Cell phone theft is on the rise. That trend will only increase if the phone becomes a substitute for cash.
In any case, I don't go along with the idea of having all my eggs in one basket. I don't care to be helpless if I lose my cell phone. Not that using a cell phone for financial transactions is an intrinsically bad idea, just that the idea needs a fair bit of refinement. And I don't think the "substitute for cash" idea is a credible starting point. There's a lot to like about cash. For one thing, it can take a lot more abuse than a cell phone can.
However, setting the cash idea aside, there are still many interesting possibilities. With a bit of work, the cell phone could become a very convenient terminal for strong three-factor authentication. It just needs a biometric scanner for the "something you are" and a unique cryptographic identity for the "something you have". Along with biometric authentication comes the ability to function as a "dead man switch", which would reduce the attractiveness of the phone as a target for theft.
It's also not hard to imagine enriching the "something you know" component so that the phone attaches different functions to different passphrases, so that for example if you're forced to unlock the phone at gunpoint, it unlocks all right but hides certain data and sends out a distress signal.
Hasn't that dang thing gotten enough play by now? It's half the reason why I gave up listening to commercial radio.
The tune was certainly iconic here as well. Only here, the exploding market for CB radios in 1975 consisted mostly of kids from Hong Kong driving Japanese cars with spoilers and tinted windows. They don't go in for a lot of country music.
Check out some of the other comments. A fair number of people seem unable to distinguish between "break" and "brake".
Okay, fine. Spelling is a fairly minor skill in the grand scheme of things. But I have to wonder at how far the confusion extends, if we take as a premise that language is essentially built upon metaphor. Do they have a mental image of something breaking when the brakes are applied?
"Open source hardware" seems to mean "hardware standard not generated by a recognized professional organization."
You have a valid point. The same thing exists in software, so that for example I can expect my FORTRAN 77 program to behave correctly on any compiler which is compliant with the standard. In time, maybe we'll have formal language standards for Python and Ruby. But there's no guarantee. Look at all the language forking that happened to Lisp. Now, was that good or bad? It all depends on your particular needs.
Languages and protocols are relatively simple to formalize, and they offer a high return on investment for doing so. But formalization is the senescent phase of any design effort. There are a lot of areas where things are changing much too fast for a standardization effort to be meaningful, to say nothing of the occasions where the standards process is subverted by manipulation of one kind or another, OOXML being one particularly blatant example.
In the software world, open source plays an intermediate role in providing a reusable, extensible, working implementation of a design idea. It's a natural fit to prevailing needs. PHP, for example, is a terrible language in terms of specification, yet it's abundantly successful. Why? Because nobody cares about the specification as long as the implementation is usable. And it is. It's usable at zero cost. No investment in special tooling is required.
Why shouldn't this same, intermediate, role for open source apply comparably for hardware? Of course there are instances when an entire industry has to agree on a specification in order for it to become viable, but there are also many cases where this would be overkill. There are tooling overheads in hardware, no question. But at a certain scale of operation they're not prohibitive.
The legal standing is that when you're in a public place you have no right to privacy.
You make it sound very definitive and absolute. Bear in mind that you're describing a particular jurisdiction at a particular time. Indeed it's completely contextual.
Well, given the right circumstances, we might find all sorts of things beneficial. If it was my camera monitoring my property for my benefit, that's something I could like. Even though you, walking by at the moment that my camera is taking a shot, might not feel so happy about it.
So, obviously, there's a whole modus vivendi that we have to work out, a legitimate and necessary one, around these rather new situations. And there are people who will use this legitimate circumstance to try to get away with something not so legitimate. You're right to point that out.
I remember setting up a spare video camera in our lab back in the early 90's, capturing images and dumping them out onto an experimental web server we had running. This would be an early hack of the webcam concept.
I hadn't considered that it would be an issue.
But my colleagues were distinctly not impressed, and so I quickly tore down the rig. I think that, to them, the lab was a private space. The camera violated their expectation of privacy, and they didn't like that. I've been thinking about it ever since.
