I know you think it's dumb that people are suing Nintendo, but I'm certainly not a troll.
From a practical perspective, if you spill something hot on yourself, you probably shouldn't just let it sit there for 90 seconds.
Hot liquids are aborbed by clothing and held against the skin. The time to remove the burning agent is the time it would take to remove your wet clothes. How quickly can you get out of soaked jeans in a car seat?
Real world example: a few months ago my wife scalded herself while making tea when a glass pitcher broke. She was wearing boxer shorts. The front of both thighs received first degree burns that healed in a week, with one small exception: where the tea splashed onto the hem of the shorts. In that small area the burn was second degree, even though she took them off as fast as she could. (no, we did not sue anyone:-))
Even if the coffee temperature was reduced, the woman would still be seriously burned. Any hot food (or anything hot, really) has the capacity to burn, yet people still manage to eat and drink hot things regularly without serious injury. Did you miss the statistic that only 1 in 24 million people a year complained about the coffee being too hot? The other millions apparently could deal with it just fine.
This is just not true; temperature makes a difference. In kids for example a second degree burn is caused by 140F water in one second; at 130F it takes 10 seconds; at 120F it takes several minutes. All three temperatures will taste "hot". Furthermore the point is not how often accidents occur--that is affected more by cup/lid design than anything else, probably. The point is the potential severity of any individual accident.
So what? Pretty much all heated food or drink is prepared and usually served at temperatures higher than it can be immediately consumed. If McDonald's hands you fresh french fries which just came out of the fryer they will likely burn you too if you try to eat them immediately. Most people are smart enough to let hot food cool down before eating or drinking it, or if they do manage to burn themselves they don't blame others for their own mistakes.
Again, the point is not whether something is hot or not, the point is exactly how hot it is. We're certainly advanced enough as a society to consider situations in terms of actual temperatures.
The restaurants that continue to serve overheated coffee do so at their peril, and Starbucks in fact has faced lawsuits about it.
From a practical perspective there is absolutely no reason to serve coffee at a tissue-destroying temperature. The argument that people like hot coffee makes so sense since no one can drink coffee at that temperature without suffering serious burns. No one! People have to wait before drinking, and time of waiting represents exposure to a hazard, since any spill will scald them.
The only reason that restaurants continue to keep their coffee so hot is that it is cheaper to use equipment that heats continuously regardless of temperature. This can result in beverages being served that are literally at boiling point. If beverages were simply heated to an appropriate temperature and kept there, a) they could be consumed right away, and b) even if they did spill they would not cause serious injury. This is clearly a better way to do things.
That's pretty insightful post but it misses the fundamental competition between a band and its label, and the ways in which they use each other. Most bands make much more money on their tours than they do their albums. This is especially true for mid-size bands--professional musicians but not rich. From their perspective, the purpose of the album is to drive attendance at shows, and the purpose of labels is to handle the production and distribution of the album.
This is in direct opposition to the labels' point of view. They make very little money off the tours, and to them the bread and butter is album sales and licensing. This system works well in that the self-interest of each party strengthens the other: the labels sell as many albums as they can, which leads to more kids at shows, which leads to more record sales, etc.
The fly in the ointment is that today it is so much easier to distribute music to the masses that the cost has dropped to zero. Thus, to a band, the only advantage of a label is in providing the capital for the album production. A mid-size band might conceivably not care if their albums sell a ton, as long as the music reaches the critics and the kids online.
But the labels care dearly how many albums sell. That is why you see the RIAA (an association of labels only) fighting as hard as they are. They are faced with a dramatically shrinking business model and they are trying to litigate/legislate it back into existence.
The music industry is already changing as you describe, but it is the bands who are driving it, as many of them realize they no longer need a big label and go (or stay) independent. The live music industry, and bands, will do just fine. It is the labels (who built their fortunes on distribution) who are hurting. They don't like ideas like yours because it means a smaller role (and profits) for them. They don't realize that it's going to happen whether they like it or not.
There are so many variations to the meaning of the word "natural" that it's as fruitful a subject for critical analysis as it is useful for communication. When you use the word you convey as much about the way you view the world as you convey objective information.
The question of what is "natural" about human activity has been a point of tension for hundreds of years. That includes dramatic tension too--read "King Lear" with a critical eye and watch how its many interpretations are used to create drama.
Your post arises from a broad consideration that everything that exists, exists within nature--therefore everything is natural. But that ignores the broad historical use of the word as a distinction between conscious man and unconscious animals and processes.
