It has been recognized for a long time that driving (esp. long-distance driving), or flying, while sleepy, can be as dangerous, or more dangerous, than being drunk. This is probably because of the sustained attention that has to be paid to the job at hand in these professions, and the high and obvious consequences of mistakes. That's why there are federal rules governing the number of hours of work that can be done both short and long term, particularly in aviation. IIRC, truck drivers now may not drive longer than 12 hours at a stretch without a rest period, specifically because of the high proportion of truck accidents that occured after 12 hours on duty.
If we could actually make an easy, simple to administer test for sleepiness levels, it might provide a basis to stop encouraging the "60 hours a week means you are a wimp" mentality that seems prevalent at many corporations. Sleep is not an optional thing, and lack of sleep has definite effects on personality, performance, judgement, reasoning ability, and powers of concentration. While regularly forgoing enough sleep might appear to enhance productivity in the short term, in the long term it takes a toll on you. There are lots of rumors about the effects of long-term sleep deprivation, for instance this link which claims that for every year beyond 55 you work, you lose 2 years off of your lifespan http://www.fedex401k.com/News.html, but I would love to see links directly to comprehensive studies of the long term effects of sleep deprivation.
I think that a society that encourages a lack of proper rest has a lot of people only functioning at half-steam, but to change that, one needs to be able to scientifically quantify sleepiness, which as far as I know has not been done. Anyone know different?
For someone who brags in their sig about knowing the difference between "affect" and "effect", you should know about the difference between "ThermO Nuclear War" and "Thermal Nuclear War". The former is used to refer to warfare with hydrogen bombs (which use the extremely high temps in a "normal" atomic bomb to trigger fusion, thus a Thermonuclear weapon vs a plain ol' nuclear weapon), and the latter would probably be used by W.
"To discover how prevalent counterfeit high-tech parts have become in the United States, PC World purchased seven hard drives, seven memory modules, and ten cell phone batteries online, using pricing search engines to find low prices. We then asked vendors to authenticate the gear. Of the two dozen products we bought, four (all cell phone batteries) were counterfeit. We also received at least one old or refurbished product masquerading as new, got one broken drive, and in a few cases ordered a specific brand but received a cheaper brand in its place. Worse, our reporter had his credit card number stolen and misused multiple times during the course of researching this story. Ultimately, only 15 of the 24 items we bought turned out to be exactly as advertised."
Damn - it's a jungle out there. It makes you wonder about the future of e-commerce vs. touch-it-before-you-buy-it stores if there is so much online fraud and it is such a PITA to fix/return the problem product.
OTOH, in years of buying hundreds of books from Amazon, they messed up my order only once, and they promptly "fixed" (refunded) it when I sent back the improper item.
It makes sense, though. When you don't have a physical location/person to track down, and your money is already in their bank, it is much harder to get a refund for defective goods, so the PITA factor means a lot of people wont bother. And thus, an online retailer has much less incentive (vs. a brick and mortar store) to be sure of the quality of their goods since the return percentage will be less anyway.
I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, there's no money in it. Apparently, Thomas Edison's first recorded patent in 1868 was for an electronic vote counter, which turned out to be a commercial disaster. Politicians wanted votes to come in slowly, so they could direct their "efforts" at the last second. I've just been reading up on it recently, and apparently (since Edison grew up in poverty) its financial failure made him promise to himself that he would never again invent something that didn't have monetary promise. (Sorry, I can't find a reliable link)
Sadly, today's pols are not much different. Wasn't it Stalin who said he had no problem with democracy so long as it was he who counted the votes?
Unfortunately, civiliation avionics are not better; the Embraer 145 is equiped with Honeywell units (part of the Primus 1000 package, also in use on several bizjets) for their FMSes that generally get MEL'ed about once per month per plane, for software glitches that freeze up the system. Every update seems to break some other part of the functionality, to the point where there is an unofficial list of functions on the FMS that nobody uses so the boxes don't lock up in flight. You would think dual FMSes would solve the problem, but the glitches tend to take down one after the other, so the redundancy is not very useful. Considering that using dual FMSes on the Embraer is approved as a sole source of navigation, this is pretty disturbing. If it only froze up, that would not be a bad failure mode; it's the ones that miscalculate fuel burn or silently throw the airplane outside of RNP by a factor of 3 with no annuncations (even though one is supposed to show up) that worry me. There has not been a passenger fatality yet on the EMB-145 fleet yet, but the software glitches on a pretty important system ain't helping....
Anyone else here know about the Tombstone agency? The one that only passes new regs when tombstones pop up? Wish there was a better way than waiting for that...
If we converted to digital and left the poorest of our nation out in the cold, we'd devolve into some discussion about how the evil government was depriving the weakest among us from access to a free press, possibly even with a few stats peppered in about how TV is even more important for them because of illiteracy rates, and so on, and maybe some good socialism arguments to boot.
But when we DO help them, it's, of course, a conspiracy to spread propaganda and keep everyone under their thumbs! (After all, network television is nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the government!)
You guys are the best.;-)"
"I think this attitude is hilarious coming from slashdot. I have seen it almost too many times to count. From the "technology isn't bad, it's just technology" crowd, and indictment of a communication technology. And yes, one-way is still communication. Otherwise, we should trash newspapers and "Shakespear" (sic - hmm, maybe you're right about the dumbing down...), too."
