Meta-mod insightful. (does posting undo metamods?) But they'll still be able to track your cellphone. "I commend google on there newest..." should be: "I commend Google on their newest..."/grammar nazi
It's capital controls through the back door. It's unbelievably onerous - essentially the US government is a party to every transaction you make throughout the world, and every transaction any company or trust in which a US person has any interest makes anywhere in the world. But of course the Secretary of the Treasury can exempt anybody he likes.
"anything Congress deems necessary, which the courts also deem necessary, which the President and all subsequent Presidents deem necessary, and which voters deem necessary in all subsequent elections by not electing contrarian representatives, is Constitutional. ANYTHING!"
No, even if all branches and a majority of the people agree, and have for decades, if it is beyond Constitutional authority, then it is unconstitutional. One example of this is federal jury trials.The Sixth Amendment begins: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury...", but this has been interpreted to mean only criminal prosecutions with a potential sentence of over six months, which is an unconstitutional contradiction of the plain language of the amendment. (never mind the Seventh Amendment guarantee of jury trials in civil suits for more than $20, that was virtually a dead letter from the beginning.)
Your sources aren't good. Neither makes any citations. The first claims 10 times more acidic, but that is only a difference of 1 on the pH scale. The second claims that rain pH sometimes gets to 3.3, but does not note what normal rain pH is, or the fact that acidity can naturally go 20x higher than that from thunderstorms. Wikipedia says: "On Americas East Coast, rain that is derived from the Atlantic Ocean typically has a pH of 5.0-5.6; rain that comes across the continental from the west has a pH of 3.8-4.8; and local thunderstorms can have a pH as low as 2.0. Rain becomes acidic primarily due to the presence of two strong acids, sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and nitric acid (HNO3). Sulfuric acid is derived from natural sources such as volcanoes, and wetlands (sulfate reducing bacteria); and anthropogenic sources such as the combustion of fossil fuels, and mining where H2S is present. Nitric acid is produced by natural sources such as lightning, soil bacteria, and natural fires; while also produced anthropogenically by the combustion of fossil fuels and from power plants. In the past 20 years the concentrations of nitric and sulfuric acid has decreased in presence of rainwater, which may be due to the significant increase in ammonium (most likely as ammonia from livestock production), which acts as a buffer in acid rain and raising the pH." And: "In 1991, DENR provided its first assessment of acid rain in the United States. It reported that 5% of New England Lakes were acidic, with sulfates being the most common problem. They noted that 2% of the lakes could no longer support Brook Trout, and 6% of the lakes were unsuitable for the survival of many species of minnow." "Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976." "On March 10, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This rule provides states with a solution to the problem of power plant pollution that drifts from one state to another. CAIR will permanently cap emissions of SO2 and NOx in the eastern United States. When fully implemented, CAIR will reduce SO2 emissions in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia by over 70 percent and NOx emissions by over 60 percent from 2003 levels."
What, you're a physics teacher?! You should know that it is absolutely mathematically invalid to say "x degrees Celsius plus or minus y percent". Celsius is not a ratio scale. You have to use Kelvin to talk about ratios or percentages. That is why it is "3 degrees C" but "276.15 Kelvin". The Celsius scale does not have a proper zero point, Kelvin does.
3C = 276.15K, 276.15K ±5% = [262.34K, 289.96K] = [-9.8575C, 16.8075C], a range of 26.665K or C
4C = 277.15K, 277.15K ±7% = [257.7495K, 296.5505K] = [-15.4005C, 23.4005C], a range of 38.801K or C
The first range is entirely within the second range.
The response just makes it even worse. Lies piled on lies, spin on spin. This appears to me a clear case of deliberate scientific fraud and orchestrated coverup.
"I try to put a section in every paper entitled something like "Things That Did Not Work So Well", because any experiment or computation or theory is likely to involve some dead ends that seemed like a good idea at the time..."
