My family has most of the Disc World books as well as all of the Miles Vorkosigan series. We reread them frequently, especially after each new book arrives. The characters are like distant relatives that we care about but can't visit often enough.
Both series could be considered addictive IF you like the genres. (We prefer them to main line fiction, which is depressing and predictable in our opinion.)
While I can understand having communications channeled through an official source, I find it odd that the person has to be the head of the agency.
The words 'spin control' come to mind, especially when that person is a lawyer and the agency is one that affects our lives on a daily basis.
I also wonder if the person has ever heard of the concept of delegating a the job of 'official source' to a department which can assign different people to different projects based on expertise.
It almost sounds like a lawyer attempting to hide things by making everything 'non-attributable' except for what the lawyer says. And I would bet that the lawyer will be VERY careful about making off hand comments, thus keeping the communications from the organization 'consistent' and 'safe'.
From one viewpoint this may be a 'good' thing. We won't have a situation where 'Brownie' makes stupid comments when responding to Katrina.
It appears that Pivar's collecting and scientific work is supported by a group of plastic mold companies he founded in 1959 under the name 'Chemtainer Industries'. (Thank you Choad Namath for the link to the September 9, 2004 article in the New York Times! The article is 'Two Scientists Caught in Amber'. It is about the art work in the apartment.)
Oddly enough, the second person mentioned in the article is a biophysicist named Helen Matsos who shared the apartment at the time.
(note to British readers: the kind of torch the GP was talking about was what Americans would call a 'flashlight')
Shouldn't that be a note to the American readers, where 'torch' would refer to a device for carrying fire, as in the Olympic torch? If it weren't for a familiarity with old detective novels and a British/American dictionary, I would have assumed the fire carrying type.
While having either type of 'torch' shoved up where the sun doesn't shine would be an internally illuminating experience, the one that uses an open flame would be much more painful.
That price per page puts it in the 'art book' range, especially if it uses high quality paper and binding. And from what I remember of the review, at least one of the books mentioned fell into that category.
If this is true, then it shows that Pivar definitely has the ability to find a good market and take advantage of it. (It does fit his background as an inventor/chemical engineer.)
Think about it. As long as the population continues growing, in numbers and physical size, the market for handling shit will continue to grow. This will especially be true at times when disasters hit and emergency sanitation facilities are needed.
I did find a reference where PZ Myer states that Pivar is a 'flake'. Of course, that reference points to a prior posting where someone asks if Pivar is a 'flake'.
Still no direct 'crackpot' references. Just one about 'crackpottery' that does NOT refer to Pivar directly.
I'm hoping it IS sarcasm or a troll. (Perhaps the name 'B Sharp C' is a clue.)
Unfortunately, I have encountered too many people who think this way and are willing to fight to protect their constitutional right to speak up and prove that they have problems with logical thought and scientific reasoning.
Stuart Pivar's noted areas of expertice seem to be chemical engineering, art collecting and business. (The business side may be associated with art collecting and possibly chemical engineering. It appears he has money. Some references call him an eccentric inventor and collector.)
Some patents with his name on them date to the mid 1970s.
Another article, written in 2006, claimed that he was 76. While I dislike dealing with age based stereotypes, he is at an age where some people believe that experience is knowledge. These people are often impossible to convince that they are wrong, even when faced with mountains of evidence to the contrary. (I'm hoping that this isn't the case. It is a sad thing to see a creative mind fossilize.)
There are some references that Pivar has been associated with well known evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould. While that does provide a contact with biology, it does not make Pivar a biologist. It may, however, be a potential source for the material in the books.
I will say that the illustrations provided in the review make me think of transformation art, especially that found in cartoons, anime, fantasy art and science fiction. LifeCode and related books might be a good source for ideas for people in those fields.
If you read the reviews, you will find that the reviewer tore apart the contents of the book, not the reputation of the Stuart Pivar.
If you dig a little further, you will find that Stuart Pivar seems to have a good reputation in the chemical engineering world and the art world.
A scan for Stuart Pivar in Google uncovers some patents he seems to be associated with regarding molding hollow plastic articles. (For some reason a Stewart Pivar is also associated with these patents. Are they the same person?) I can see where these patents could have made him a fair amount of cash if handled properly.
