. It's like saying that it's "likely" that NASA did put a man on the moon instead of staging the Apollo landings, or "likely" that the earth is round, or likely the North Pole is in the North and the South Pole is in the South, or "likely" that the government isn't secretly run by a cabal of powerful warlocks.
We should demand that the U.S. behave in an ethical fashion, but I'm not sure what is supposed to be unethical about Stuxnet or Flame. The Iranians have secretly launched a program that will allow them to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Since Iran is swimming in oil and natural gas, this is a pretty clear signal that the regime wants to build a nuclear bomb, or at the very least, they want that option on the table. Rather than bomb the facility, and putting American pilots and Iranian civilians at risk, the U.S. and the Israelis blew up their centrifuges with a virus. That's a hell of a lot more humane than dropping bunker-busters from a B-2. As for Flame, it spies on people... and yeah, espionage is sort of a dirty business, but it's always been that way, long before the internet. I don't see how spying digitally makes it any more unethical than planting a bug in their office. There are weapons that are by their nature unethical- nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which are indiscriminant and cause a lot of suffering. But cyberwarfare isn't like that, it's capable of being extremely targeted and can neutralize a target without any loss of life or suffering.
Richard Clarke writes about this in his book Cyber War, and it's actually a pretty insightful take on the situation. His argument is that there's no point in some kind of blanket treaty against cyberwarfare. But, he argues, it makes sense to have policy and treaties that prohibit certain kinds of cyberwarfare. He argued that the banking system should be off limits. Civilian targets should be off limits. Attacking power grids and other infrastructure should be off limits, unless you'd already entered into a shooting war. So far, the U.S. appears to have restrained from these sort of attacks. You can't really say the same thing about certain other countries. North Korea has been involved in attacks against banks; Russia has attacked civilian sites, and China has supposedly spent years planting logic bombs that would allow them to turn off the lights in the U.S.
I think this view makes a lot of sense. Talking about banning cyberwarfare is sort of like looking at the Wright Brother's plane and saying that we should ban the use in aircraft in war because civilians might be targeted. First off, it's a legitimate tool of war. Second of all, it's gives you a tremendous military advantage, so it's going to happen, the only question is how. As a good rule of thumb, I think you could argue that if you'd be justified in dropping a bomb on a target, you're certainly justified in taking it out with a piece of code. Likewise, if it's not okay to bomb it, it's not okay to take it out with a logic bomb.
Now other powers like Iran, Israel, Turkey, etc are saying the same thing about cyberattacks: "The Americans did it so it must be okay."
That's not even remotely close to being true- countries have been launching cyberattacks a long time before Stuxnet was discovered. Russia launched cyberattacks against Estonia in 2007 and then against Georgia in 2008 during the war over South Ossetia. North Korea allegedly launched a massive attack on U.S. government sites in 2009. In 2007, the Israelis used a cyberattack to disable Syria's air defenses so they could bomb the Syrian nuclear program. And China's supposedly been planting logic bombs and backdoors that would, in the event of a war, allow them to take down U.S. infrastructure. Cyberwarfare was happening long before Stuxnet became known in 2010.
That's why whistleblowers are supposed to be protected by law, which is what Manning should have been.
Most of the stuff Manning revealed didn't provide any evidence of wrongdoing, so he's not protected as a whistleblower. The "collateral murder" video, for instance. A reporter was wandering through an active war zone in the company of insurgents armed with RPGs and AK-47s, and Apache gunship pilots mistook him for an insurgent when he aimed his telephoto lens at them. So they opened fire. It's a horrific tragedy, and a reminder of the costs of war, but it's not criminal. The Apache pilots followed the rules of engagement. Similarly, revealing private, non-criminal communications by diplomats is not protected by whistleblowing laws.
All reference to these things have largely vanished from the internet
So the fact that there's not a shred of evidence to support any the stuff you're saying proves that there is a huge conspiracy. Because otherwise, there's no way to explain why there isn't anything on the internet to back up what you're saying.
In other words, you're just pulling this stuff out of your ass.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for managing to Godwin the entire discussion. But perhaps we can all agree that whether or not Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, the United States does some pretty bad stuff, and needs to be held accountable. The question is, do we need Wikileaks, or something like it?
Let's take a moment and consider abuses concealed by the U.S. government by the past ten years. I would nominate Abu Ghraib, the CIA black prisons, and the domestic eavesdropping program as the three worst scandals, in the sense of concealed abuses (as opposed to, say, the Iraq War, which was an abuse of power conducted in full view of everyone). In each case, the scandals were broken by traditional news media. Abu Ghraib, for instance, was broken by Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker. Old media seems to be doing pretty well in exposing the government. To the point, I would argue, that if you're a regular reader of the New York Times, you have a pretty good idea of what your government is up to. The diplomatic cables only confirmed this, I'd argue. When the lid was taken off the whole thing, it worked pretty much the way it we thought it did.
Traditional media establishments do a decent job of keeping us informed about our government's failures, if we care to be informed about them (many people don't but that's another issue). This seems to be true of western democracies as a whole. Democracies already have mechanisms for collecting leaks (reporters) and distributing the information (newspapers, TV news, websites). Where Wikileaks- or an organization like Wikileaks- could really do a lot of good is in areas where traditional media aren't able to operate freely. That would include places like China, Russia, parts of Africa and much of the Middle East. Whether WikiLeaks is the best way to do this is arguable. Assange and his notoriety are both the organization's biggest asset, and it's biggest liability.