This is an angle that the environmental movement has not yet come to terms with. The gorilla in the room is not the carbon production of the currently industrialized countries, it is the carbon production in the near future (20-50 years) of the currently inductrializing countries, which are far more populous.
You are wrong. There are numerous environmental organizations working on the issues of the industrializing nations. Just because you have not heard of them, does not mean they do not exist. Here is just one example.
Most of the rhetoric of the global warming movement has been centered about modest lifestyle changes in developing countries: smaller cars, power conservation, and subsidizing carbon neutral energy sources. These are easy changes to make for the average westerner: They don't strongly impact our quality of life. Too bad the the carbon withheld from the atmosphere due to these changes is so small compared to the quantities that will be released a generation from now from the populous countries that are currently industrializing.
This completely misses the point. The focus is not on modest lifestyle changes, it is on developing technologies that produce major impacts on carbon dioxide emissions, with only modest impacts on lifestyle. It's not just about getting everyone to buy a smaller car--the important work is getting the car makers to produce much more efficient machines that do the same thing. My 1997 car gets 30 MPG; my mom's hybrid gets more than 40 MPG; and my friend's turbo diesel gets 50 MPG. All three cars are the same size and go the same speed.
For the global warming movement to address the gorilla in the room, they would have to ask people in China and India to forgo that first refrigerator, automobile, computer, tractor, or paved road. And that is not a morally defensable or politically feasable position. Until the global warming movement faces up to this fact their efforts in the developed world are just a sideshow.
Bullshit, this is a stupid straw man. The U.S. went through our polluting phase with these technologies because we were developing them for the first time. Now they are already developed and vastly improved. There is absolutely no reason China should have to recapitulate the entire nasty process, especially when we are so open to sharing technology and subsidizing a modern manufacturing base through open global trade. The point is to encourage them to learn from our mistakes and build energy efficiency and clean technologies into their infrastructure from the beginning--a choice we did not have.
- Company is founded in 1980 - Celebrates "1st anniversary in 1981" - Celebrates "2nd anniversary in 1982" - Celebrates "3rd anniversary in 1983" - Celebrates "4th anniversary in 1984" - Celebrates "5th anniversary in 1985" - Celebrates "6th anniversary in 1986" - Celebrates "7th anniversary in 1987" - Celebrates "8th anniversary in 1988" - Celebrates "9th anniversary in 1989" - Celebrates "10th anniversary in 1990"
The GP reads like an example of what is wrong with the U.S. these days--policy based on ideology and freestanding logic with an unknown (unexpressed, maybe non-existant) connection to objective reality.
Maybe the private sector could do a better job, I don't know. More to the point I'm happy to say that I don't know until I see some rigorous studies that indicate one way or the other.
My knowledge of history is that the U.S. has had publically funded education since before 1900, and since then we have grown tremendously in power and wealth. Based on that my initial thoughts are that public education has not held us back and is likely to have been a contributing factor.
Foreign vs. Domestic does not matter
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Saving U.S. Science
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but ultimately it makes no difference to the nation whether we raise or import our scientists and engineers, as long as we get the benefit of their advances first. IMHO the idea that the U.S. was at some time a powerhouse of home-grown scientists and engineers is a myth. Across the board, in every discipline you will find immigrants as well as born-Americans at the heart of our success.
Does anyone really care where Einstein, Teller, or Fermi (for example) were born? No, what matters is that we figured out nuclear technology first. America is a nation of immigrants and we should try very hard to resist the impulse to close ourselves off to it. If the next bioengineering genius is French I want to make it very attractive and easy for him to immigrate to the U.S. rather than stay in France.
Well, excepting those with extraordinarily concentrated wealth, like the founder of a company, they can just liquidate their stocks. Sure, the last ones will sell for less than the first, but they will all sell and make them billions. And, any drop in the price of the stock will hold true to millions of other people with stock or funds that are invested in stock.
Sure they CAN. The point is that it is not in their economic interest to do so. If they do sell, those billions have to go somewhere and they go right back into some other kind of investment. Thus the incentive is not to liquidate, but to maximise the value of invested wealth.
And I don't think you understand the multiplicative effect of capital. A single person owning 10% of an established public company is just about enough for them to control it.
Um, that was pretty much my point--the wealthy control capital, they don't just have lot of money sitting around in a pool like Scrooge McDuck.
Large investors are unnecessary. Banks did the job before them.
Banks are large investors, they are just synthetic vs. real people. And who owns and controls the banks?