The expectation of privacy is contextual, of course, and we each have rather firm internal rules about how it works. But often these rules are tacit even to us, so it's not easy to specify them in a way that would be generally useful. For example, is a bar a public space or a private one? See, it turns out to be both. We may go to a bar to meet people, in which aspect it's a public space. And we may also go there because it provides cover for having an intimate conversation, in which aspect it's private.
As an acceptable tradeoff between security and privacy, we may be okay with security cameras monitoring us, because we assume that those images ordinarily remain locked away in a box somewhere. If the same cameras were to put the same images on the web, we might consider that the tradeoff is no longer acceptable. What about the case where the images are to be scanned for identifying features by some third party? I think the answer will depend on whether we regard the resulting data as anonymizing us or identifying us and tracking our movements. And our legitimate reason to be concerned is that, once the images have been passed to other hands, we just can't know what will happen next.
I think you make a fair case that there is a contextual distinction between populations and individuals. But let's be precise: when talking about a specific individual, we're no longer in the realm of population statistics. "Mortality" in this context - separated from notions of statistics - simply means the attribute of being mortal. To an individual person, death is an singular event, whereas mortality is a condition of existence.
Since you want to appeal to frequency of usage, let's look at the numbers a bit more closely. According to Google Scholar there are twice as many occurrences of "death rate" (that is, the individuated death event explicitly converted to a relative frequency) as your preferred term "mortality risk", and the use of "mortality" not followed by "risk" is seven times more frequent.
The reason why these jokes keep coming up is because "risk of death" is a ridiculous phrase if not explicitly qualified. So, for slightly different reasons, is "mortality risk."
If you want the canonical term that's used in a statistical or medical context, just say "mortality". We'll all understand perfectly what you mean, and there will be no snickering. You don't say "mortality risk" because that would be redundant. It makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. (Of course, if you want to create that impression, you're on the right track.)
Another conventional term is "death rate". Both "mortality" and "death rate" refer to the relative frequency of deaths in a given population under given conditions.
The simple explanation for this is that geography dominates. Stockholm is built on an archipelago, so that it's not easily amenable to developing a ring line. Nevertheless the Stockholm system does have a ring line (the Tvärbanan) which serves - as all ring lines do - to interconnect outlying regions and offload some of the congestion in the core lines, but note that this ring can only exist because of a favorable landscape. In general the Stockholm system is dominated by branching radial lines, considerably more so than in cities which have simple, uniform landscapes.
Vancouver is a city of comparable size and density. We have a more modest transit system and an even more challenging coastal geography. Urban and suburban growth is extremely radial in Vancouver, and transit reflects this, to a fault. In consequence, the use of personal vehicles remains much higher here than in Stockholm. Vancouver transit is great between certain locations, especially with respect to the core, but you just can't realistically get around using transit between many others. A drive that might take me 25 minutes by car could easily take 2 hours by transit, and I could find myself standing most of the way. (This frustration is exactly what brings ring lines into existence, of course, but there has to be sufficient demand to justify the cost. By the time Vancouver reaches that tipping point, I'll be long dead.)
The Conservatives [...] have been in and out of power for decades.
The Progressive Conservatives were indeed in and out of power for decades, but that party no longer exists. The present government was originally called the Reform Party of Canada, and never governed under that name. It renamed itself the Conservative Reform Alliance party after the PC party collapsed. It's so far to the right that all the other parties are relatively clustered on the left, hence splitting the vote among them and allowing this party to form a majority in the last election with only 39.6% of the popular vote.
In terms of overreach, this party is setting new lows at an aggressive pace. The list is already dozens of items long, with suspicion of election fraud being only the latest. We've seen corrupt politics across the spectrum in Canada before, but never on this scale.
Totally agree. It's a trick that comes in handy when fitting the shelving system into an alcove or other constrained space. Make whatever width you need. That said, there's a lot of waste wood in producing 19-inch rack spacing from stock shelves. Also keep in mind that the shelving won't be nearly as stable in that orientation as it is across the mortised uprights.
Strictly speaking, you don't even need a table saw, just a decent crosscut saw and a chisel. The work goes faster than you might think because the rabbets are so shallow. With this degree of alteration, it's even possible to make uprights of dual depth: for use in work tables with drawers below and shelving above, for example. I love the IVAR system for this sort of versatility, design simplicity, and use of materials.