The think I'm mostly wondering about is stability. How do they do that? Hovercrafts are notorious for their instability, especially smaller craft. Flying them is a tough balancing act.
My impression is that it doesn't have good stability. Stability refers to the tendency of an aircraft to correct deviations in its flight path. An aircraft has inherent stability in three axes- pitch, yaw, and roll. Pitch refers to the nose pitching up and down, yaw refers to the nose yawing left and right, and roll is rolling about the long axis. So if a gust of wind rolls one wing up, the plane will automatically compensate and level out-without any action on the part of the pilot. This machine seems to perhaps have decent pitch and yaw stability, but roll stability seems to be pretty minimal. You can watch the machine slowly rolling in the movie; it's presumably the result of having a high center of gravity, like a man standing in a canoe.
As far as I can tell, the machine isn't actually stable, instead the pilot continually makes small adjustments to keep the machine flying level. According to the article, "Aerofex's new proof-of-concept craft keeps itself stable by responding to a human rider's natural sense of balance" and "The company has apparently rectified the issue with the addition of knee-level "control bars" on either side of the vehicle that make the vehicle more responsive to the pilot's movements." So from the video and the article it would seem that they haven't made the machine stable, they've made it controllable, and given the pilot the ability to continually make small adjustments to keep it level. If he gets distracted, of course...
It's important science, but even if the telescope works without a hitch and everything goes according to plan, the Webb Space Telescope represents a real failure on the part of NASA administration. According to Wikipedia, the telescope was originally supposed to launch in 2007 for a cost of $500 million; then 2007-2008 for a cost of $1 billion, then 2009 for $1.8 billion, now it's 2018 and 8.7 billion. The Curiosity rover has also had major problems, being two years behind schedule and $1.5 billion over budget.
I support the work NASA does, and I think that we should support projects like the Webb telescope and Curiosity. But it's pretty clear that the current management at NASA is incompetent when we have this situation of projects continually coming in late and massively over budget. The guys in the blue shirts we saw working mission control are doing a great job, but their leadership is failing them. It seems to me that if we could figure out how to reform NASA, reward success and have accountability for failures, we might be able to save money and get more science done at the same time- although I'm not terribly optimistic about that.
You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.
MOST of the cool stuff NASA did in the 60's was on military hardware or tests for the air force (using air force hardware).
Nobody's going to dispute that the military has produced some major technological breakthroughs. A lot of the early efforts in computing were military cryptographic efforts, the military played a critical role in developing navigational technologies like radar and later GPS, and of course, DARPA brought us the internet.
But there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, I'd argue it's pretty hard *not* to have one or two major technological breakthroughs when you're spending $700 billion per year. The question isn't whether the military produces major technological advances, the question is whether it would be more cost-effective to fund pure research, rather than hope that pissing away trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow nets us an innovative technology. If your goal is research,distributing $700 billion to civilians to do blue-sky research and R&D would probably create a lot more of that.
Second, while the military may have driven civilian technology in the past, that seems to be less true today. These days, we see the military increasingly using civilian technology- hooking together PlayStation processors to create a supercomputer, using Xbox controllers to pilot predator drones, using iPods as ballistics computers for sniper rifles... that kind of thing. More and more, we see that the military is leapfrogging on civilian technology, not the other way around. So even if funding the military may have produced innovation in the past, that seems less true today.
That all depends on his role. Stealing the cables is illegal, but publishing them isn't. That, in short, is why Bradley Manning is in jail, and the editor of the New York Times is not. The question is, which role did Assange play?
If Bradley Manning planned the theft of the cables himself and then handed it off to Wikileaks, Assange is in the clear, just like the New York Times. But if Assange and Manning had a dialogue, and Assange guided or helped Manning in any way, Assange is guilty of espionage.
I think that if the U.S. had a strong case, Assange wouldn't be hanging out in the Ecuadorian embassy, instead the British would have rounded him up and sent him off the the U.S. for trial a long time ago. But Assange isn't stupid or complacent, he's smart and paranoid. So he did one of two things. Either (a) he helped Manning, but he did so in a way that was completely untraceable, or (b) he was smart about it, and said "whoa, hey dude, happy to help distribute this stuff but I'm not going to be involved in stealing anything."
I'd bet that Assange kept his hands clean. He's expecting the U.S. to come after him, and so if someone approaches him about the possibility of stealing American intelligence, he'll suspect a trap. Even once he's satisfied that it's not a trap, he'd see the risks posed by direct involvement. Another thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. has been leaning on Manning for a long time. You can bet the interrogators and prosecutors have told him that if he implicates Assange, they can get him a better deal. So Manning has told them Assange isn't involved- and either he's steel-willed and won't break, or he's being honest. Either way, the U.S. is screwed.
I don't think we really need to have this fight. We need to make it clear that people are free to believe whatever they want, they just have to pass the test.