And their money is no better at generating growth than mine. I have seen nothing that indicates to me that wealth is good for the economy. Income is, but wealth isn't. But income is taxed and wealth isn't. There is nothing magical about the wealth of the wealthy that helps the economy.
The point isn't that wealthy people are necessary, it is that they are an unavoidable result of an economy. A democratically elected government, who does not control the capital, is the best counterbalance. Attempting to directly control the economy and government at once doesn't work out in the long run.
But surely it's not hidden in a mattress anywhere. It's out in the economy, making the economy work. The money *is* changing hands. Sure, it's making Rich Bastard wealthier, but it's making us wealthier, too. Maybe it's in a treasury bill, giving our government a loan and working capital to buy things and pay salaries. Or in a stock, which gives a company working capital to buy things and pay salaries.
This is a great point, one that is essential for understanding the relative advantages of capitalism over communism or socialism. It's not so much that the richest 1% own the majority of capital, it is that they control it. It's not ownership the way we normally think of it with respect to personal property, because there are practical limitations on how they can use it. Bill Gates can't just liquidate his stock and take the cash; partway through the process the resulting market crash would wipe out his wealth. What he can do, though, is choose where it will work in the economy.
As the capital he controls is worked through the economy, it creates growth. His appreciation and return is a small tax on that growth, however like taxes it is quickly reinvested as new capital. The rich capitalists compete with the government in directing the economy. This creates the competitive tension between elitist business and populist government that drives the improvement of both.
I have no objection to an article detailing some of the tricks people can use to track other people. The over-hyped connection to Nike and Apple is the ridiculous part. It's not like the only place in the world to get an electronic transmitter or RFID is from this one particular product that just happens to marry two of the best-known brands in the world. And it's not like an electronic tag is the only way to figure out when someone is in their dorm room.
I bet Apple didn't bother encrypting the transmission because all it does is transmit an ID and data stream. The data is totally unimportant unless you happen to care about someone's training program. And here's the crucial part--the ID is also totally unimportant because when people go jogging, they almost always go jogging in a public place. And when you're jogging in public you're already broadcasting your ID at least 60 feet, via the light that is reflected off your recognizable face.
I paid for my jammer so I should get to use it when I want. Personal cell phones should never be allowed in a movie theater. Only on-call surgeons and the like should be allowed to use them, nobody else. And even then, I really, really, REALLY don't like the idea. Why can't one person in a theater of 400 simply skip the movie that night if they absolutely cannot be out of contact? They can't just go another time? There's 25 other times to go see that movie in a week (at least) and they're all going to be the same movie. I'm sure two hours is a lot of time to an on-call surgeon; they might think twice before they spend it at a movie theater.
Missing cell phone calls has never been a problem with any of the emergency doctors or federal special agents I know (in Washington DC, where you would expect this to be an issue). It's certainly not enough of an issue to warrant a ban on the use of cell phone jammer on private property.
Researchers at the University of Washington have published a report detailing many easy and cheap ways the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit previously discussed on Slashdot can be used to track individuals, even when they are not carrying their iPod.
No, but they still have to have that particular pair of shoes on, and you have to be within 60 feet of them!
The amount of effort it would take to track someone via the transmitter in one of their (presumably many shoes) is ridiculous compared to the amount of effort involved in shall we say more traditional methods of stalking.
Sure, you could custom-hack a Linux "gumstick" computer to read the shoe tag and transmit it to a computer to see when your girlfriend is home. But really all you'd ever know for sure is when that particular shoe is at home. Maybe a better bet would be to just install a Web-enabled X10 cam with no hacking required. Or you could go really old-school-stalker and just drive by her damn house to see if the lights are on.
Sure I guess you could drive along behind some girl reading her electronic shoe tag from 60 feet away...on the other hand if you're within 60 feet you can probably SEE her with your own EYES.
I know iPods and security vulnerabilities are hot topics these days. That doesn't mean every story that crosses the two should get the breathless treatment. This is just blatant fear-mongering in an attempt to generate press. There isn't even any valuable information to be captured, like from an RFID credit card for example.
I totally agree and the only TV I watch now is over the rabbit ears! Seriously, that's true. Part of growing up for me was realizing a) TV is mostly a time waste and b) I'll watch a shitload of it anyway if I have access to enough channels.
Of course now I spend more free time on/., so how much have I really gained??
When I was 18-25, I ate a lot of ramen and PBJ, drove the piece of shit truck I could afford, slept on a mattress on the floor of a group house, and had to go in with 3 other guys to get cable. I was poor and frankly didn't give a shit about most of that stuff. I knew there was better stuff out there, but it was more important to me to spend my money on fun stuff. These days I drive a reliable station wagon, eat healthy and I'm saving up for a house.