Heavy rackmount equipment has to be supported front and back. Here, rack rails make sense, because you can set them up independent of inserting the equipment.
It's poor practice, however, to slide equipment out on these rails in order to gain access to cabling. Avoid this situation if you possibly can, because it introduces a high risk of issues cause by connector and cable strain. The more complex your data center, the more likely you'll be hurt by this.
IKEA also makes a modular shelf system called IVAR in two depths, 30cm and 50cm. The width is unsuitable for rackmount equipment, but the depth is perfect in the 50cm option.
I'm struggling here to think of a primitive tool with handed-ness built into it. Anyone?
Any kind of axe or hammer or adze whose haft is made from a found object such as tree branch would qualify.
Such hafts are never perfectly symmetrical, and they are held asymmetrically. A good tool will exploit the natural shape of the haft so as to conform to the user's handedness. The center of effort of the tool as well as the attack angle of the blade will be set accordingly. It's usually obvious in the instant that you pick up such a tool whether it's made for left-handed or right-handed use.
Agreed, religious fundamentalism is on the rise in the United States. But then so is secularism, so all is not lost.
In fact a lot of strangely irrational beliefs are gaining popularity in the United States, even as it loses its preeminent standing on various measures such as health care, education, political freedom, homicide, incarceration, and quality of life generally. It's painful to watch the end of an empire, but history teaches us to expect the process to pass through various coping stages. Denial is one of them. I think that accounts for the religious fundamentalism and the rightwards shift in politics.
I guess I have to ask: why do you need belief at all?
Wouldn't simply accepting the vastness and wonder of the universe be satisfying enough? Why would you need to introduce a superfluous explanation to the package? That's really inelegant.
And it's not just inelegant, it's problematic. As soon as you say "the universe must have a creator" then we have to ask about the nature of this creator, called X for example. We won't get useful answers, because X, by definition, lies outside the universe. But worse, our claim about the necessity for X will also create a vexing infinite regression, because in order for X to exist, there must be some enclosing field of existence sufficient to hold X. Applying the earlier premise that such a field of existence can't arise without a creator, we then have to start talking about Y, and so on. It's useless, and really untenable.
So, don't give up your sense of wonder at the universe. Just let go of the part about how it "must" have a creator. Or, if you're so deeply accultured to the idea of God that you can't let go, then see if you're comfortable with the idea of God and the universe being the same thing. Then at least you won't have a paradox.
We inevitably live within a field of subjective experience. Creative people make a point of coming to terms with their subjectivity by embracing and exploring it. We can all do this in varying degrees, and I think our lives are richer when we do. Intuition is a surprisingly powerful way of navigating within capabilities that you "don't know that you know".
Rational thinking makes our lives richer in a complementary way. It requires a particular sort of discipline that we're only now, as a species, beginning to accept. We look for objective evidence and, in a disinterested way, apply logic to compare among explanations to see which best fits the evidence.
It's entirely possible to cultivate both the intuitive and rational ways of making sense of the world. I find that doing so bypasses almost entirely the requirement for what most people call belief or faith, that is, holding something to be (objectively) true without objective evidence.
Subjective experience is sufficient unto itself. If my intuition says, "go south for a mile and you'll find water," I'll give that factor a certain tentative weight in my route planning. But it's not a belief and I feel no obligation to defend it as if it were objectively true. It is, however, "magical" thinking in the sense that I'm willing to elevate a delicate aspect of my subjective landscape to a higher status than critical reason, by itself, would give it.
This situation reminds me of the Clipper Chip fiasco. This was a US government initiative during the Clinton administration to build an encryption chip with a backdoor that could only be operated by a key escrowed by the government.
Strangely, there proved to be no international market for the chip.
In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him.
"I do not need a lantern," he said. "Darkness or light is all the same to me."
"I know you do not need a lantern to find your way," his friend replied, "but if you don't have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it."
The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him.
"Look out where you are going!" he exclaimed to the stranger. "Can't you see this lantern?"
"Your candle has burned out, brother," replied the stranger.