The same scan uncovers the fact that he was closely tied to Andy Warhol and was a cofounder of New York Academy of Art. He seems to have a reasonably good reputation in those circles. I especially liked an article where he rescued a Roman bronze from being broken into parts because it had been misclassified as a later sculpture.
You'll note that the reviewer didn't touch on those areas. Instead, the reviewer focused on his area of expertise, biology, and methodically tore apart the arguments that Pivar put forth. Since Pivar lacks a peer-reviewed scientific reputation in biology and related topics, you can't really say Pivar's reputation as a scientist was destroyed.
Destroying the reputation of those you disagree with is foolish. It is just a matter of time before someone with means properly makes you pay.
If Pivar truly wants to protect his 'reputation' as a scientist, then he will do it with hard facts backed up by peer-reviewed science and not a lawsuit.
Note that the comment about 'Destroying the reputation of those with disagree with' also applies to Stuart Pivar. Just because he has the money to take such a thing to court doesn't mean that he should. If anything, Pivar is in the process of destroying his own reputation as an elderly but budding scientist.
In order to find a reference to the term 'crackpot' in the review, I had to refer to the original review. As mentioned in an earlier posting, the author of the review used the word 'crackpottery' when describing the book.
I have to add another compliment for the book, though. In addition to the lovely artwork, it's an extremely high quality print; well bound, on heavy stock, and looking to last a thousand years. It seems no expense was spared getting it published, which is in contrast to the content, and is unusual for such flagrant crackpottery. It may well be popular among creationists, who can always be trusted to favor glossy superficialities over substance.
I will admit that I find that some of Stuart Privar's ideas to be useful for a couple of projects of mine. They would make great transformation sequences for fantasy and science fiction movies.
Personally I wouldn't trust the Amazon ratings. I have read in several places that it is possible to 'push' a rating with the right combination of purchases, timing and reviews.
A person or organization with money could do that. Not that the author and friends of the LifeCode book would do that.
It could be a synergistic combination of weather and bad farming practices. If you are on the edge and there is a drought going on, bad farming practices in one area can make the weather worse in other areas. The process continues until you reach areas that have more redundancy.
For that matter, the big stock market crash of 1929 could play a part in this. If the economy tanks, crops may not be planted in areas where they are risky, increasing the odds of erosion. Or bad farming practices may be 'encouraged' by the need to maximize profits and minimize costs.
We're dealing with complex, interactive systems that are linked in ways that we do not fully understand.
Ah, WATFOR and WATFIV. That brings back memories of punch cards and 24 hour turn around times at the end of the quarter when the projects were due.
One of my favorite memories of computer gaming at the time was Hammurabi, run on a Teletype that was connected via acoustical modem to a computer over two hundred miles away. I was able to get the population from about 100 people to over five billion before I made a mistake and failed to enter the right number of zeros for one of the parameters. Everybody died the next turn or so.
The same deviation could be used to find the 'casual' criminal who is responsible for unsolved crimes because they are unlikely suspects and their crimes are infrequent. Some of the more infamous serial killers of recent years could have been found that way.
Still, abuses could happen in more ways than one, especially if people get up in arms about how a potential tool was available but not used. We need to watch for the media 'railroading' the masses when it comes to technology, and present ways for the technology to be controlled.
Show people both the benefits of the technology AND the ways it could be abused.
If you could demonstrate that the people rejecting you for the job made a false conclusion based on the data available, you might be able to take the organization that provided the data to court for libel.
Of course, you would need proof that you had a legitimate reason for walking around NYC while sick. That reason might be as simple as seeing a doctor or specialist, as well as doing errands while out. The proof would be the video record.
Personally, I would love to see more control of 'reference check' organizations, especially when it comes to data that could result in not getting hired. Ideally, a person should be able to demand a copy of their records at any time, for a nominal sum, just to verify that the data is correct.
They should also have the right to challenge the data, especially if there is very negative information associated with it.
If you follow the chain of comment and response, you will notice that Anagama was responding to somebody claiming that Anagama watches too much TV. Stating that they don't watch TV was a perfectly legitimate response and not worthy of your dissing words and profanity.