Newsflash: youngsters don't have a lot of money, and don't really care about long-term quality. They are more impulsive and spend money all over the place because their interests have not settled down yet. They're more likely to want a hot new computer/iPod/phone/jacket etc long before their current one wears out. That means buying often, which means buying cheap.
Not many youngsters own new cars either, but I'd hardly say that spells doom for the car companies. People grow up, and coincedentally when they can afford nicer stuff, they tend to become more interested in quality.
Slam the scaremongering all you want, but at least have the intelligence to distinguish the popular-press scaremongering (the "imminent ice age" story from the 70's) from the actual science (anthrogenic-forced global warming today).
Einstein's constant was proposed in 1915 in support of his assumption, based on a philosophical disposition and a paucity of data on star velocities, that the universe was on average static. As you noted it lasted until 1931, but the key point in its topple from grace is not the length of time, but the availability of data to measure against. Once a bare minimum of good data was available, it became it obvious that it was not supported, and even Einstein recanted it.
In contrast, global warming has been under serious study for well over 3 decades, during which time the amounts of directly observed and proxy data available (not to mention the tools for modeling and analysis) have improved by orders of magnitude. Yet today the scientific community considers it even better supported than when it was first proposed.
It may be that to maintain our liberty we will be more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Or we may be less vulnerable. While it's true that free speech (and freedom of association, a separate but related right) may allow "the terrorists" to organize and recruit, it also allows their enemies (us, free Americans) to organize and recruit as well. One of the great national strengths that freedom of speech conveys is the power of many. Like open source software development, the power of many means that the more people who can observe and think about a problem, the more likely it is for the most effective solution to arise.
Freedom of speech means that there is greater opportunity for errors in methodology to be found, for problems to be reported, and for more diverse innovation in problem solving. What Newt is proposing does not lead to better solutions, it leads to better concentration of power in the hands of a small number of solution-creators. I prefer an America where journalists, bloggers, or anyone at all can stand up and say "Hey! We're going about this all wrong!" or "Hey, you forgot this important thing: __________" or "Hey! This guy (agency, etc) is not doing his job well!"
It's a competitive marketplace of ideas and I think Americans can compete just fine with our enemies--if we allow ourselves to.
And how long did it fly with the rest of scientific community?
Not long in fact, and Einstein himself referred to it as his biggest blunder. (Although in fact there is now renewed interest in it because of new observations.)
Your example supports the view that the scientific community cares first and foremost about being correct--not about "fitting in," not kowtowing to famous people, not getting rich.
I've pointed this out before, but I have yet to see any rigorous evidence for the assertion that scientists gain anything by somehow promoting a theory they do not believe is true.
It's classic FUD--an unfounded, unsupported ad hominem attack that draws attention from the substantive issue--the science itself. I could understand it if there were some evidence that scientists had anything to gain by promoting a movie they agree with. For example there is no question that oil companies have a financial stake in maintaining the status quo usage of fossil fuels, just like tobacco companies have a financial stake in the number of people who start smoking every year. But there's no evidence that all the climate scientists will be super-rich in a couple years if only the public would learn about global warming.
Do you think that scientists that have a vested interest in global warming (ie reputations, grant money, etc.) might support a film that furthers their cause?
Do you think you can get away with totally unfounded assertions just because you used a question mark?
Using my designs, my creations, and my story without permission, and they're not even getting it right. They've got the colors of the dinosaurs wrong for one thing, and their timeline is just way off. Please await official notice from my lawyer and/or a plague of some kind.
I dislike stories like these in a discussion of education because I think they are not really relevant and borderline manipulative. They invoke all the worst emotions from that teenage time of life--emotions that everyone experienced and that often carry heavy baggage. It sucks that adults did not treat you as an equal when you were 16. But I'd say that's more a function of being a 16-year-old than an overall failing of the education system. A lot of adults in all walks of life do not take teenagers seriously.
IMO the best way to judge the education system is by the future adult achievements of students, not necessarily by how well it treats each one or makes them feel at the time. In fact I'd say that one of the leading problems in the U.S. society is an over-emphasis on student's feelings vs. their achievement. Being a teenager sucks sometimes; I don't think the schools are entirely at fault for that. And incidentally, U.S. high school students are typically far less rigidly controlled than the Asian and European students to which they are often compared.