Look at it this way- maybe you're a die-hard free market Republican, but if you're taking an econ class, it's still legit to ask you to know about Karl Marx and Communism. If you take a history course, then you need to be able to explain the South's arguments for slavery, but that doesn't mean you have to endorse them. Same deal with evolution. You're free to believe that God created everything, the bats and bees and Galapagos tortoises. That's your right according to the First Amendment. But it's legitimate to ask you to be able to outline the arguments used by Darwin's _Origin of Species_ to argue for evolution. I mean, we don't say, "we can't discuss Nietzsche in philosophy class! I'm a Christian, and he was an atheist!" All we're requiring is that students are familiar with what science says. They're free to believe it or not. Likewise, it's perfectly acceptable (probably even a good idea) to have a course in high school talking about religion, as long as it's in the context of learning about religious views, not endorsing a particular viewpoint.
And as for all the atheists out there- we need to remember to respect the right of a Christian to believe in creationism. Now, it's true that as an atheist in a Christian society, you often feel like people don't respect your right to disbelieve. Fair enough. But as this one guy once said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And whether he was the son of God or not, I think he had a point.
Manned exploration of the sun is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. It would be far more cost-effective to explore by sending robotic rovers to drive around on the surface of the sun.
TRANSCRIPT: EMERGENCY STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BY ALL NEWS AGENCIES AND EMERGENCY BROADCAST CHANNELS.
"My fellow Americans. I stand before you as President to tell you that at 12:03 AM Eastern Time, a massive asteroid over ten miles in diameter impacted the coast of the North Sea at a speed of over 50,000 miles per hour. This asteroid caused a blast equivalent to over one million of our most powerful H-bombs. At least 100 million souls were killed by the shockwave, but even as we speak, a mile-high tsunami is sweeping across Europe, drowning thousands of years of civilization in the blink of an eye. Molten debris is now being sent hurtling towards us in suborbital trajectories, and will soon ignite wildfires across the globe. Any of you who are unfortunate enough to survive the coming inferno will face an earth that has become a ruined hellscape. With ash blotting out the skies, all crops and plants will wither and die, and the unlucky survivors of civilization will descend into an orgy of cannibalism as they desperately try to consume their friends and families to survive the freezing snows and darkness of our Apocalypse. But I have saved the worst news, the most bitter tidings, for last.
"For with the destruction of Finland, the source code for 'Angry Birds Rio' has been lost to us. Forever. I ask that you now observe a moment of silence. [chokes back tears]. Perhaps we could have carried on otherwise. Perhaps we could have found the will to carry on. The United States as we knew it would never have survived this catastrophe, but perhaps we could have saved the species, and rebuilt something from the ashes. But not now. With the loss of Angry Birds Rio, all hope has been extinguished. There is simply no reason to carry on living. Even if we could save the species, what would be the point? And so I have decided that, with our remaining resources, the American Government will distribute cyanide capsules to help ease your passing. I will now commit suicide live on camera, to demonstrate to you the proper way to consume the cyanide poison capsule. God have mercy on our souls."
For all the conspiracy theorists out there, my question is, why would the Swedes would bow to U.S. pressure in the first place? Sweden isn't some corrupt and backwards little banana republic, they're a modern European democracy and they're perfectly capable of telling the U.S. to go f*** themselves if they feel like it. What leverage would the U.S. have over Sweden that they we could just dictate how their justice system works and what charges they bring against people? What, are we going to threaten that if they don't cooperate, America will block imports of IKEA's new Trogdör bookshelf?
The big drawback with a lighter-than-air design is that your aircraft has to be really large, and that, in turn, inherently limits your speed. Drag on the fuselage is proportional to area, so if you've got an airship five times the diameter of a 747's fuselage, it's going to have 25 times the drag. The result is that airships are limited to low speeds. Top speed of the Goodyear Blimp is 50 mph and top speed of the Hindenberg was 85 mph. It's an inherent design limitation, which means that even with modern technology, this thing will have a similar top speed to a 1930s era airship like the Hindenberg. That's a huge part of why blimps have never really caught on.
Airships have one big advantage, however. It doesn't cost anything to produce the lift. The lighter than air design means that in still air, the airship isn't expending any energy. The aircraft, meanwhile, produces lift by having a continuous flow of air over the wings. That creates drag, so to maintain speed, the airplane has to compensate and burn fuel to produce thrust with an engine.
In short, if you want to take a trip by air, take a plane. But what if you don't want to go anywhere? Well, if you don't want to go anywhere, an airship is the way to go there. Since it doesn't spend any fuel, it can just hang out in one place for a long time. That makes blimps perfect if your mission is surveillance, and if you're dealing with an opponent that lacks any sort of air force or anti-air capability. Which is the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
I can almost guarantee you that staying mentally ill will be worse for your body than any hypothetical consequences from taking antidepressants.
The issues with antidepressants aren't just hypothetical. The FDA found reports of suicide associated with antidepressant use serious enough to include a "black box" warning to the effect that antidepressants can cause an increase in suicidal thinking. That's not a minor issue, that the drug you're taking to make yourself feel better might actually make you suicidal. Another issue- when given to people with bipolar disorder, antidepressants can actually cause mania, and some researchers believe this can cause the disorder to actually get worse over time. The problem here is that some forms of bipolar (bipolar II) are easily mistaken for depression, since the symptoms are primarily depression, and the ups aren't as obvious as bipolar I. Another issue is that antidepressants can cause what they call discontinuation syndrome- that is, withdrawal effects. For some it's not too bad; Prozac takes a long time to wash out of your system so it's a naturally slow withdrawal, but for others that filter rapidly out of the bloodstream, the withdrawal is really hellish.