The first question I ask myself is to what extent it's proper for NASA to engage with public politics. (Of course survival requires it to play politics all the time, but my question is about influencing public debate.)
If NASA's function is to study climate change, then of course it has a duty to report its findings. The ethics are straightforward, but they don't apply here. However, NASA does have scientific and technical expertise which may qualify it, or even oblige it, to share its knowledge with the public, especially as NASA receives substantial public funding.
Also, NASA's prominence in the aerospace industry should make it especially conscientious concerning adverse effects of that industry. And aerospace is a significant contributor to greenhouse emissions. So again, it has an ethical obligation to inform itself about the effect of such emissions on climate change, and to share its findings.
As to whether or not NASA is taking the correct position, that's really a secondary question. Certainly NASA is saying nothing controversial in warning about climate change. It's an altruistic position, in line with most of the scientific community. Conversely, it would be at least moderately suspicious if NASA were to dismiss the issue as unimportant, given that this position is directly self-serving.
Now, a group of people want to disagree with NASA on this issue, that's fine. We can let their claims stand on their own merits, while noting what company they keep with what vested interests. But calling to silence NASA is just plain inappropriate.
Why are you willing to let Google get away with monopolistic behavior that Microsoft gets crucified for?
Google has market share because it provides services that people want to use. It's not above criticism, and it bears watching if only because it's got fingers in so many pies. But so far, I haven't seen compelling evidence that Google is evil. And neither have the courts.
Microsoft has market share because it historically used every means, fair and foul, to lock customers into its products, intimidate vendors into incorporating its products, and crush, absorb, or threaten competitors to its products. Not only did Microsoft make crappy software, it did so strategically. Microsoft still threatens Linux with unspecified patent violations. Oh yeah, and stacking the ISO standards committee so it could get its bloated and patent-encumbered XML standard ratified. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist in both the US and the EU.
Slashdot Mirror
Cell phone theft is on the rise. That trend will only increase if the phone becomes a substitute for cash.
In any case, I don't go along with the idea of having all my eggs in one basket. I don't care to be helpless if I lose my cell phone. Not that using a cell phone for financial transactions is an intrinsically bad idea, just that the idea needs a fair bit of refinement. And I don't think the "substitute for cash" idea is a credible starting point. There's a lot to like about cash. For one thing, it can take a lot more abuse than a cell phone can.
However, setting the cash idea aside, there are still many interesting possibilities. With a bit of work, the cell phone could become a very convenient terminal for strong three-factor authentication. It just needs a biometric scanner for the "something you are" and a unique cryptographic identity for the "something you have". Along with biometric authentication comes the ability to function as a "dead man switch", which would reduce the attractiveness of the phone as a target for theft.
It's also not hard to imagine enriching the "something you know" component so that the phone attaches different functions to different passphrases, so that for example if you're forced to unlock the phone at gunpoint, it unlocks all right but hides certain data and sends out a distress signal.
Hasn't that dang thing gotten enough play by now? It's half the reason why I gave up listening to commercial radio.
The tune was certainly iconic here as well. Only here, the exploding market for CB radios in 1975 consisted mostly of kids from Hong Kong driving Japanese cars with spoilers and tinted windows. They don't go in for a lot of country music.
Check out some of the other comments. A fair number of people seem unable to distinguish between "break" and "brake".
Okay, fine. Spelling is a fairly minor skill in the grand scheme of things. But I have to wonder at how far the confusion extends, if we take as a premise that language is essentially built upon metaphor. Do they have a mental image of something breaking when the brakes are applied?
"Open source hardware" seems to mean "hardware standard not generated by a recognized professional organization."
You have a valid point. The same thing exists in software, so that for example I can expect my FORTRAN 77 program to behave correctly on any compiler which is compliant with the standard. In time, maybe we'll have formal language standards for Python and Ruby. But there's no guarantee. Look at all the language forking that happened to Lisp. Now, was that good or bad? It all depends on your particular needs.
Languages and protocols are relatively simple to formalize, and they offer a high return on investment for doing so. But formalization is the senescent phase of any design effort. There are a lot of areas where things are changing much too fast for a standardization effort to be meaningful, to say nothing of the occasions where the standards process is subverted by manipulation of one kind or another, OOXML being one particularly blatant example.