Should students have a voice equal to the adults who teach and govern them in the school setting? To me the answer is clearly no. It sounds like the adults at your school could definitely have handled the situation better. No doubt, and your story is regretable--its clearly a condemnation of the people involved (particularly the nurse). I have a real hard time expanding this into a blanket condemnation of the U.S. education system though. I'd respectfully submit that this has disproportionate importance to you because you're the one who lived it.
It sounds something like this: "today 3 American soldiers were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad." Or, "two teenagers are dead tonight after running into a telephone pole at high speed." Or, "researchers at the University of Virginia yesterday reported that high concentrations of PTFE in water induced tumors in rats." Straight up, factual reporting.
There is no such thing as news that is not biased. If you think you know of any, then it just proves that they are either good at hiding their bias, or they happen to have precisely the same bias you already have.
There is no such thing as a reporter who is unbiased. But the focus of journalism training is to learn to report news objectively and as free from bias as possible. The best reporters are in fact the ones who are best at hiding their bias--by reporting factual news, not opinion. Note that most "journalists" you've heard of do not fit this bill. The opinion shouters are always way more famous than actual reporters.
Anyone can tell me what they think of something. The hard part is finding out and reporting the facts of what happened in the first place. But consumers of news also have a responsibility, to consume critically. This does not mean assuming that everything I read is as biased as I am. It means using my critical reading and thinking skills to distinguish fact from opinion.
that New York Times reporters try their best to report factually and objectively despite their personal biases, while bloggers like Instapundit and DailyKos write to defend and trumpet their personal biases.
And if we're going to play "own your bias," the first place you might want to look is in a mirror:
The "anything to hurt Bush" reporting that has increasingly come to characterize the paper in the last four years...I now await the usual Slashdot downmodding of non-liberal political posts.
I'm not exactly seeing a lot of independently verifiable facts in your post.
Slashdot Mirror
Hot liquids are aborbed by clothing and held against the skin. The time to remove the burning agent is the time it would take to remove your wet clothes. How quickly can you get out of soaked jeans in a car seat?
Real world example: a few months ago my wife scalded herself while making tea when a glass pitcher broke. She was wearing boxer shorts. The front of both thighs received first degree burns that healed in a week, with one small exception: where the tea splashed onto the hem of the shorts. In that small area the burn was second degree, even though she took them off as fast as she could. (no, we did not sue anyone
This is just not true; temperature makes a difference. In kids for example a second degree burn is caused by 140F water in one second; at 130F it takes 10 seconds; at 120F it takes several minutes. All three temperatures will taste "hot". Furthermore the point is not how often accidents occur--that is affected more by cup/lid design than anything else, probably. The point is the potential severity of any individual accident.
Again, the point is not whether something is hot or not, the point is exactly how hot it is. We're certainly advanced enough as a society to consider situations in terms of actual temperatures.
The restaurants that continue to serve overheated coffee do so at their peril, and Starbucks in fact has faced lawsuits about it.
From a practical perspective there is absolutely no reason to serve coffee at a tissue-destroying temperature. The argument that people like hot coffee makes so sense since no one can drink coffee at that temperature without suffering serious burns. No one! People have to wait before drinking, and time of waiting represents exposure to a hazard, since any spill will scald them.
The only reason that restaurants continue to keep their coffee so hot is that it is cheaper to use equipment that heats continuously regardless of temperature. This can result in beverages being served that are literally at boiling point. If beverages were simply heated to an appropriate temperature and kept there, a) they could be consumed right away, and b) even if they did spill they would not cause serious injury. This is clearly a better way to do things.
I'll tell you later.
That's pretty insightful post but it misses the fundamental competition between a band and its label, and the ways in which they use each other. Most bands make much more money on their tours than they do their albums. This is especially true for mid-size bands--professional musicians but not rich. From their perspective, the purpose of the album is to drive attendance at shows, and the purpose of labels is to handle the production and distribution of the album.
This is in direct opposition to the labels' point of view. They make very little money off the tours, and to them the bread and butter is album sales and licensing. This system works well in that the self-interest of each party strengthens the other: the labels sell as many albums as they can, which leads to more kids at shows, which leads to more record sales, etc.
The fly in the ointment is that today it is so much easier to distribute music to the masses that the cost has dropped to zero. Thus, to a band, the only advantage of a label is in providing the capital for the album production. A mid-size band might conceivably not care if their albums sell a ton, as long as the music reaches the critics and the kids online.
But the labels care dearly how many albums sell. That is why you see the RIAA (an association of labels only) fighting as hard as they are. They are faced with a dramatically shrinking business model and they are trying to litigate/legislate it back into existence.