I'm not saying you should never take antidepressants, but these are very powerful chemicals we're talking about, so you really need to be careful. That means be sure you're working with a good psychiatrist, not your primary care physician, who simply does not have the know-how to diagnose and treat serious mental illnesses. That means doing a lot of reading as well- educate yourself about what you're up against and what the treatments are.
And it's a good idea to consider the various alternative/complementary treatments. Things like exercise, meditation, EPA (the active stuff in fish oil), supplementation with zinc, B12, folic acid, vitamin D. The thinking here is that these things have an attractive risk-reward profile. That is, the evidence for these things isn't fantastic (although that could be because there's not a multibillion dollar fish-oil industry sponsoring clinical research) and while they might help a little, they probably won't be miracle cures. On the other hand, they're cheap and because they're stuff that you consume anyway, they're unlikely to do much harm. They're worth giving a shot if you don't think things are quite dire enough to require medication but you aren't feeling great. Alternatively, if you do need medication, they may improve its effectiveness.
I'm in the shitty situation at the moment where the medication I've been taking has stopped working. We've tried an increased dose, but alas, no improvement.
This is a pretty well-known phenomenon, it's known by psychiatrists as the "Prozac poop-out". After a while, the antidepressant just stops working. It seems to be particularly common among bipolar patients, to the point that some psychiatrists actually consider it a sign that you're dealing with bipolar, rather than classic depression http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/02_diagnosis.html. And if the doctor you're seeing doesn't know about this, you should seriously consider a different doctor.
Yeah, assuming he's being absolutely truthful, it's a lot like a maffia Don using his protection money to feed the homeless.
Which would be great if that's what Myrhvold was doing. Here's what the article says:
Scientists and researchers working with Intellectual Ventures have come up with lots of wild ideas over the years. Some of them have the potential to help the world, ranging from a laser to zap mosquitoes to a container for preserving vaccines for long periods of time.
And now Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer who founded Intellectual Ventures, wants to see those ideas rolled out and made available to the developing world.
That’s the story behind Intellectual Ventures’ decision to seek a new vice president to lead its “Global Good” initiative. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Asset Trust..."
So it's not even Myrhvold's money, he's actually using Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's money and then lecturing to others about how they should do more. Yes, Nathan, by using other people's money to help people and then boasting about it, you've really shown us the way. Your selfless sacrifice, nobility and sense of humility have truly touched us all... you're up there with Jesus and Gandhi.
Is this story some kind of sick joke? Nathan Myrvold lecturing us all about being better people? What the hell has Nathan F***ing Myrhvold ever done for the world? Myrhvold first became filthy rich as chief technology officer for Microsoft. He helped the company make billions of dollars abusing their monopoly power to get consumers to buy crappy software.
Unlike Bill Gates, who sees the light and decides to devote his life to charity, Myrhvold goes on to devote his life to setting up Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest patent troll. Gate's post-Microsoft career is dictated by his desire to work at something other than making money. Myrhvold's post-Microsoft career is dictated by the idea that he still wants to make an assload of money, he just doesn't want to actually do any work any more. He'd rather screw around in the kitchen and write a cookbook, while his company makes money by threatening to sue the people who are actually trying to innovate and create something.
Hell, he's not even funding this effort. Guess who's funding it? The article says it's "funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Asset Trust". So Gates is putting up the money, and Myrhvold is running around trying to take all the credit for being this great philanthropist. Well, I've got a suggestion for you Nathan. Want to make the world a better place? Shut down Intellectual Ventures. That would do far more to spur innovation than anything you've ever done.
Citation needed. "Assault rifle" is a term made up by politicians and adopted by the media because it sounds threatening.
The history of the term goes back to the German STG-44. The "STG" means "Sturmgewehr". "Sturm" is German for "assault" and "gewehr" is rifle. The Sturmgewehr 44 was the first battle rifle to combine an intermediate size cartridge, detachable clip, and fully automatic fire, and so later weapons with these features- like the AK-47 and M-16- became known as assault rifles.
Hope so too. But still, there is nothing more nauseating than American Nationalism oozing out of every statement on the mission success. It's worse than the Chinese - and that takes some doing.
Listen, America has done plenty of things that we should be ashamed of. When you're blindly supporting the country through things like unjust wars and human rights abuses, that's nationalism. But sometimes the country does something genuinely right, something true to the values of the nation. Like the guys at NASA did tonight. I think we've earned the right to take a brief break from worrying about how screwed up things are with the country economically, politically, and militarily, and feel a little pride about doing something something that's genuinely amazing. So please f*** off.
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Wonderful. Thank you, Slashdot, for posting an article glorifying this human piece of garbage. I suppose this is supposed to make us forget that Putin has jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory? The man is nothing more than a bully, and these antics just show what a small, pathetic person he really is. The outlandish antics- tiger hunting, shooting whales, bare-chested horseback riding... he's doing it for the same reason as the guy who buys the really expensive, shiny, loud red pickup. He's compensating for deep insecurities. In his heart, he's nothing but a coward. If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass. A real leader wouldn't spend all his time glorifying himself. And a real man wouldn't be so terrified by a bunch of girls in a punk band that he'd have to send them to prison for standing up to him.