I seem to recall an SF story where the anti-debris shield ended up being the equivalent of large blobs of very sticky gel, kind of like giant gummy bears. Debris of all types would stick to it, not just those that are affected by magnetism.
All you had to do was put it into orbit and move it around with space tugs, aiming for spots with lots of debris. Debris would stick to it. When there was too much debris, you just take the shield to a station, scrape it off and send it back, with more gel if needed.
The people that came up with the solution got in trouble with the Establishment because it didn't cost billions of dollars and it wasn't high tech.
On a more serious side, if you had a decent LEO base, you could send tugs to retrieve the satellites that are hazards but still intact. And for that matter, if the satellites are built at the LEO base, a lot of extra hardware needed to orbit the things could be left behind. Why should satellites designed for LEO and GEO have to handle the high Gs of launch if 99.9999% of their life is spent in zero G? A LEO or even GEO based assembly site could cut launch costs and greatly improve reliability.
Heck, you could even test the satellites in their native element for weeks or months before hauling them to their target orbits.
Scaled Composites, the people who created SpaceShipOne, is the group that suffered the explosion. From what I've read, they were running a test that had been run a number of times before without mishap.
The failure killed three people and put three others in the hospital, two in critical condition and one in serious condition. That failure could be due to flawed materials, unknown damage to the equipment, sabotage, simple human error, a design flaw or any one of a number of other reasons. It is currently under investigation.
Note that the problem occurred DURING TESTING, not when the equipment was being used for passengers. (They will undoubtedly change their testing procedures to prevent this type of disaster from happening.) They were being good corporate citizens by making sure that things worked before being put into production.
Scaled Composites is NOT one of those corner-cutting for-profit space corporations that exist today and fade away tomorrow. They have a long track record of successful projects that push the envelope when it comes to aviation technology.
Heck, their use of nitrous oxide and a rubber based propellant for SpaceShipOne was designed to reduce risks, not increase them. The combination is a lot less risky than what NASA uses in their rockets.
I wouldn't be surprized if the problem could be traced to defective equipment provided by the vendors Scaled Composites uses for their materials. (But that is conjecture right now.)
The space fratboys will be self terminating. After getting plastered on a bender, they'll open an airlock and wonder why they are having problems breathing.
Of course the space nerds will need to have backup plans to handle the fatal mistakes the space fratboys make. And those backup plans will need to be more than idiot proof.
I usually do a quick count of the money I get from an ATM. On the other hand, I'm close to six feet tall, I have a heavy beard and I can look like the type that would love to beat you up if you tried something stupid. I also tend to use ATMs in 'safe' locations while staying very aware of the environment.
Other people may not feel safe about doing a count, especially if they can see at a glance that they got X bills when they were expecting X bills. Thus a request for $75 could result in 6 bills, three $20s and three $5s and result in a total of $120 if the $5s were actually $20s.
If this person already has some cash in their wallet, they may not realize what happened.
And if this person is elderly, female, invalid, handling infants or small children, or some in some other vulnerable state, they might forego the counting, especially if the ATM is in an unsafe location.
I have had a number of instances where I could have 'saved' a lot of money if I had kept my mouth shut when my 'guestimate' of what I would have to pay was way over what was being charged. In these instances, the per unit prices were right but the quantities were off.
Rather than face an ethical problem, I mentioned the possibility of an error to the sales person and they checked their numbers. Sure enough, they realized that they had been using the wrong quantities. Their positive responses were uplifting.
Since the businesses were local businesses that I like and support, I don't feel that I lost out by bringing up the mistakes. If anything, it allows me to sleep with a clean conscience.
I will admit that there have been times when I've realized that mistakes were made after I've returned home with the merchandise. If the mistakes are small enough, for or against me, I just let them slide. If they are large ones, either way, I'll see about correcting them. (The register receipt would have to be fairly easy to understand though. It is more than a little embarassing to try to correct something that is actually part of a deep discount deal.)
A number of years ago I withdrew $60 from an ATM. When I looked at the before and after numbers, I noticed that $120 had been pulled out. Thankfully I had a 'before' and 'after' picture that I was able to present to the bank so that I wasn't out the $60 they double withdrew.
The bank actually responded quickly and all worked out.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah! Another Pratchett and Bujold fan.