Things That Did Not Work So Well: Accidentally applying coffee to the superconducting field magnets seemed to have a negative effect on both. Application to theorists, whether internally or externally, tended to increase volubility without notably increasing comprehensibility; while a positive qualitative effect was noted on ingestion by experimentalists, particularly graduate students.
Estate tax in the US is basically the same rates as income tax, (18-35%) but with only the amount over $5M being counted. Some states have their own estate tax, the feds now give a credit for that, too. There are many things, however, which count as part of the gross estate that one might not think of as being part of the estate.
They have changed plans. Hyperion is now Gen4 Energy. Now: 20% enriched uranium nitride, lead-bismuth cooled, 10-year / 25MWe, installation no sooner than 2018 (and probably later), no word on price, but likely $60M-$100M (early installations more expensive) judging by their niche target markets. They have an impressive team in both business and engineering.
"..India and China don't fall on that line due to the King effect." Which explains nothing, it only gives it a name. China and India are not nations, historically they were not unified states any more than Europe. They are actually empires composed of many nations.
"50 feet higher is what will happen if we burn all the Canadian oil sands." No, the seas will not rise 50 feet. The wildest estimates are about 8 ft by 2100, assuming 6C expected heating (top of the range, 1C is the bottom) and then far more melting and expansion than IPCC estimates for that amount of heating. The actual projections are more like 40cm, (and that's assuming a doubling in the rate of sea level rise already) but the error bars are huge for both expected heating and resulting sea level rise. 50 feet is many standard deviations outside those bars. It's not going to happen. Even if we burned all the tar sands (which would be a bad idea for many reasons besides warming, and is unlikely to happen), it would take centuries to get 50 feet of sea level rise.
"15 Terawatts to power the world [wikipedia.org] and each fission reactor apparently provides about 1 gigawatt [euronuclear.org], so to furnish 50% of the world's energy needs of today with nuclear, we'd need to build 1 billion nuclear fission reactors."
No. No. No. Even assuming your figures, 15TW/1GW = 15,000, not 1 billion.
From the same Wikipedia article you cited, total fossil fuel use is the equivalent of 4.2e20J worldwide for 2008. That's thermal power equivalent, not electric. If the average nuclear reactor is 1GW electric, and is 40% efficient, that's 2.5GW thermal. The average actual output per plant is about double that, since a plant will have an average of 2 reactors. (Same WP article and links say 0.93TW / 439 plants = 2.11 GW) So, say 5GW thermal per plant =.1.58e17J per plant per year. 4.2e20J/1.58e17J = 2658 nuclear power plants or 5316 reactors to replace all fossil fuels, then add back the 439 existing plants= 3097 plants, 6242 1GWe reactors would replace all world fossil fuel use at current consumption rates. (Cross checking with the figure 143,851TWh primary energy for 2008, and using 3GW thermal per reactor (33% efficient), gives 5470 reactors to replace all world energy, so the above calculation is likely an overestimate. )
(Fossil and Nuclear are 87% of all energy. At most 50% more would replace all the other sources of energy, too, assuming that the others sources are electrical rather than thermal equivalent. -- that's 1/(1 - (1-0.87)/40%)
4.6x as many would get the entire world up to US levels of energy consumption. 7x as many would do both. 10x as many would support a population of 9.5billion at higher than current US levels for all energy needs.) So assuming 10x needed to provide all energy for the future world at US consumption rates, 30,970 plants, 62,420 1GWe reactors would be the most the world could ever need, and is likely an extreme overestimate.
Don't claim that there wouldn't be enough fuel for so many reactors, either. The demonstrated energy density of thorium dioxide is 1.6e13J/kg, with nearly 100% burnup. Assuming 5.2e20J current yearly energy use, that's 32,400 tonnes of thorium dioxide per year, or perhaps as much as 10x that in the future. No one knows what the reserves are really because no one wants thorium now - it's a high- concentration byproduct of rare-earth mining, with 600,000 - 3,000,000 tons of high grade ore in just one US deposit. If 5% of the cost of $0.05/kWh electricity went to fuel, thorium would sell for $11,000/kg, at 1/10th which price, 100s of millions of tons would be economically extractable from common granite. We have enough fuel to last for millennia, and the technology to use it.