There's a reason why the same people who deny science also buy into the particular right-wing brand of free-market economics promoted by the Republican Party and libertarians, and the reason is that it's just another form of pseudoscience. It's part of a pattern of thinking (or lack of thinking, to be more accurate) that we see on the right, where people refuse to acknowledge basic realities that don't fit their worldview.
Republicans argue that they can somehow manage to balance the budget. Yet they advocate more tax cuts for the rich, they've signed a pledge that they won't raise taxes, and they won't identify the spending cuts they'll make to bring it all in line. To top it all off, they want to increase military spending. At the end of the day, it somehow has to all add up, and it doesn't. They're denying the basic principles of arithmetic.
Meanwhile the libertarians argue that they can somehow create an economic utopia by unleashing a sociopathic social order in which corporations are free to do whatever they want without oversight by the government. But we've seen what happens without a strong government, and the result is Somalia. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. A strong economy and thriving corporations require a government to provide infrastructure, security, and the rule of law. And we've seen what happens when corporations are allowed to do whatever they want; the result is disasters like the 2008 financial meltdown perpetrated by Wall Street speculators. Their entire premise is that we can just ignore political and economic realities and build a better world by following ideas from a series of poorly written economic fantasy novels.
Healthy political discourse requires disagreement and different views. But one end of the political spectrum just seems to have taken a break from reason. It's not just that they're rejecting science, they have an increasingly shaky hold on reality.
human activity is the likely cause of the increase of CO2
There's no "likely" about it. We know exactly where the C02 increase is coming from. Every year humans pull millions of barrels of oil out of the ground, billions of tons of coal, and trillions of cubic meters of natural gas. Then we burn them, and that releases carbon dioxide. Using the word "likely" implies that there's actually some uncertainty here or reasonable doubt. There are legitimate areas of debate (exactly how much it warm? how fast? what are the costs and benefits of various policies?) but when you question high-school chemistry and mathematics, you're engaging in precisely the kind of pseudoscience that the article is talking about. Implying that it's "likely" that human have added C02 suggests that it's likely humans haven't added C02. Which is an exercise in irrational, paranoid, conspiracy-theory type thinking. It's like saying that it's "likely" that NASA did put a man on the moon instead of staging the Apollo landings, or "likely" that the earth is round, or likely the North Pole is in the North and the South Pole is in the South, or "likely" that the government isn't secretly run by a cabal of powerful warlocks.
We should demand that the U.S. behave in an ethical fashion, but I'm not sure what is supposed to be unethical about Stuxnet or Flame. The Iranians have secretly launched a program that will allow them to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Since Iran is swimming in oil and natural gas, this is a pretty clear signal that the regime wants to build a nuclear bomb, or at the very least, they want that option on the table. Rather than bomb the facility, and putting American pilots and Iranian civilians at risk, the U.S. and the Israelis blew up their centrifuges with a virus. That's a hell of a lot more humane than dropping bunker-busters from a B-2. As for Flame, it spies on people... and yeah, espionage is sort of a dirty business, but it's always been that way, long before the internet. I don't see how spying digitally makes it any more unethical than planting a bug in their office. There are weapons that are by their nature unethical- nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which are indiscriminant and cause a lot of suffering. But cyberwarfare isn't like that, it's capable of being extremely targeted and can neutralize a target without any loss of life or suffering.
Richard Clarke writes about this in his book Cyber War, and it's actually a pretty insightful take on the situation. His argument is that there's no point in some kind of blanket treaty against cyberwarfare. But, he argues, it makes sense to have policy and treaties that prohibit certain kinds of cyberwarfare. He argued that the banking system should be off limits. Civilian targets should be off limits. Attacking power grids and other infrastructure should be off limits, unless you'd already entered into a shooting war. So far, the U.S. appears to have restrained from these sort of attacks. You can't really say the same thing about certain other countries. North Korea has been involved in attacks against banks; Russia has attacked civilian sites, and China has supposedly spent years planting logic bombs that would allow them to turn off the lights in the U.S.
I think this view makes a lot of sense. Talking about banning cyberwarfare is sort of like looking at the Wright Brother's plane and saying that we should ban the use in aircraft in war because civilians might be targeted. First off, it's a legitimate tool of war. Second of all, it's gives you a tremendous military advantage, so it's going to happen, the only question is how. As a good rule of thumb, I think you could argue that if you'd be justified in dropping a bomb on a target, you're certainly justified in taking it out with a piece of code. Likewise, if it's not okay to bomb it, it's not okay to take it out with a logic bomb.
Now other powers like Iran, Israel, Turkey, etc are saying the same thing about cyberattacks: "The Americans did it so it must be okay."
That's not even remotely close to being true- countries have been launching cyberattacks a long time before Stuxnet was discovered. Russia launched cyberattacks against Estonia in 2007 and then against Georgia in 2008 during the war over South Ossetia. North Korea allegedly launched a massive attack on U.S. government sites in 2009. In 2007, the Israelis used a cyberattack to disable Syria's air defenses so they could bomb the Syrian nuclear program. And China's supposedly been planting logic bombs and backdoors that would, in the event of a war, allow them to take down U.S. infrastructure. Cyberwarfare was happening long before Stuxnet became known in 2010.