My family has most of the Disc World books as well as all of the Miles Vorkosigan series. We reread them frequently, especially after each new book arrives. The characters are like distant relatives that we care about but can't visit often enough.
Both series could be considered addictive IF you like the genres. (We prefer them to main line fiction, which is depressing and predictable in our opinion.)
While I can understand having communications channeled through an official source, I find it odd that the person has to be the head of the agency.
The words 'spin control' come to mind, especially when that person is a lawyer and the agency is one that affects our lives on a daily basis.
I also wonder if the person has ever heard of the concept of delegating a the job of 'official source' to a department which can assign different people to different projects based on expertise.
It almost sounds like a lawyer attempting to hide things by making everything 'non-attributable' except for what the lawyer says. And I would bet that the lawyer will be VERY careful about making off hand comments, thus keeping the communications from the organization 'consistent' and 'safe'.
From one viewpoint this may be a 'good' thing. We won't have a situation where 'Brownie' makes stupid comments when responding to Katrina.
It appears that Pivar's collecting and scientific work is supported by a group of plastic mold companies he founded in 1959 under the name 'Chemtainer Industries'. (Thank you Choad Namath for the link to the September 9, 2004 article in the New York Times! The article is 'Two Scientists Caught in Amber'. It is about the art work in the apartment.)
Oddly enough, the second person mentioned in the article is a biophysicist named Helen Matsos who shared the apartment at the time.
Shouldn't that be a note to the American readers, where 'torch' would refer to a device for carrying fire, as in the Olympic torch? If it weren't for a familiarity with old detective novels and a British/American dictionary, I would have assumed the fire carrying type.
While having either type of 'torch' shoved up where the sun doesn't shine would be an internally illuminating experience, the one that uses an open flame would be much more painful.
That price per page puts it in the 'art book' range, especially if it uses high quality paper and binding. And from what I remember of the review, at least one of the books mentioned fell into that category.
If this is true, then it shows that Pivar definitely has the ability to find a good market and take advantage of it. (It does fit his background as an inventor/chemical engineer.)
Think about it. As long as the population continues growing, in numbers and physical size, the market for handling shit will continue to grow. This will especially be true at times when disasters hit and emergency sanitation facilities are needed.
I did find a reference where PZ Myer states that Pivar is a 'flake'. Of course, that reference points to a prior posting where someone asks if Pivar is a 'flake'.
Still no direct 'crackpot' references. Just one about 'crackpottery' that does NOT refer to Pivar directly.
I'm hoping it IS sarcasm or a troll. (Perhaps the name 'B Sharp C' is a clue.)
Unfortunately, I have encountered too many people who think this way and are willing to fight to protect their constitutional right to speak up and prove that they have problems with logical thought and scientific reasoning.
Note that PZ Myer is a scientist who is part of the faculty at a state university.
Also note that Stuart Pivar doesn't have any such credentials. He is, at first glance, a pseudo scientist.
Could you provide a link to the prior posts where the 'pseudo' scientist Myer calls Pivar a crackpot? I haven't found those sources yet.
Stuart Pivar's noted areas of expertice seem to be chemical engineering, art collecting and business. (The business side may be associated with art collecting and possibly chemical engineering. It appears he has money. Some references call him an eccentric inventor and collector.)
Some patents with his name on them date to the mid 1970s.
Another article, written in 2006, claimed that he was 76. While I dislike dealing with age based stereotypes, he is at an age where some people believe that experience is knowledge. These people are often impossible to convince that they are wrong, even when faced with mountains of evidence to the contrary. (I'm hoping that this isn't the case. It is a sad thing to see a creative mind fossilize.)
There are some references that Pivar has been associated with well known evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould. While that does provide a contact with biology, it does not make Pivar a biologist. It may, however, be a potential source for the material in the books.
I will say that the illustrations provided in the review make me think of transformation art, especially that found in cartoons, anime, fantasy art and science fiction. LifeCode and related books might be a good source for ideas for people in those fields.
If you read the reviews, you will find that the reviewer tore apart the contents of the book, not the reputation of the Stuart Pivar.
If you dig a little further, you will find that Stuart Pivar seems to have a good reputation in the chemical engineering world and the art world.