"As a scientist, I'm frustrated by the apparent fact that most people don't care about the science. "
I'm appalled that someone who claims to be a scientist is unable to tell when his figures are off by over five orders of magnitude.
They have changed plans. Hyperion is now Gen4 Energy. Now: 20% enriched uranium nitride, lead-bismuth cooled, 10-year / 25MWe, installation no sooner than 2018 (and probably later), no word on price, but likely $60M-$100M (early installations more expensive) judging by their niche target markets. They have an impressive team in both business and engineering.
"some pedantic slashdotter is actually going to reply to this after finding some reference to something that could arguably be a "square triangle" just to prove me wrong. "
Well, this is Slashdot, we're here for all your pedantry needs. Unfortunately the best I can do for you is a three-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 360 degrees, just like a square, or an equilateral four-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 180 degrees, just like a triangle. (Spherical and hyperbolic special cases respectively.).
Well if he's trolling it's epic, going on for months of posting history on slashdot, with some unrelated posts, too. There is corroborating evidence online for most of it but the work at Target and the leg show up in one set of sources and the computer/Japanese stuff in another. It's possible icongorilla has assumed Zach Dovel's information and woven into his own story. Or not. The real Z.D. supposedly has a NOC engineer job. But maybe it's really the same guy and he's just puffing his resume a bit. I'd say ~70% probability it's a really epic troll, 30% probability it's truth. If someone asked the one with the nice Z.D. linkedin profile and also the guy with the zakkudo wordpress blog if he's really icongorilla or not,it would clear things up.
There basically is no welfare anymore. Well, there's food stamps, but that is an undisguised agricultural subsidy. Even so, the Republicans want to slash it now so they can buy more $300million broken fighter jets and $400/gal. fuel for "our brave men and women in uniform". Minimum wage is way too rich to get Medicaid in most states. AFDC has pretty short lifetime limits, and it's essentially only for women with children.
I suppose you also believe in hospitals denying you a certified copy of your birth certificate when they say 30 years later, that while the hospital got paid, that your mom's insurance company claims your mom didn't pay her insurance in full? Even if that means you can't get a driver's license or a passport because of it?
Maybe the validity of your marriage and the legitimacy of your children should depend on whether you're current on the credit card that paid the catering bill?
Schools have already gotten their money from the lender. The student had a contract with the school that the school is breaking. The lender is interfering in that contract, which is a tort, with damages to one's career and earnings.
1966 Harvard tuition: $1760 ($12460 in today's dollars). 2012 Harvard tuition: $52,460 - and it was a much better school in 1966. (Plus, it has a $26B endowment, not counting its buildings and campus.)
There is a huge amount of waste and fraud. A medium-sized class pays hundreds per hour, a lecture several thousand. The professors don't get most of that. The buildings are mostly donated, although some of the tuition money does go to white-elephant edifices. Libraries get only a tiny cut. Maintenance isn't that expensive. No property taxes, no debts, no income taxes. The best I can figure is that most of the cash goes to useless administrators, the rest is embezzled one way or another. It really is a mystery.
The call itself very likely occurred, there is corroborating evidence. What was said by Barbara Olson is another matter. Nobody is going to have a perfect memory of what was said in calls like that, and when recalling, some amount of reconstruction, often verging on confabulation is going to take place, particularly when there is a motive to "spin" the information, as there surely is for a political appointee trial lawyer working for an administration that was using the attacks as a mandate for wide-reaching new policies. Such spinning often is not a conscious act.