That's why whistleblowers are supposed to be protected by law, which is what Manning should have been.
Most of the stuff Manning revealed didn't provide any evidence of wrongdoing, so he's not protected as a whistleblower. The "collateral murder" video, for instance. A reporter was wandering through an active war zone in the company of insurgents armed with RPGs and AK-47s, and Apache gunship pilots mistook him for an insurgent when he aimed his telephoto lens at them. So they opened fire. It's a horrific tragedy, and a reminder of the costs of war, but it's not criminal. The Apache pilots followed the rules of engagement. Similarly, revealing private, non-criminal communications by diplomats is not protected by whistleblowing laws.
All reference to these things have largely vanished from the internet
So the fact that there's not a shred of evidence to support any the stuff you're saying proves that there is a huge conspiracy. Because otherwise, there's no way to explain why there isn't anything on the internet to back up what you're saying.
In other words, you're just pulling this stuff out of your ass.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for managing to Godwin the entire discussion. But perhaps we can all agree that whether or not Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, the United States does some pretty bad stuff, and needs to be held accountable. The question is, do we need Wikileaks, or something like it?
Let's take a moment and consider abuses concealed by the U.S. government by the past ten years. I would nominate Abu Ghraib, the CIA black prisons, and the domestic eavesdropping program as the three worst scandals, in the sense of concealed abuses (as opposed to, say, the Iraq War, which was an abuse of power conducted in full view of everyone). In each case, the scandals were broken by traditional news media. Abu Ghraib, for instance, was broken by Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker. Old media seems to be doing pretty well in exposing the government. To the point, I would argue, that if you're a regular reader of the New York Times, you have a pretty good idea of what your government is up to. The diplomatic cables only confirmed this, I'd argue. When the lid was taken off the whole thing, it worked pretty much the way it we thought it did.
Traditional media establishments do a decent job of keeping us informed about our government's failures, if we care to be informed about them (many people don't but that's another issue). This seems to be true of western democracies as a whole. Democracies already have mechanisms for collecting leaks (reporters) and distributing the information (newspapers, TV news, websites). Where Wikileaks- or an organization like Wikileaks- could really do a lot of good is in areas where traditional media aren't able to operate freely. That would include places like China, Russia, parts of Africa and much of the Middle East. Whether WikiLeaks is the best way to do this is arguable. Assange and his notoriety are both the organization's biggest asset, and it's biggest liability.
The think I'm mostly wondering about is stability. How do they do that? Hovercrafts are notorious for their instability, especially smaller craft. Flying them is a tough balancing act.
My impression is that it doesn't have good stability. Stability refers to the tendency of an aircraft to correct deviations in its flight path. An aircraft has inherent stability in three axes- pitch, yaw, and roll. Pitch refers to the nose pitching up and down, yaw refers to the nose yawing left and right, and roll is rolling about the long axis. So if a gust of wind rolls one wing up, the plane will automatically compensate and level out-without any action on the part of the pilot. This machine seems to perhaps have decent pitch and yaw stability, but roll stability seems to be pretty minimal. You can watch the machine slowly rolling in the movie; it's presumably the result of having a high center of gravity, like a man standing in a canoe.
As far as I can tell, the machine isn't actually stable, instead the pilot continually makes small adjustments to keep the machine flying level. According to the article, "Aerofex's new proof-of-concept craft keeps itself stable by responding to a human rider's natural sense of balance" and "The company has apparently rectified the issue with the addition of knee-level "control bars" on either side of the vehicle that make the vehicle more responsive to the pilot's movements." So from the video and the article it would seem that they haven't made the machine stable, they've made it controllable, and given the pilot the ability to continually make small adjustments to keep it level. If he gets distracted, of course...
It's important science, but even if the telescope works without a hitch and everything goes according to plan, the Webb Space Telescope represents a real failure on the part of NASA administration. According to Wikipedia, the telescope was originally supposed to launch in 2007 for a cost of $500 million; then 2007-2008 for a cost of $1 billion, then 2009 for $1.8 billion, now it's 2018 and 8.7 billion. The Curiosity rover has also had major problems, being two years behind schedule and $1.5 billion over budget.
I support the work NASA does, and I think that we should support projects like the Webb telescope and Curiosity. But it's pretty clear that the current management at NASA is incompetent when we have this situation of projects continually coming in late and massively over budget. The guys in the blue shirts we saw working mission control are doing a great job, but their leadership is failing them. It seems to me that if we could figure out how to reform NASA, reward success and have accountability for failures, we might be able to save money and get more science done at the same time- although I'm not terribly optimistic about that.
You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.
MOST of the cool stuff NASA did in the 60's was on military hardware or tests for the air force (using air force hardware).
Nobody's going to dispute that the military has produced some major technological breakthroughs. A lot of the early efforts in computing were military cryptographic efforts, the military played a critical role in developing navigational technologies like radar and later GPS, and of course, DARPA brought us the internet.
But there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, I'd argue it's pretty hard *not* to have one or two major technological breakthroughs when you're spending $700 billion per year. The question isn't whether the military produces major technological advances, the question is whether it would be more cost-effective to fund pure research, rather than hope that pissing away trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow nets us an innovative technology. If your goal is research ,distributing $700 billion to civilians to do blue-sky research and R&D would probably create a lot more of that.