In the software world, open source plays an intermediate role in providing a reusable, extensible, working implementation of a design idea. It's a natural fit to prevailing needs. PHP, for example, is a terrible language in terms of specification, yet it's abundantly successful. Why? Because nobody cares about the specification as long as the implementation is usable. And it is. It's usable at zero cost. No investment in special tooling is required.
Why shouldn't this same, intermediate, role for open source apply comparably for hardware? Of course there are instances when an entire industry has to agree on a specification in order for it to become viable, but there are also many cases where this would be overkill. There are tooling overheads in hardware, no question. But at a certain scale of operation they're not prohibitive.
The legal standing is that when you're in a public place you have no right to privacy.
You make it sound very definitive and absolute. Bear in mind that you're describing a particular jurisdiction at a particular time. Indeed it's completely contextual.
Well, given the right circumstances, we might find all sorts of things beneficial. If it was my camera monitoring my property for my benefit, that's something I could like. Even though you, walking by at the moment that my camera is taking a shot, might not feel so happy about it.
So, obviously, there's a whole modus vivendi that we have to work out, a legitimate and necessary one, around these rather new situations. And there are people who will use this legitimate circumstance to try to get away with something not so legitimate. You're right to point that out.
You really need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
I remember setting up a spare video camera in our lab back in the early 90's, capturing images and dumping them out onto an experimental web server we had running. This would be an early hack of the webcam concept.
I hadn't considered that it would be an issue. But my colleagues were distinctly not impressed, and so I quickly tore down the rig. I think that, to them, the lab was a private space. The camera violated their expectation of privacy, and they didn't like that. I've been thinking about it ever since.
The expectation of privacy is contextual, of course, and we each have rather firm internal rules about how it works. But often these rules are tacit even to us, so it's not easy to specify them in a way that would be generally useful. For example, is a bar a public space or a private one? See, it turns out to be both. We may go to a bar to meet people, in which aspect it's a public space. And we may also go there because it provides cover for having an intimate conversation, in which aspect it's private.
As an acceptable tradeoff between security and privacy, we may be okay with security cameras monitoring us, because we assume that those images ordinarily remain locked away in a box somewhere. If the same cameras were to put the same images on the web, we might consider that the tradeoff is no longer acceptable. What about the case where the images are to be scanned for identifying features by some third party? I think the answer will depend on whether we regard the resulting data as anonymizing us or identifying us and tracking our movements. And our legitimate reason to be concerned is that, once the images have been passed to other hands, we just can't know what will happen next.
I think you make a fair case that there is a contextual distinction between populations and individuals. But let's be precise: when talking about a specific individual, we're no longer in the realm of population statistics. "Mortality" in this context - separated from notions of statistics - simply means the attribute of being mortal. To an individual person, death is an singular event, whereas mortality is a condition of existence.
Since you want to appeal to frequency of usage, let's look at the numbers a bit more closely. According to Google Scholar there are twice as many occurrences of "death rate" (that is, the individuated death event explicitly converted to a relative frequency) as your preferred term "mortality risk", and the use of "mortality" not followed by "risk" is seven times more frequent.
The reason why these jokes keep coming up is because "risk of death" is a ridiculous phrase if not explicitly qualified. So, for slightly different reasons, is "mortality risk."
If you want the canonical term that's used in a statistical or medical context, just say "mortality". We'll all understand perfectly what you mean, and there will be no snickering. You don't say "mortality risk" because that would be redundant. It makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. (Of course, if you want to create that impression, you're on the right track.)
Another conventional term is "death rate". Both "mortality" and "death rate" refer to the relative frequency of deaths in a given population under given conditions.
The simple explanation for this is that geography dominates. Stockholm is built on an archipelago, so that it's not easily amenable to developing a ring line. Nevertheless the Stockholm system does have a ring line (the Tvärbanan) which serves - as all ring lines do - to interconnect outlying regions and offload some of the congestion in the core lines, but note that this ring can only exist because of a favorable landscape. In general the Stockholm system is dominated by branching radial lines, considerably more so than in cities which have simple, uniform landscapes.