Olson has a mixed record. On the one hand he was involved in Regan's Iran-Contra defense, the appeal of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Bush v. Gore, arguing that the detention camp at Guantanamo is outside US court jurisdiction, and Citizens United v. FEC; on the other hand, he fought inside the Bush administration for some system of due process to be available to detainees, he was counsel in a case against California's gay marriage ban, supported the rights of the so-called "ground-zero mosque" and has been married to a Democrat for some years now.
We report that extended exposure to broad-spectrum terahertz radiation results in specific changes in cellular functions that are closely related to DNA-directed gene transcription. Our gene chip survey of gene expression shows that whereas 89% of the protein coding genes in mouse stem cells do not respond to the applied terahertz radiation, certain genes are activated, while other are repressed. RT-PCR experiments with selected gene probes corresponding to transcripts in the three groups of genes detail the gene specific effect. The response was not only gene specific but also irradiation conditions dependent. Our findings suggest that the applied terahertz irradiation accelerates cell differentiation toward adipose phenotype by activating the transcription factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG). Finally, our molecular dynamics computer simulations indicate that the local breathing dynamics of the PPARG promoter DNA coincides with the gene specific response to the THz radiation. We propose that THz radiation is a potential tool for cellular reprogramming.
Translation for the media: "Study Says Porno-Scanners Make You Fatter".
The box-cutter thing is likely a myth. Also, it's "Trade", not "Trace". "No one on United Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center, reported anything about weapons or tactics. One flight attendant on American Flight 11, which also crashed into the World Trade Center, said she was disabled by a chemical spray, while another flight attendant said a passenger was stabbed or shot. On the Pentagon plane, American Flight 77, Barbara Olson reported hijackers carrying knives and box cutters but did not describe how they took the cockpit. And on United Flight 93, passengers reported knives but also a hijacker threatening to explode a bomb. The box cutter-knives story isn't demonstrably false, but it serves to divert attention from the other weapons and to mask the fact that we don't have any idea how the hijackings happened. " http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/09/what_you_think_you_know_about_sept_11_.html
And there is reason to be skeptical about the Barbara Olson story, since the only source is her husband, Ted Olson, who at the time was U.S. Solicitor General to a notoriously mendacious and criminal White House.
Slashdot Mirror
Meta-mod insightful. (does posting undo metamods?) /grammar nazi
But they'll still be able to track your cellphone.
"I commend google on there newest..." should be: "I commend Google on their newest..."
It's capital controls through the back door. It's unbelievably onerous - essentially the US government is a party to every transaction you make throughout the world, and every transaction any company or trust in which a US person has any interest makes anywhere in the world. But of course the Secretary of the Treasury can exempt anybody he likes.
"anything Congress deems necessary, which the courts also deem necessary, which the President and all subsequent Presidents deem necessary, and which voters deem necessary in all subsequent elections by not electing contrarian representatives, is Constitutional. ANYTHING!"
No, even if all branches and a majority of the people agree, and have for decades, if it is beyond Constitutional authority, then it is unconstitutional. One example of this is federal jury trials.The Sixth Amendment begins: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury...", but this has been interpreted to mean only criminal prosecutions with a potential sentence of over six months, which is an unconstitutional contradiction of the plain language of the amendment. (never mind the Seventh Amendment guarantee of jury trials in civil suits for more than $20, that was virtually a dead letter from the beginning.)
That first link should have been: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain#Acidity
Your sources aren't good. Neither makes any citations. The first claims 10 times more acidic, but that is only a difference of 1 on the pH scale. The second claims that rain pH sometimes gets to 3.3, but does not note what normal rain pH is, or the fact that acidity can naturally go 20x higher than that from thunderstorms. Wikipedia says:
"On Americas East Coast, rain that is derived from the Atlantic Ocean typically has a pH of 5.0-5.6; rain that comes across the continental from the west has a pH of 3.8-4.8; and local thunderstorms can have a pH as low as 2.0. Rain becomes acidic primarily due to the presence of two strong acids, sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and nitric acid (HNO3). Sulfuric acid is derived from natural sources such as volcanoes, and wetlands (sulfate reducing bacteria); and anthropogenic sources such as the combustion of fossil fuels, and mining where H2S is present. Nitric acid is produced by natural sources such as lightning, soil bacteria, and natural fires; while also produced anthropogenically by the combustion of fossil fuels and from power plants. In the past 20 years the concentrations of nitric and sulfuric acid has decreased in presence of rainwater, which may be due to the significant increase in ammonium (most likely as ammonia from livestock production), which acts as a buffer in acid rain and raising the pH."