A scan for Stuart Pivar in Google uncovers some patents he seems to be associated with regarding molding hollow plastic articles. (For some reason a Stewart Pivar is also associated with these patents. Are they the same person?) I can see where these patents could have made him a fair amount of cash if handled properly.
The same scan uncovers the fact that he was closely tied to Andy Warhol and was a cofounder of New York Academy of Art. He seems to have a reasonably good reputation in those circles. I especially liked an article where he rescued a Roman bronze from being broken into parts because it had been misclassified as a later sculpture.
You'll note that the reviewer didn't touch on those areas. Instead, the reviewer focused on his area of expertise, biology, and methodically tore apart the arguments that Pivar put forth. Since Pivar lacks a peer-reviewed scientific reputation in biology and related topics, you can't really say Pivar's reputation as a scientist was destroyed.
If Pivar truly wants to protect his 'reputation' as a scientist, then he will do it with hard facts backed up by peer-reviewed science and not a lawsuit.
Note that the comment about 'Destroying the reputation of those with disagree with' also applies to Stuart Pivar. Just because he has the money to take such a thing to court doesn't mean that he should. If anything, Pivar is in the process of destroying his own reputation as an elderly but budding scientist.
In order to find a reference to the term 'crackpot' in the review, I had to refer to the original review. As mentioned in an earlier posting, the author of the review used the word 'crackpottery' when describing the book.
I will admit that I find that some of Stuart Privar's ideas to be useful for a couple of projects of mine. They would make great transformation sequences for fantasy and science fiction movies.
Personally I wouldn't trust the Amazon ratings. I have read in several places that it is possible to 'push' a rating with the right combination of purchases, timing and reviews.
A person or organization with money could do that. Not that the author and friends of the LifeCode book would do that.
It could be a synergistic combination of weather and bad farming practices. If you are on the edge and there is a drought going on, bad farming practices in one area can make the weather worse in other areas. The process continues until you reach areas that have more redundancy.
For that matter, the big stock market crash of 1929 could play a part in this. If the economy tanks, crops may not be planted in areas where they are risky, increasing the odds of erosion. Or bad farming practices may be 'encouraged' by the need to maximize profits and minimize costs.
We're dealing with complex, interactive systems that are linked in ways that we do not fully understand.
If I recall, other versions of Fortran were also text deficient. I seem to recall having a four character limit for H (Hollerith) type variables.
Of course it has been a few decades since I've played with Fortran.
Ah, WATFOR and WATFIV. That brings back memories of punch cards and 24 hour turn around times at the end of the quarter when the projects were due.
One of my favorite memories of computer gaming at the time was Hammurabi, run on a Teletype that was connected via acoustical modem to a computer over two hundred miles away. I was able to get the population from about 100 people to over five billion before I made a mistake and failed to enter the right number of zeros for one of the parameters. Everybody died the next turn or so.
Anything can be abused.
The same deviation could be used to find the 'casual' criminal who is responsible for unsolved crimes because they are unlikely suspects and their crimes are infrequent. Some of the more infamous serial killers of recent years could have been found that way.
Still, abuses could happen in more ways than one, especially if people get up in arms about how a potential tool was available but not used. We need to watch for the media 'railroading' the masses when it comes to technology, and present ways for the technology to be controlled.
Show people both the benefits of the technology AND the ways it could be abused.
If you could demonstrate that the people rejecting you for the job made a false conclusion based on the data available, you might be able to take the organization that provided the data to court for libel.
Of course, you would need proof that you had a legitimate reason for walking around NYC while sick. That reason might be as simple as seeing a doctor or specialist, as well as doing errands while out. The proof would be the video record.
Personally, I would love to see more control of 'reference check' organizations, especially when it comes to data that could result in not getting hired. Ideally, a person should be able to demand a copy of their records at any time, for a nominal sum, just to verify that the data is correct.
They should also have the right to challenge the data, especially if there is very negative information associated with it.
If you follow the chain of comment and response, you will notice that Anagama was responding to somebody claiming that Anagama watches too much TV. Stating that they don't watch TV was a perfectly legitimate response and not worthy of your dissing words and profanity.
