No. No it isn't. The Drake Equation is just a crock - it expresses something we have no data for in terms of a bunch of variables... that we have NO DATA FOR. People just guess the numbers and say "My God, there probably IS life out there!" But the fact remains that the numbers used in the Drake equations (at least some of them) are guesses. Maybe n_e is 0.01, or maybe it's 1/(#planets in universe).
Using "Accepted values" for the Drake Equation are like using accepted values for the age of the earth taken from the bible - eg "the accepted age is 6000 years, so bang goes your dinosaur idea!"
Now who knows, maybe in 200 years we'll have some reasonable bounds on these variables. But for now we have nothing.
Why won't he run as an independent? If the Republican party doesn't back him, why not be the libertarian candidate and give them some much needed publicity?
It's a good testbed. It's the major issue (apart from, say global warming) where science is inconvenient and actively refutes a major belief held by many of the population. I know it's annoying to have the same stupid argument over and again, but it's a good test of a politician: Are they going to believe the science and follow that, or take a more 'populist' view? Are they willing to stand up and back an unpopular position because the scientists tell them that it's true? That is why it is so important to a lot of people - it tests if the leader will follow scientific advice even when many people don't want them to. Sure, a moonshot, energy independence, technological advances are fine and dandy. But they're also very popular so it's not a big conflict to say that you support them. It's the controversial issues (Evolution, Global Warming) that show whether or not the politician is a leader willing to take a popularity hit in favor of science or just a populist who only follows science when it's convenient.
The basic idea is that Newton's laws are gallilean invariant - you can start moving, change origins etc and they still hold. Newton's solution was to state that the center of mass of a system was the "rest point" and from that you can define notions of absolute time and space. His argument was that everyone believed it to be true for some point - some the Earth, others the Sun. He was just saying that you should treat the CoM of the whole system as "The center of the world" and use that as a rest point. Of course it turns out to be redundant when you move on to Einstein's relativity.
Yes to special relativity. Newton's bucket rotates with reference to the local gravitational field, so it doesn't do anything to upset general relativity. But it is a very nice problem to give students when they first encounter SR - it forces you to really think about what notions of absolute space and time imply.
No, it isn't. It goes on and on about how politics isn't 1 dimensional, and revolutionizes by making it... 2 dimensional! Politics is a LOT more complicated than that, and the simple representation of PoliticalCompass is just that, a very simple representation. It's someone's ideas of where to place people based on some rather simplistic questions. For example - which is more "authoritarian" - No on national service, no on abortion, or yes on both? PC places both at the same "level" even though the two are completely separate issues, they both go on the "authoritarian/libertarian" axis.
There are many, many more axes to pick "Corporate liberty/authoritarian" vs "Personal liberty/authoritarian" might be a good one to separate - I'd quite like candidates who'll allow me personal freedoms yet still, say, fund the FDA.
It's a simple, silly gimmick. It'll probably amuse people, though, to find that Ron Paul isn't actually libertarian at all, according to the site, he's above the line into authoritarian. Both Kucinich and Gravel are below.
Could you elaborate on that? I've been having issues with TF2 recently and wonder if it's related - random 10-15 seconds "timeouts" in which everything seizes up and won't move...
Been done a few times, but the one that comes to mind is this:http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3270764
There was also someone who stole a bunch (something like $300k) of legos like this (yeah, geeks crime) and I remember a case involving Mall-wart and iPods...
Actually it's the other way around. If people would vote for who they wanted instead of "the lesser of the two evils who Fox News tells me are my only choices" we might have something change for once. Kang or Kodos, anyone?
I think a proof a Pythagoras' Theorem wouldn't exactly be original research by now. You can pretty much prove it with one diagram and high school level algebra/geometry.
No. We elect a government and all the other ballots can go some other time. Why not have a presidential ballot that you do first, on paper, and then a machine in the next room for all the less important (ie local ordinances etc) stuff?
Garrett recently gave a talk to the International Loop Quantum Gravity Seminar: http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/ has slides and audio from the talk (and many other less controversial talks).
I don't know what qualifies to you as immediate verifications - we still haven't seen gravitational waves, one of Einstein's predictions from GR - nearly a hundred years later, it's one of those big experiments you seem to hate going out to test it. Oh, and I'll be sure to tell all the folks on hep-th to stop looking at QED since it's solved.
You're right. And that silly speed of light is the same in all reference frames, what a crazy idea. It'll never have a practical application right?
In theoretical physics what we do is... theoretical. Get used to it. Oh, and conflating CERN and cosmology so much makes me seriously doubt your credentials. Most string theorists have a budget of their own salary plus a few grad students/post docs. CERN is largely examining the standard model (looking for a Higgs boson, for example) which is an incredibly well tested theory, and has had a number of practical applications - you wouldn't have your nice lasers for AMO without quantum electrodynamics...
If you're embarrassed by your lack of funding, I'm sorry. But with the lack of understanding you show here, I'm not surprised.
Slashdot Mirror
And the US has Bush and Dick?
Heh, exactly :)
No. No it isn't. The Drake Equation is just a crock - it expresses something we have no data for in terms of a bunch of variables... that we have NO DATA FOR. People just guess the numbers and say "My God, there probably IS life out there!" But the fact remains that the numbers used in the Drake equations (at least some of them) are guesses. Maybe n_e is 0.01, or maybe it's 1/(#planets in universe).