And:
"In 1991, DENR provided its first assessment of acid rain in the United States. It reported that 5% of New England Lakes were acidic, with sulfates being the most common problem. They noted that 2% of the lakes could no longer support Brook Trout, and 6% of the lakes were unsuitable for the survival of many species of minnow."
"Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976."
"On March 10, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This rule provides states with a solution to the problem of power plant pollution that drifts from one state to another. CAIR will permanently cap emissions of SO2 and NOx in the eastern United States. When fully implemented, CAIR will reduce SO2 emissions in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia by over 70 percent and NOx emissions by over 60 percent from 2003 levels."
So the problem is not current.
What, you're a physics teacher?! You should know that it is absolutely mathematically invalid to say "x degrees Celsius plus or minus y percent". Celsius is not a ratio scale. You have to use Kelvin to talk about ratios or percentages. That is why it is "3 degrees C" but "276.15 Kelvin". The Celsius scale does not have a proper zero point, Kelvin does.
3C = 276.15K,
276.15K ±5% = [262.34K, 289.96K] = [-9.8575C, 16.8075C], a range of 26.665K or C
4C = 277.15K,
277.15K ±7% = [257.7495K, 296.5505K] = [-15.4005C, 23.4005C], a range of 38.801K or C
The first range is entirely within the second range.
The response just makes it even worse. Lies piled on lies, spin on spin. This appears to me a clear case of deliberate scientific fraud and orchestrated coverup.
"I try to put a section in every paper entitled something like "Things That Did Not Work So Well", because any experiment or computation or theory is likely to involve some dead ends that seemed like a good idea at the time..."
Things That Did Not Work So Well:
Accidentally applying coffee to the superconducting field magnets seemed to have a negative effect on both. Application to theorists, whether internally or externally, tended to increase volubility without notably increasing comprehensibility; while a positive qualitative effect was noted on ingestion by experimentalists, particularly graduate students.
Estate tax in the US is basically the same rates as income tax, (18-35%) but with only the amount over $5M being counted. Some states have their own estate tax, the feds now give a credit for that, too. There are many things, however, which count as part of the gross estate that one might not think of as being part of the estate.
Repost of my comment from a few days ago:
They have changed plans. Hyperion is now Gen4 Energy. Now: 20% enriched uranium nitride, lead-bismuth cooled, 10-year / 25MWe, installation no sooner than 2018 (and probably later), no word on price, but likely $60M-$100M (early installations more expensive) judging by their niche target markets. They have an impressive team in both business and engineering.
"..India and China don't fall on that line due to the King effect."
Which explains nothing, it only gives it a name.
China and India are not nations, historically they were not unified states any more than Europe. They are actually empires composed of many nations.
"50 feet higher is what will happen if we burn all the Canadian oil sands."
No, the seas will not rise 50 feet. The wildest estimates are about 8 ft by 2100, assuming 6C expected heating (top of the range, 1C is the bottom) and then far more melting and expansion than IPCC estimates for that amount of heating. The actual projections are more like 40cm, (and that's assuming a doubling in the rate of sea level rise already) but the error bars are huge for both expected heating and resulting sea level rise. 50 feet is many standard deviations outside those bars. It's not going to happen. Even if we burned all the tar sands (which would be a bad idea for many reasons besides warming, and is unlikely to happen), it would take centuries to get 50 feet of sea level rise.