The music industry is already changing as you describe, but it is the bands who are driving it, as many of them realize they no longer need a big label and go (or stay) independent. The live music industry, and bands, will do just fine. It is the labels (who built their fortunes on distribution) who are hurting. They don't like ideas like yours because it means a smaller role (and profits) for them. They don't realize that it's going to happen whether they like it or not.
There are so many variations to the meaning of the word "natural" that it's as fruitful a subject for critical analysis as it is useful for communication. When you use the word you convey as much about the way you view the world as you convey objective information.
The question of what is "natural" about human activity has been a point of tension for hundreds of years. That includes dramatic tension too--read "King Lear" with a critical eye and watch how its many interpretations are used to create drama.
Your post arises from a broad consideration that everything that exists, exists within nature--therefore everything is natural. But that ignores the broad historical use of the word as a distinction between conscious man and unconscious animals and processes.
You are wrong. There are numerous environmental organizations working on the issues of the industrializing nations. Just because you have not heard of them, does not mean they do not exist. Here is just one example.
This completely misses the point. The focus is not on modest lifestyle changes, it is on developing technologies that produce major impacts on carbon dioxide emissions, with only modest impacts on lifestyle. It's not just about getting everyone to buy a smaller car--the important work is getting the car makers to produce much more efficient machines that do the same thing. My 1997 car gets 30 MPG; my mom's hybrid gets more than 40 MPG; and my friend's turbo diesel gets 50 MPG. All three cars are the same size and go the same speed.
Bullshit, this is a stupid straw man. The U.S. went through our polluting phase with these technologies because we were developing them for the first time. Now they are already developed and vastly improved. There is absolutely no reason China should have to recapitulate the entire nasty process, especially when we are so open to sharing technology and subsidizing a modern manufacturing base through open global trade. The point is to encourage them to learn from our mistakes and build energy efficiency and clean technologies into their infrastructure from the beginning--a choice we did not have.
- Company is founded in 1980
- Celebrates "1st anniversary in 1981"
- Celebrates "2nd anniversary in 1982"
- Celebrates "3rd anniversary in 1983"
- Celebrates "4th anniversary in 1984"
- Celebrates "5th anniversary in 1985"
- Celebrates "6th anniversary in 1986"
- Celebrates "7th anniversary in 1987"
- Celebrates "8th anniversary in 1988"
- Celebrates "9th anniversary in 1989"
- Celebrates "10th anniversary in 1990"
So what's the problem?
The GP reads like an example of what is wrong with the U.S. these days--policy based on ideology and freestanding logic with an unknown (unexpressed, maybe non-existant) connection to objective reality.
Maybe the private sector could do a better job, I don't know. More to the point I'm happy to say that I don't know until I see some rigorous studies that indicate one way or the other.
My knowledge of history is that the U.S. has had publically funded education since before 1900, and since then we have grown tremendously in power and wealth. Based on that my initial thoughts are that public education has not held us back and is likely to have been a contributing factor.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but ultimately it makes no difference to the nation whether we raise or import our scientists and engineers, as long as we get the benefit of their advances first. IMHO the idea that the U.S. was at some time a powerhouse of home-grown scientists and engineers is a myth. Across the board, in every discipline you will find immigrants as well as born-Americans at the heart of our success.
Does anyone really care where Einstein, Teller, or Fermi (for example) were born? No, what matters is that we figured out nuclear technology first. America is a nation of immigrants and we should try very hard to resist the impulse to close ourselves off to it. If the next bioengineering genius is French I want to make it very attractive and easy for him to immigrate to the U.S. rather than stay in France.
Sure they CAN. The point is that it is not in their economic interest to do so. If they do sell, those billions have to go somewhere and they go right back into some other kind of investment. Thus the incentive is not to liquidate, but to maximise the value of invested wealth.
Um, that was pretty much my point--the wealthy control capital, they don't just have lot of money sitting around in a pool like Scrooge McDuck.
Banks are large investors, they are just synthetic vs. real people. And who owns and controls the banks?
The point isn't that wealthy people are necessary, it is that they are an unavoidable result of an economy. A democratically elected government, who does not control the capital, is the best counterbalance. Attempting to directly control the economy and government at once doesn't work out in the long run.
This is a great point, one that is essential for understanding the relative advantages of capitalism over communism or socialism. It's not so much that the richest 1% own the majority of capital, it is that they control it. It's not ownership the way we normally think of it with respect to personal property, because there are practical limitations on how they can use it. Bill Gates can't just liquidate his stock and take the cash; partway through the process the resulting market crash would wipe out his wealth. What he can do, though, is choose where it will work in the economy.