Second, while the military may have driven civilian technology in the past, that seems to be less true today. These days, we see the military increasingly using civilian technology- hooking together PlayStation processors to create a supercomputer, using Xbox controllers to pilot predator drones, using iPods as ballistics computers for sniper rifles... that kind of thing. More and more, we see that the military is leapfrogging on civilian technology, not the other way around. So even if funding the military may have produced innovation in the past, that seems less true today.
His crime? Journalism.
That all depends on his role. Stealing the cables is illegal, but publishing them isn't. That, in short, is why Bradley Manning is in jail, and the editor of the New York Times is not. The question is, which role did Assange play?
If Bradley Manning planned the theft of the cables himself and then handed it off to Wikileaks, Assange is in the clear, just like the New York Times. But if Assange and Manning had a dialogue, and Assange guided or helped Manning in any way, Assange is guilty of espionage.
I think that if the U.S. had a strong case, Assange wouldn't be hanging out in the Ecuadorian embassy, instead the British would have rounded him up and sent him off the the U.S. for trial a long time ago. But Assange isn't stupid or complacent, he's smart and paranoid. So he did one of two things. Either (a) he helped Manning, but he did so in a way that was completely untraceable, or (b) he was smart about it, and said "whoa, hey dude, happy to help distribute this stuff but I'm not going to be involved in stealing anything."
I'd bet that Assange kept his hands clean. He's expecting the U.S. to come after him, and so if someone approaches him about the possibility of stealing American intelligence, he'll suspect a trap. Even once he's satisfied that it's not a trap, he'd see the risks posed by direct involvement. Another thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. has been leaning on Manning for a long time. You can bet the interrogators and prosecutors have told him that if he implicates Assange, they can get him a better deal. So Manning has told them Assange isn't involved- and either he's steel-willed and won't break, or he's being honest. Either way, the U.S. is screwed.
Look at it this way- maybe you're a die-hard free market Republican, but if you're taking an econ class, it's still legit to ask you to know about Karl Marx and Communism. If you take a history course, then you need to be able to explain the South's arguments for slavery, but that doesn't mean you have to endorse them. Same deal with evolution. You're free to believe that God created everything, the bats and bees and Galapagos tortoises. That's your right according to the First Amendment. But it's legitimate to ask you to be able to outline the arguments used by Darwin's _Origin of Species_ to argue for evolution. I mean, we don't say, "we can't discuss Nietzsche in philosophy class! I'm a Christian, and he was an atheist!" All we're requiring is that students are familiar with what science says. They're free to believe it or not. Likewise, it's perfectly acceptable (probably even a good idea) to have a course in high school talking about religion, as long as it's in the context of learning about religious views, not endorsing a particular viewpoint.
And as for all the atheists out there- we need to remember to respect the right of a Christian to believe in creationism. Now, it's true that as an atheist in a Christian society, you often feel like people don't respect your right to disbelieve. Fair enough. But as this one guy once said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And whether he was the son of God or not, I think he had a point.
Manned exploration of the sun.
Manned exploration of the sun is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. It would be far more cost-effective to explore by sending robotic rovers to drive around on the surface of the sun.
"For with the destruction of Finland, the source code for 'Angry Birds Rio' has been lost to us. Forever. I ask that you now observe a moment of silence. [chokes back tears]. Perhaps we could have carried on otherwise. Perhaps we could have found the will to carry on. The United States as we knew it would never have survived this catastrophe, but perhaps we could have saved the species, and rebuilt something from the ashes. But not now. With the loss of Angry Birds Rio, all hope has been extinguished. There is simply no reason to carry on living. Even if we could save the species, what would be the point? And so I have decided that, with our remaining resources, the American Government will distribute cyanide capsules to help ease your passing. I will now commit suicide live on camera, to demonstrate to you the proper way to consume the cyanide poison capsule. God have mercy on our souls."
For all the conspiracy theorists out there, my question is, why would the Swedes would bow to U.S. pressure in the first place? Sweden isn't some corrupt and backwards little banana republic, they're a modern European democracy and they're perfectly capable of telling the U.S. to go f*** themselves if they feel like it. What leverage would the U.S. have over Sweden that they we could just dictate how their justice system works and what charges they bring against people? What, are we going to threaten that if they don't cooperate, America will block imports of IKEA's new Trogdör bookshelf?
Airships have one big advantage, however. It doesn't cost anything to produce the lift. The lighter than air design means that in still air, the airship isn't expending any energy. The aircraft, meanwhile, produces lift by having a continuous flow of air over the wings. That creates drag, so to maintain speed, the airplane has to compensate and burn fuel to produce thrust with an engine.
In short, if you want to take a trip by air, take a plane. But what if you don't want to go anywhere? Well, if you don't want to go anywhere, an airship is the way to go there. Since it doesn't spend any fuel, it can just hang out in one place for a long time. That makes blimps perfect if your mission is surveillance, and if you're dealing with an opponent that lacks any sort of air force or anti-air capability. Which is the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
I can almost guarantee you that staying mentally ill will be worse for your body than any hypothetical consequences from taking antidepressants.