"15 Terawatts to power the world [wikipedia.org] and each fission reactor apparently provides about 1 gigawatt [euronuclear.org], so to furnish 50% of the world's energy needs of today with nuclear, we'd need to build 1 billion nuclear fission reactors."
No. No. No. Even assuming your figures, 15TW/1GW = 15,000, not 1 billion.
From the same Wikipedia article you cited, total fossil fuel use is the equivalent of 4.2e20J worldwide for 2008. That's thermal power equivalent, not electric. If the average nuclear reactor is 1GW electric, and is 40% efficient, that's 2.5GW thermal. The average actual output per plant is about double that, since a plant will have an average of 2 reactors. (Same WP article and links say 0.93TW / 439 plants = 2.11 GW) .1.58e17J per plant per year. 4.2e20J/1.58e17J = 2658 nuclear power plants or 5316 reactors to replace all fossil fuels, then add back the 439 existing plants=
So, say 5GW thermal per plant =
3097 plants, 6242 1GWe reactors would replace all world fossil fuel use at current consumption rates.
(Cross checking with the figure 143,851TWh primary energy for 2008, and using 3GW thermal per reactor (33% efficient), gives 5470 reactors to replace all world energy, so the above calculation is likely an overestimate. )
(Fossil and Nuclear are 87% of all energy. At most 50% more would replace all the other sources of energy, too, assuming that the others sources are electrical rather than thermal equivalent. -- that's 1/(1 - (1-0.87)/40%)
4.6x as many would get the entire world up to US levels of energy consumption. 7x as many would do both. 10x as many would support a population of 9.5billion at higher than current US levels for all energy needs.)
So assuming 10x needed to provide all energy for the future world at US consumption rates,
30,970 plants, 62,420 1GWe reactors would be the most the world could ever need, and is likely an extreme overestimate.
Don't claim that there wouldn't be enough fuel for so many reactors, either. The demonstrated energy density of thorium dioxide is 1.6e13J/kg, with nearly 100% burnup. Assuming 5.2e20J current yearly energy use, that's 32,400 tonnes of thorium dioxide per year, or perhaps as much as 10x that in the future. No one knows what the reserves are really because no one wants thorium now - it's a high- concentration byproduct of rare-earth mining, with 600,000 - 3,000,000 tons of high grade ore in just one US deposit. If 5% of the cost of $0.05/kWh electricity went to fuel, thorium would sell for $11,000/kg, at 1/10th which price, 100s of millions of tons would be economically extractable from common granite. We have enough fuel to last for millennia, and the technology to use it.
"As a scientist, I'm frustrated by the apparent fact that most people don't care about the science. "
I'm appalled that someone who claims to be a scientist is unable to tell when his figures are off by over five orders of magnitude.
They have changed plans. Hyperion is now Gen4 Energy. Now: 20% enriched uranium nitride, lead-bismuth cooled, 10-year / 25MWe, installation no sooner than 2018 (and probably later), no word on price, but likely $60M-$100M (early installations more expensive) judging by their niche target markets. They have an impressive team in both business and engineering.
"Get 2 ea. 6' copper ground spikes ... Careful not to bend them too much in the process. They aren't iron."
Yes, they are. They're just copper-plated.
Which also lets you take off your tinfoil hat indoors.
"some pedantic slashdotter is actually going to reply to this after finding some reference to something that could arguably be a "square triangle" just to prove me wrong. "
Well, this is Slashdot, we're here for all your pedantry needs. Unfortunately the best I can do for you is a three-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 360 degrees, just like a square, or an equilateral four-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 180 degrees, just like a triangle. (Spherical and hyperbolic special cases respectively.).
Well if he's trolling it's epic, going on for months of posting history on slashdot, with some unrelated posts, too. There is corroborating evidence online for most of it but the work at Target and the leg show up in one set of sources and the computer/Japanese stuff in another. It's possible icongorilla has assumed Zach Dovel's information and woven into his own story. Or not. The real Z.D. supposedly has a NOC engineer job. But maybe it's really the same guy and he's just puffing his resume a bit. I'd say ~70% probability it's a really epic troll, 30% probability it's truth. If someone asked the one with the nice Z.D. linkedin profile and also the guy with the zakkudo wordpress blog if he's really icongorilla or not,it would clear things up.