Vancouver is a city of comparable size and density. We have a more modest transit system and an even more challenging coastal geography. Urban and suburban growth is extremely radial in Vancouver, and transit reflects this, to a fault. In consequence, the use of personal vehicles remains much higher here than in Stockholm. Vancouver transit is great between certain locations, especially with respect to the core, but you just can't realistically get around using transit between many others. A drive that might take me 25 minutes by car could easily take 2 hours by transit, and I could find myself standing most of the way. (This frustration is exactly what brings ring lines into existence, of course, but there has to be sufficient demand to justify the cost. By the time Vancouver reaches that tipping point, I'll be long dead.)
The Conservatives [...] have been in and out of power for decades.
The Progressive Conservatives were indeed in and out of power for decades, but that party no longer exists. The present government was originally called the Reform Party of Canada, and never governed under that name. It renamed itself the Conservative Reform Alliance party after the PC party collapsed. It's so far to the right that all the other parties are relatively clustered on the left, hence splitting the vote among them and allowing this party to form a majority in the last election with only 39.6% of the popular vote.
In terms of overreach, this party is setting new lows at an aggressive pace. The list is already dozens of items long, with suspicion of election fraud being only the latest. We've seen corrupt politics across the spectrum in Canada before, but never on this scale.
Totally agree. It's a trick that comes in handy when fitting the shelving system into an alcove or other constrained space. Make whatever width you need. That said, there's a lot of waste wood in producing 19-inch rack spacing from stock shelves. Also keep in mind that the shelving won't be nearly as stable in that orientation as it is across the mortised uprights.
Strictly speaking, you don't even need a table saw, just a decent crosscut saw and a chisel. The work goes faster than you might think because the rabbets are so shallow. With this degree of alteration, it's even possible to make uprights of dual depth: for use in work tables with drawers below and shelving above, for example. I love the IVAR system for this sort of versatility, design simplicity, and use of materials.
Heavy rackmount equipment has to be supported front and back. Here, rack rails make sense, because you can set them up independent of inserting the equipment.
It's poor practice, however, to slide equipment out on these rails in order to gain access to cabling. Avoid this situation if you possibly can, because it introduces a high risk of issues cause by connector and cable strain. The more complex your data center, the more likely you'll be hurt by this.
IKEA also makes a modular shelf system called IVAR in two depths, 30cm and 50cm. The width is unsuitable for rackmount equipment, but the depth is perfect in the 50cm option.
FTA:
Representing only 10 percent of the general human population, scientists have long wondered why left-handed people are a rarity.
Wow, I never knew that scientists made up ten percent of the population. Yay us.
I'm struggling here to think of a primitive tool with handed-ness built into it. Anyone?
Any kind of axe or hammer or adze whose haft is made from a found object such as tree branch would qualify.
Such hafts are never perfectly symmetrical, and they are held asymmetrically. A good tool will exploit the natural shape of the haft so as to conform to the user's handedness. The center of effort of the tool as well as the attack angle of the blade will be set accordingly. It's usually obvious in the instant that you pick up such a tool whether it's made for left-handed or right-handed use.
Agreed, religious fundamentalism is on the rise in the United States. But then so is secularism, so all is not lost.
In fact a lot of strangely irrational beliefs are gaining popularity in the United States, even as it loses its preeminent standing on various measures such as health care, education, political freedom, homicide, incarceration, and quality of life generally. It's painful to watch the end of an empire, but history teaches us to expect the process to pass through various coping stages. Denial is one of them. I think that accounts for the religious fundamentalism and the rightwards shift in politics.
I guess I have to ask: why do you need belief at all?
Wouldn't simply accepting the vastness and wonder of the universe be satisfying enough? Why would you need to introduce a superfluous explanation to the package? That's really inelegant.
And it's not just inelegant, it's problematic. As soon as you say "the universe must have a creator" then we have to ask about the nature of this creator, called X for example. We won't get useful answers, because X, by definition, lies outside the universe. But worse, our claim about the necessity for X will also create a vexing infinite regression, because in order for X to exist, there must be some enclosing field of existence sufficient to hold X. Applying the earlier premise that such a field of existence can't arise without a creator, we then have to start talking about Y, and so on. It's useless, and really untenable.