As the capital he controls is worked through the economy, it creates growth. His appreciation and return is a small tax on that growth, however like taxes it is quickly reinvested as new capital. The rich capitalists compete with the government in directing the economy. This creates the competitive tension between elitist business and populist government that drives the improvement of both.
I have no objection to an article detailing some of the tricks people can use to track other people. The over-hyped connection to Nike and Apple is the ridiculous part. It's not like the only place in the world to get an electronic transmitter or RFID is from this one particular product that just happens to marry two of the best-known brands in the world. And it's not like an electronic tag is the only way to figure out when someone is in their dorm room.
I bet Apple didn't bother encrypting the transmission because all it does is transmit an ID and data stream. The data is totally unimportant unless you happen to care about someone's training program. And here's the crucial part--the ID is also totally unimportant because when people go jogging, they almost always go jogging in a public place. And when you're jogging in public you're already broadcasting your ID at least 60 feet, via the light that is reflected off your recognizable face.
I paid for my jammer so I should get to use it when I want. Personal cell phones should never be allowed in a movie theater. Only on-call surgeons and the like should be allowed to use them, nobody else. And even then, I really, really, REALLY don't like the idea. Why can't one person in a theater of 400 simply skip the movie that night if they absolutely cannot be out of contact? They can't just go another time? There's 25 other times to go see that movie in a week (at least) and they're all going to be the same movie. I'm sure two hours is a lot of time to an on-call surgeon; they might think twice before they spend it at a movie theater.
Missing cell phone calls has never been a problem with any of the emergency doctors or federal special agents I know (in Washington DC, where you would expect this to be an issue). It's certainly not enough of an issue to warrant a ban on the use of cell phone jammer on private property.
No, but they still have to have that particular pair of shoes on, and you have to be within 60 feet of them!
The amount of effort it would take to track someone via the transmitter in one of their (presumably many shoes) is ridiculous compared to the amount of effort involved in shall we say more traditional methods of stalking.
Sure, you could custom-hack a Linux "gumstick" computer to read the shoe tag and transmit it to a computer to see when your girlfriend is home. But really all you'd ever know for sure is when that particular shoe is at home. Maybe a better bet would be to just install a Web-enabled X10 cam with no hacking required. Or you could go really old-school-stalker and just drive by her damn house to see if the lights are on.
Sure I guess you could drive along behind some girl reading her electronic shoe tag from 60 feet away...on the other hand if you're within 60 feet you can probably SEE her with your own EYES.
I know iPods and security vulnerabilities are hot topics these days. That doesn't mean every story that crosses the two should get the breathless treatment. This is just blatant fear-mongering in an attempt to generate press. There isn't even any valuable information to be captured, like from an RFID credit card for example.
I totally agree and the only TV I watch now is over the rabbit ears! Seriously, that's true. Part of growing up for me was realizing a) TV is mostly a time waste and b) I'll watch a shitload of it anyway if I have access to enough channels.
/., so how much have I really gained??
Of course now I spend more free time on
When I was 18-25, I ate a lot of ramen and PBJ, drove the piece of shit truck I could afford, slept on a mattress on the floor of a group house, and had to go in with 3 other guys to get cable. I was poor and frankly didn't give a shit about most of that stuff. I knew there was better stuff out there, but it was more important to me to spend my money on fun stuff. These days I drive a reliable station wagon, eat healthy and I'm saving up for a house.
Newsflash: youngsters don't have a lot of money, and don't really care about long-term quality. They are more impulsive and spend money all over the place because their interests have not settled down yet. They're more likely to want a hot new computer/iPod/phone/jacket etc long before their current one wears out. That means buying often, which means buying cheap.
Not many youngsters own new cars either, but I'd hardly say that spells doom for the car companies. People grow up, and coincedentally when they can afford nicer stuff, they tend to become more interested in quality.
Slam the scaremongering all you want, but at least have the intelligence to distinguish the popular-press scaremongering (the "imminent ice age" story from the 70's) from the actual science (anthrogenic-forced global warming today).
Global warming was first proposed in the 1950's and first seriously considered in the 1970's, so you're off by a factor of at least two. http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatechange.html
Einstein's constant was proposed in 1915 in support of his assumption, based on a philosophical disposition and a paucity of data on star velocities, that the universe was on average static. As you noted it lasted until 1931, but the key point in its topple from grace is not the length of time, but the availability of data to measure against. Once a bare minimum of good data was available, it became it obvious that it was not supported, and even Einstein recanted it.