I seem to recall an SF story where the anti-debris shield ended up being the equivalent of large blobs of very sticky gel, kind of like giant gummy bears. Debris of all types would stick to it, not just those that are affected by magnetism.
All you had to do was put it into orbit and move it around with space tugs, aiming for spots with lots of debris. Debris would stick to it. When there was too much debris, you just take the shield to a station, scrape it off and send it back, with more gel if needed.
The people that came up with the solution got in trouble with the Establishment because it didn't cost billions of dollars and it wasn't high tech.
On a more serious side, if you had a decent LEO base, you could send tugs to retrieve the satellites that are hazards but still intact. And for that matter, if the satellites are built at the LEO base, a lot of extra hardware needed to orbit the things could be left behind. Why should satellites designed for LEO and GEO have to handle the high Gs of launch if 99.9999% of their life is spent in zero G? A LEO or even GEO based assembly site could cut launch costs and greatly improve reliability.
Heck, you could even test the satellites in their native element for weeks or months before hauling them to their target orbits.
Scaled Composites, the people who created SpaceShipOne, is the group that suffered the explosion. From what I've read, they were running a test that had been run a number of times before without mishap.
The failure killed three people and put three others in the hospital, two in critical condition and one in serious condition. That failure could be due to flawed materials, unknown damage to the equipment, sabotage, simple human error, a design flaw or any one of a number of other reasons. It is currently under investigation.
Note that the problem occurred DURING TESTING, not when the equipment was being used for passengers. (They will undoubtedly change their testing procedures to prevent this type of disaster from happening.) They were being good corporate citizens by making sure that things worked before being put into production.
Scaled Composites is NOT one of those corner-cutting for-profit space corporations that exist today and fade away tomorrow. They have a long track record of successful projects that push the envelope when it comes to aviation technology.
Heck, their use of nitrous oxide and a rubber based propellant for SpaceShipOne was designed to reduce risks, not increase them. The combination is a lot less risky than what NASA uses in their rockets.
I wouldn't be surprized if the problem could be traced to defective equipment provided by the vendors Scaled Composites uses for their materials. (But that is conjecture right now.)
The space fratboys will be self terminating. After getting plastered on a bender, they'll open an airlock and wonder why they are having problems breathing.
Of course the space nerds will need to have backup plans to handle the fatal mistakes the space fratboys make. And those backup plans will need to be more than idiot proof.
I usually do a quick count of the money I get from an ATM. On the other hand, I'm close to six feet tall, I have a heavy beard and I can look like the type that would love to beat you up if you tried something stupid. I also tend to use ATMs in 'safe' locations while staying very aware of the environment.
Other people may not feel safe about doing a count, especially if they can see at a glance that they got X bills when they were expecting X bills. Thus a request for $75 could result in 6 bills, three $20s and three $5s and result in a total of $120 if the $5s were actually $20s.
If this person already has some cash in their wallet, they may not realize what happened.
And if this person is elderly, female, invalid, handling infants or small children, or some in some other vulnerable state, they might forego the counting, especially if the ATM is in an unsafe location.
I have had a number of instances where I could have 'saved' a lot of money if I had kept my mouth shut when my 'guestimate' of what I would have to pay was way over what was being charged. In these instances, the per unit prices were right but the quantities were off.
Rather than face an ethical problem, I mentioned the possibility of an error to the sales person and they checked their numbers. Sure enough, they realized that they had been using the wrong quantities. Their positive responses were uplifting.
Since the businesses were local businesses that I like and support, I don't feel that I lost out by bringing up the mistakes. If anything, it allows me to sleep with a clean conscience.
I will admit that there have been times when I've realized that mistakes were made after I've returned home with the merchandise. If the mistakes are small enough, for or against me, I just let them slide. If they are large ones, either way, I'll see about correcting them. (The register receipt would have to be fairly easy to understand though. It is more than a little embarassing to try to correct something that is actually part of a deep discount deal.)
A number of years ago I withdrew $60 from an ATM. When I looked at the before and after numbers, I noticed that $120 had been pulled out. Thankfully I had a 'before' and 'after' picture that I was able to present to the bank so that I wasn't out the $60 they double withdrew.
The bank actually responded quickly and all worked out.