"Be on welfare. "
There basically is no welfare anymore. Well, there's food stamps, but that is an undisguised agricultural subsidy. Even so, the Republicans want to slash it now so they can buy more $300million broken fighter jets and $400/gal. fuel for "our brave men and women in uniform". Minimum wage is way too rich to get Medicaid in most states. AFDC has pretty short lifetime limits, and it's essentially only for women with children.
I suppose you also believe in hospitals denying you a certified copy of your birth certificate when they say 30 years later, that while the hospital got paid, that your mom's insurance company claims your mom didn't pay her insurance in full? Even if that means you can't get a driver's license or a passport because of it?
Maybe the validity of your marriage and the legitimacy of your children should depend on whether you're current on the credit card that paid the catering bill?
Schools have already gotten their money from the lender. The student had a contract with the school that the school is breaking. The lender is interfering in that contract, which is a tort, with damages to one's career and earnings.
1966 Harvard tuition: $1760 ($12460 in today's dollars). 2012 Harvard tuition: $52,460 - and it was a much better school in 1966. (Plus, it has a $26B endowment, not counting its buildings and campus.)
There is a huge amount of waste and fraud. A medium-sized class pays hundreds per hour, a lecture several thousand. The professors don't get most of that. The buildings are mostly donated, although some of the tuition money does go to white-elephant edifices. Libraries get only a tiny cut. Maintenance isn't that expensive. No property taxes, no debts, no income taxes. The best I can figure is that most of the cash goes to useless administrators, the rest is embezzled one way or another. It really is a mystery.
There seem to be a bunch of checks outstanding from his account for $2.56.
The call itself very likely occurred, there is corroborating evidence. What was said by Barbara Olson is another matter. Nobody is going to have a perfect memory of what was said in calls like that, and when recalling, some amount of reconstruction, often verging on confabulation is going to take place, particularly when there is a motive to "spin" the information, as there surely is for a political appointee trial lawyer working for an administration that was using the attacks as a mandate for wide-reaching new policies. Such spinning often is not a conscious act.
Olson has a mixed record. On the one hand he was involved in Regan's Iran-Contra defense, the appeal of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Bush v. Gore, arguing that the detention camp at Guantanamo is outside US court jurisdiction, and Citizens United v. FEC; on the other hand, he fought inside the Bush administration for some system of due process to be available to detainees, he was counsel in a case against California's gay marriage ban, supported the rights of the so-called "ground-zero mosque" and has been married to a Democrat for some years now.
And radio waves alone can affect gene expression, no nanoparticles needed: Mammalian Stem Cells Reprogramming in Response to Terahertz Radiation
Translation for the media: "Study Says Porno-Scanners Make You Fatter".
The box-cutter thing is likely a myth. Also, it's "Trade", not "Trace".
"No one on United Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center, reported anything about weapons or tactics. One flight attendant on American Flight 11, which also crashed into the World Trade Center, said she was disabled by a chemical spray, while another flight attendant said a passenger was stabbed or shot. On the Pentagon plane, American Flight 77, Barbara Olson reported hijackers carrying knives and box cutters but did not describe how they took the cockpit. And on United Flight 93, passengers reported knives but also a hijacker threatening to explode a bomb. The box cutter-knives story isn't demonstrably false, but it serves to divert attention from the other weapons and to mask the fact that we don't have any idea how the hijackings happened. "
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/09/what_you_think_you_know_about_sept_11_.html
And there is reason to be skeptical about the Barbara Olson story, since the only source is her husband, Ted Olson, who at the time was U.S. Solicitor General to a notoriously mendacious and criminal White House.
So that'd be:
Gimp's
New
Annoying
Acronym?