In contrast, global warming has been under serious study for well over 3 decades, during which time the amounts of directly observed and proxy data available (not to mention the tools for modeling and analysis) have improved by orders of magnitude. Yet today the scientific community considers it even better supported than when it was first proposed.
Or we may be less vulnerable. While it's true that free speech (and freedom of association, a separate but related right) may allow "the terrorists" to organize and recruit, it also allows their enemies (us, free Americans) to organize and recruit as well. One of the great national strengths that freedom of speech conveys is the power of many. Like open source software development, the power of many means that the more people who can observe and think about a problem, the more likely it is for the most effective solution to arise.
Freedom of speech means that there is greater opportunity for errors in methodology to be found, for problems to be reported, and for more diverse innovation in problem solving. What Newt is proposing does not lead to better solutions, it leads to better concentration of power in the hands of a small number of solution-creators. I prefer an America where journalists, bloggers, or anyone at all can stand up and say "Hey! We're going about this all wrong!" or "Hey, you forgot this important thing: __________" or "Hey! This guy (agency, etc) is not doing his job well!"
It's a competitive marketplace of ideas and I think Americans can compete just fine with our enemies--if we allow ourselves to.
And how long did it fly with the rest of scientific community?
Not long in fact, and Einstein himself referred to it as his biggest blunder. (Although in fact there is now renewed interest in it because of new observations.)
Your example supports the view that the scientific community cares first and foremost about being correct--not about "fitting in," not kowtowing to famous people, not getting rich.
It's classic FUD--an unfounded, unsupported ad hominem attack that draws attention from the substantive issue--the science itself. I could understand it if there were some evidence that scientists had anything to gain by promoting a movie they agree with. For example there is no question that oil companies have a financial stake in maintaining the status quo usage of fossil fuels, just like tobacco companies have a financial stake in the number of people who start smoking every year. But there's no evidence that all the climate scientists will be super-rich in a couple years if only the public would learn about global warming.
Do you think you can get away with totally unfounded assertions just because you used a question mark?
Using my designs, my creations, and my story without permission, and they're not even getting it right. They've got the colors of the dinosaurs wrong for one thing, and their timeline is just way off. Please await official notice from my lawyer and/or a plague of some kind.
Sincerely,
God
I dislike stories like these in a discussion of education because I think they are not really relevant and borderline manipulative. They invoke all the worst emotions from that teenage time of life--emotions that everyone experienced and that often carry heavy baggage. It sucks that adults did not treat you as an equal when you were 16. But I'd say that's more a function of being a 16-year-old than an overall failing of the education system. A lot of adults in all walks of life do not take teenagers seriously.
IMO the best way to judge the education system is by the future adult achievements of students, not necessarily by how well it treats each one or makes them feel at the time. In fact I'd say that one of the leading problems in the U.S. society is an over-emphasis on student's feelings vs. their achievement. Being a teenager sucks sometimes; I don't think the schools are entirely at fault for that. And incidentally, U.S. high school students are typically far less rigidly controlled than the Asian and European students to which they are often compared.
Should students have a voice equal to the adults who teach and govern them in the school setting? To me the answer is clearly no. It sounds like the adults at your school could definitely have handled the situation better. No doubt, and your story is regretable--its clearly a condemnation of the people involved (particularly the nurse). I have a real hard time expanding this into a blanket condemnation of the U.S. education system though. I'd respectfully submit that this has disproportionate importance to you because you're the one who lived it.
There is no such thing as a reporter who is unbiased. But the focus of journalism training is to learn to report news objectively and as free from bias as possible. The best reporters are in fact the ones who are best at hiding their bias--by reporting factual news, not opinion. Note that most "journalists" you've heard of do not fit this bill. The opinion shouters are always way more famous than actual reporters.
Anyone can tell me what they think of something. The hard part is finding out and reporting the facts of what happened in the first place. But consumers of news also have a responsibility, to consume critically. This does not mean assuming that everything I read is as biased as I am. It means using my critical reading and thinking skills to distinguish fact from opinion.
that New York Times reporters try their best to report factually and objectively despite their personal biases, while bloggers like Instapundit and DailyKos write to defend and trumpet their personal biases.
And if we're going to play "own your bias," the first place you might want to look is in a mirror:
The "anything to hurt Bush" reporting that has increasingly come to characterize the paper in the last four years...I now await the usual Slashdot downmodding of non-liberal political posts.
I'm not exactly seeing a lot of independently verifiable facts in your post.