So, don't give up your sense of wonder at the universe. Just let go of the part about how it "must" have a creator. Or, if you're so deeply accultured to the idea of God that you can't let go, then see if you're comfortable with the idea of God and the universe being the same thing. Then at least you won't have a paradox.
Very well said.
We inevitably live within a field of subjective experience. Creative people make a point of coming to terms with their subjectivity by embracing and exploring it. We can all do this in varying degrees, and I think our lives are richer when we do. Intuition is a surprisingly powerful way of navigating within capabilities that you "don't know that you know".
Rational thinking makes our lives richer in a complementary way. It requires a particular sort of discipline that we're only now, as a species, beginning to accept. We look for objective evidence and, in a disinterested way, apply logic to compare among explanations to see which best fits the evidence.
It's entirely possible to cultivate both the intuitive and rational ways of making sense of the world. I find that doing so bypasses almost entirely the requirement for what most people call belief or faith, that is, holding something to be (objectively) true without objective evidence.
Subjective experience is sufficient unto itself. If my intuition says, "go south for a mile and you'll find water," I'll give that factor a certain tentative weight in my route planning. But it's not a belief and I feel no obligation to defend it as if it were objectively true. It is, however, "magical" thinking in the sense that I'm willing to elevate a delicate aspect of my subjective landscape to a higher status than critical reason, by itself, would give it.
Well said.
This situation reminds me of the Clipper Chip fiasco. This was a US government initiative during the Clinton administration to build an encryption chip with a backdoor that could only be operated by a key escrowed by the government.
Strangely, there proved to be no international market for the chip.
In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him.
"I do not need a lantern," he said. "Darkness or light is all the same to me."
"I know you do not need a lantern to find your way," his friend replied, "but if you don't have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it."
The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him.
"Look out where you are going!" he exclaimed to the stranger. "Can't you see this lantern?"
"Your candle has burned out, brother," replied the stranger.
What if it turns out that quantum randomness is only pseudo-random?
What if our entire reality is just a carrier wave for some other civilization's spread-spectrum communications network?
(Completely pointless speculation, I know. Still, I have to do something with my first coffee buzz of the morning.)
The first question I ask myself is to what extent it's proper for NASA to engage with public politics. (Of course survival requires it to play politics all the time, but my question is about influencing public debate.)
If NASA's function is to study climate change, then of course it has a duty to report its findings. The ethics are straightforward, but they don't apply here. However, NASA does have scientific and technical expertise which may qualify it, or even oblige it, to share its knowledge with the public, especially as NASA receives substantial public funding.
Also, NASA's prominence in the aerospace industry should make it especially conscientious concerning adverse effects of that industry. And aerospace is a significant contributor to greenhouse emissions. So again, it has an ethical obligation to inform itself about the effect of such emissions on climate change, and to share its findings.
As to whether or not NASA is taking the correct position, that's really a secondary question. Certainly NASA is saying nothing controversial in warning about climate change. It's an altruistic position, in line with most of the scientific community. Conversely, it would be at least moderately suspicious if NASA were to dismiss the issue as unimportant, given that this position is directly self-serving.
Now, a group of people want to disagree with NASA on this issue, that's fine. We can let their claims stand on their own merits, while noting what company they keep with what vested interests. But calling to silence NASA is just plain inappropriate.
Why are you willing to let Google get away with monopolistic behavior that Microsoft gets crucified for?
Google has market share because it provides services that people want to use. It's not above criticism, and it bears watching if only because it's got fingers in so many pies. But so far, I haven't seen compelling evidence that Google is evil. And neither have the courts.
Microsoft has market share because it historically used every means, fair and foul, to lock customers into its products, intimidate vendors into incorporating its products, and crush, absorb, or threaten competitors to its products. Not only did Microsoft make crappy software, it did so strategically. Microsoft still threatens Linux with unspecified patent violations. Oh yeah, and stacking the ISO standards committee so it could get its bloated and patent-encumbered XML standard ratified. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist in both the US and the EU.
What was your point again?