Using "Accepted values" for the Drake Equation are like using accepted values for the age of the earth taken from the bible - eg "the accepted age is 6000 years, so bang goes your dinosaur idea!"
Now who knows, maybe in 200 years we'll have some reasonable bounds on these variables. But for now we have nothing.
And vampires think that sucking blood is fair game.
Why won't he run as an independent? If the Republican party doesn't back him, why not be the libertarian candidate and give them some much needed publicity?
It's a good testbed. It's the major issue (apart from, say global warming) where science is inconvenient and actively refutes a major belief held by many of the population. I know it's annoying to have the same stupid argument over and again, but it's a good test of a politician: Are they going to believe the science and follow that, or take a more 'populist' view? Are they willing to stand up and back an unpopular position because the scientists tell them that it's true? That is why it is so important to a lot of people - it tests if the leader will follow scientific advice even when many people don't want them to. Sure, a moonshot, energy independence, technological advances are fine and dandy. But they're also very popular so it's not a big conflict to say that you support them. It's the controversial issues (Evolution, Global Warming) that show whether or not the politician is a leader willing to take a popularity hit in favor of science or just a populist who only follows science when it's convenient.
The basic idea is that Newton's laws are gallilean invariant - you can start moving, change origins etc and they still hold. Newton's solution was to state that the center of mass of a system was the "rest point" and from that you can define notions of absolute time and space. His argument was that everyone believed it to be true for some point - some the Earth, others the Sun. He was just saying that you should treat the CoM of the whole system as "The center of the world" and use that as a rest point. Of course it turns out to be redundant when you move on to Einstein's relativity.
Yes to special relativity. Newton's bucket rotates with reference to the local gravitational field, so it doesn't do anything to upset general relativity. But it is a very nice problem to give students when they first encounter SR - it forces you to really think about what notions of absolute space and time imply.
Actually, Newton was somewhat uneasy with the ideas of absolute space and time, but they worked so he lived with it. See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=newton+unease+absolute+time&source=web&ots=_UVarBugbG&sig=8IVYIe5iX80DIks3fHSyC7-c5No#PPA42,M1
Heaven forbid that a view have insight...
No, it isn't. It goes on and on about how politics isn't 1 dimensional, and revolutionizes by making it... 2 dimensional! Politics is a LOT more complicated than that, and the simple representation of PoliticalCompass is just that, a very simple representation. It's someone's ideas of where to place people based on some rather simplistic questions. For example - which is more "authoritarian" - No on national service, no on abortion, or yes on both? PC places both at the same "level" even though the two are completely separate issues, they both go on the "authoritarian/libertarian" axis.
There are many, many more axes to pick "Corporate liberty/authoritarian" vs "Personal liberty/authoritarian" might be a good one to separate - I'd quite like candidates who'll allow me personal freedoms yet still, say, fund the FDA.
It's a simple, silly gimmick. It'll probably amuse people, though, to find that Ron Paul isn't actually libertarian at all, according to the site, he's above the line into authoritarian. Both Kucinich and Gravel are below.
"random drops of game connections."
Could you elaborate on that? I've been having issues with TF2 recently and wonder if it's related - random 10-15 seconds "timeouts" in which everything seizes up and won't move...
Been done a few times, but the one that comes to mind is this:http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3270764
There was also someone who stole a bunch (something like $300k) of legos like this (yeah, geeks crime) and I remember a case involving Mall-wart and iPods...
I believe Sainsbury's do, and they give you a discount for using your own bags instead of plastic ones. That said, they're still far too pricey...
Actually it's the other way around. If people would vote for who they wanted instead of "the lesser of the two evils who Fox News tells me are my only choices" we might have something change for once. Kang or Kodos, anyone?
And he's pretty handy with computers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGBhnYA2h40
I think a proof a Pythagoras' Theorem wouldn't exactly be original research by now. You can pretty much prove it with one diagram and high school level algebra/geometry.
I shudder to think what'll come up - I'm at work damn it!
No. We elect a government and all the other ballots can go some other time. Why not have a presidential ballot that you do first, on paper, and then a machine in the next room for all the less important (ie local ordinances etc) stuff?
Garrett recently gave a talk to the International Loop Quantum Gravity Seminar: http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/ has slides and audio from the talk (and many other less controversial talks).
"A police investigation has exonerated the police of wrongdoing."
Is anyone surprised by this? Quis custodiat...
How much for the girl?
I don't know what qualifies to you as immediate verifications - we still haven't seen gravitational waves, one of Einstein's predictions from GR - nearly a hundred years later, it's one of those big experiments you seem to hate going out to test it. Oh, and I'll be sure to tell all the folks on hep-th to stop looking at QED since it's solved.
You're right. And that silly speed of light is the same in all reference frames, what a crazy idea. It'll never have a practical application right?
In theoretical physics what we do is... theoretical. Get used to it. Oh, and conflating CERN and cosmology so much makes me seriously doubt your credentials. Most string theorists have a budget of their own salary plus a few grad students/post docs. CERN is largely examining the standard model (looking for a Higgs boson, for example) which is an incredibly well tested theory, and has had a number of practical applications - you wouldn't have your nice lasers for AMO without quantum electrodynamics...
If you're embarrassed by your lack of funding, I'm sorry. But with the lack of understanding you show here, I'm not surprised.
Video link - tells you all you need to know about surveys. I loved Yes Minister + Yes Prime Minister - you can get them on Netflix Watch Now :)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4093618813050375979&q=Yes+minister+youtube&total=136&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4