The issues with antidepressants aren't just hypothetical. The FDA found reports of suicide associated with antidepressant use serious enough to include a "black box" warning to the effect that antidepressants can cause an increase in suicidal thinking. That's not a minor issue, that the drug you're taking to make yourself feel better might actually make you suicidal. Another issue- when given to people with bipolar disorder, antidepressants can actually cause mania, and some researchers believe this can cause the disorder to actually get worse over time. The problem here is that some forms of bipolar (bipolar II) are easily mistaken for depression, since the symptoms are primarily depression, and the ups aren't as obvious as bipolar I. Another issue is that antidepressants can cause what they call discontinuation syndrome- that is, withdrawal effects. For some it's not too bad; Prozac takes a long time to wash out of your system so it's a naturally slow withdrawal, but for others that filter rapidly out of the bloodstream, the withdrawal is really hellish.
I'm not saying you should never take antidepressants, but these are very powerful chemicals we're talking about, so you really need to be careful. That means be sure you're working with a good psychiatrist, not your primary care physician, who simply does not have the know-how to diagnose and treat serious mental illnesses. That means doing a lot of reading as well- educate yourself about what you're up against and what the treatments are.
And it's a good idea to consider the various alternative/complementary treatments. Things like exercise, meditation, EPA (the active stuff in fish oil), supplementation with zinc, B12, folic acid, vitamin D. The thinking here is that these things have an attractive risk-reward profile. That is, the evidence for these things isn't fantastic (although that could be because there's not a multibillion dollar fish-oil industry sponsoring clinical research) and while they might help a little, they probably won't be miracle cures. On the other hand, they're cheap and because they're stuff that you consume anyway, they're unlikely to do much harm. They're worth giving a shot if you don't think things are quite dire enough to require medication but you aren't feeling great. Alternatively, if you do need medication, they may improve its effectiveness.
I'm in the shitty situation at the moment where the medication I've been taking has stopped working. We've tried an increased dose, but alas, no improvement.
This is a pretty well-known phenomenon, it's known by psychiatrists as the "Prozac poop-out". After a while, the antidepressant just stops working. It seems to be particularly common among bipolar patients, to the point that some psychiatrists actually consider it a sign that you're dealing with bipolar, rather than classic depression http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/02_diagnosis.html. And if the doctor you're seeing doesn't know about this, you should seriously consider a different doctor.
Yeah, assuming he's being absolutely truthful, it's a lot like a maffia Don using his protection money to feed the homeless.
Which would be great if that's what Myrhvold was doing. Here's what the article says:
Scientists and researchers working with Intellectual Ventures have come up with lots of wild ideas over the years. Some of them have the potential to help the world, ranging from a laser to zap mosquitoes to a container for preserving vaccines for long periods of time. And now Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer who founded Intellectual Ventures, wants to see those ideas rolled out and made available to the developing world. That’s the story behind Intellectual Ventures’ decision to seek a new vice president to lead its “Global Good” initiative. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Asset Trust..."
So it's not even Myrhvold's money, he's actually using Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's money and then lecturing to others about how they should do more. Yes, Nathan, by using other people's money to help people and then boasting about it, you've really shown us the way. Your selfless sacrifice, nobility and sense of humility have truly touched us all... you're up there with Jesus and Gandhi.
Unlike Bill Gates, who sees the light and decides to devote his life to charity, Myrhvold goes on to devote his life to setting up Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest patent troll. Gate's post-Microsoft career is dictated by his desire to work at something other than making money. Myrhvold's post-Microsoft career is dictated by the idea that he still wants to make an assload of money, he just doesn't want to actually do any work any more. He'd rather screw around in the kitchen and write a cookbook, while his company makes money by threatening to sue the people who are actually trying to innovate and create something.
Hell, he's not even funding this effort. Guess who's funding it? The article says it's "funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Asset Trust". So Gates is putting up the money, and Myrhvold is running around trying to take all the credit for being this great philanthropist. Well, I've got a suggestion for you Nathan. Want to make the world a better place? Shut down Intellectual Ventures. That would do far more to spur innovation than anything you've ever done.
What a pretentious douche.
10 SCREW CUSTOMER
20 MAKE PROFIT
30 GOTO 10
Citation needed. "Assault rifle" is a term made up by politicians and adopted by the media because it sounds threatening.
The history of the term goes back to the German STG-44. The "STG" means "Sturmgewehr". "Sturm" is German for "assault" and "gewehr" is rifle. The Sturmgewehr 44 was the first battle rifle to combine an intermediate size cartridge, detachable clip, and fully automatic fire, and so later weapons with these features- like the AK-47 and M-16- became known as assault rifles.
Here's the citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44
I think while it's fun to read his stuff, no one would actually want to live in his worlds...
Are you sure you don't? Quick, check your pocket change!
Hope so too. But still, there is nothing more nauseating than American Nationalism oozing out of every statement on the mission success. It's worse than the Chinese - and that takes some doing.
Listen, America has done plenty of things that we should be ashamed of. When you're blindly supporting the country through things like unjust wars and human rights abuses, that's nationalism. But sometimes the country does something genuinely right, something true to the values of the nation. Like the guys at NASA did tonight. I think we've earned the right to take a brief break from worrying about how screwed up things are with the country economically, politically, and militarily, and feel a little pride about doing something something that's genuinely amazing. So please f*** off.