You seem to have a confusion between the concept of "Slashdot" and individual Slashdotters. If we all had exactly the same opinions on everything, there really wouldn't be much of a point to reading Slashdot, would there?
I agree that the present generation of electronic voting machines are crap. The idea of federally mandated standards, In theory, is a great idea. In reality, our federal government has little interest in an accurate vote tally presently - I'm not saying they ARE, WERE or ARE NOT, or WERE NOT interested in vote manipulation - this is not meant as a Troll. I am simply saying that cleaning up the messy details of governing (good governance) is just not interesting or a priority for the present administration.
This is an example where states' rights are quite vital. Rather than being hamstrung by the Feds, different experiments by different states may finally result in a very good solution, which may ultimately be made nationwide.
Remember, if the Federal government could mandate how states are supposed to count their votes, they could say all states must use present Diebold machines. Wouldn't that be lovely?
As for why stock sales, bank transfers and on-line purchaces occur so regularly and reliably, remember there is money to be made in those. There is no money in insuring an accurate and verified tamper-proof vote count, a fact Thomas Edison discovered when he applied for his very first patent. It was on a fast and accurate voting machine. Nobody wanted them; it was a commercial disaster. Pols liked the slow counts, because they could campain at the last minute in "weak" districts (or recruit bosses to get out the troops to vote), not to mention many more opportunites for ballot stuffing, bribery, and general corruption. Not much has changed....
Ah - thank you very much for the reference. I was referring to direct evidence that the Standard Model was incorrect or incomplete - all the things you mentioned (I believe) are problems with GR or (in the case of Pioneer) who knows what. Nonetheless, I really hope we manage to figure out a few in my lifetime!
In most cases, the major advances in physics were preceded by the discovery and measurement of new phenomena, or old phenomena to a new & unprecedented level of accuracy. A great deal of Galileo's insights were inspired by the telescope, which allowed him to see, in great detail, that the old "imperfect earth/perfect heavens" dichotomy of Aristotle and Official Church Dogma were patiently not so. This led to rapid-fire advances in astronomy, which in turn gave Newton the crucial data to test his theory of gravitation; it's easy to assume big things attract other big things - it is the exact AMOUNT that was crucial, and when he first compared the acceleration at the Earth's surface vs. the acceleration the Moon was undergoing to keep in orbit around the Earth, he found that his inverse square force assumption was way off. He stayed quiet for a decade, when new and much more accurate data came in, correcting the previous estimates of the size, and therefore the distance of the moon. And then the acceleration of the moon towards the earth was exactly right to fit the acceleration of objects near the earth's surface and the assumption of fall off of force by the square. Then he started talking about Universal Gravitation a bit more.
Einstein, and the rest of the quantum physicists, were following up on the recent discovery of both radioactivity and the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell.
The point I am (longwindedly) making is that ultimately new data drove the physics. We are at a point right now where it is so expensive to probe in areas we have not looked that we have an embarrassing richness of theories to match a paucity of data. The only clear-cut result that I know of that is outside the bounds of the Standard Model of particle physics is the recent revelation that neutrinos seem to change their type (electron, mu, and tau) as time passes, based on the distribution of neutrinos received on opposite sides of the Earth from the Sun (Sci-Am, I think about a year or two ago). In biology, OTOH, we have just recently been able (due to computer horsepower) to sequence massive numbers of genes, as well as make crude computer simulations of what kind of proteins these genes would construct. It is a new tool, the computer, that is allowing biology to seize the spotlight.
There will be more Einsteins, but perhaps in biology rather than physics for a while....
(DISCLAIMER: IANA scientist, but sometimes wish I was....)
This is very true - we are living in an unsual period of human history, namely one where the Quality of Life of your average human has been increasing for several centuries. I think this has led to the near absence of the "consume less" vs. "more stuff/energy" mentality. The oil bump (Hubbard's Peak) has been responsible for so many of our advances this past century that it may not be possible to maintain the same increases in QoL once cheap oil passes, which it is doing. Sadly, I think the mental adjustment to a "consume less" mentality is going to be very painful and politically disruptive over the next two decades... by which point it may not be as necessary!
As for transportation, I don't know if you are in the US, but in large swaths of the country, cars are the ONLY method available. I have several friends in Houston, one of the largest cities, who drive 100+ miles every day. This built-in energy inefficency makes it quite hard to change one's overall energy consumption quickly. So it is not just technology, but culture, infrastructure, location of jobs, etc.
No shortage of problems for bright/.ers to solve, eh?
One should keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.* I think some of the folks doing alternative energy research really need to keep this thought in mind a bit more. RTFA and see what I mean.
Will we need to replace oil and its fossil fuel cousins at some point? Definitely. In our lifetimes? If we are talking strictly about oil, probably. Coal? Probably not. Does such a substitute exist that a) Can be stored, b) Can be transported, c) Can be used, and d) Is energy positive (meaning we get more energy out of it than we put in to extract/grow/create it) in our current engines, machinery and infrastructure? No. Is one close? No.
Can we fund every idea in creation to find a substitute? No.
So we have to pick and choose, and it is VERY HELPFUL to have a grounding in basic physics and chemistry so we can intellegently develop alternatives. This journalist seems to be a bit deficient in the basic physics and chemistry department. He doesn't want to pick and choose, he wants to report that magic is just around the corner. This lack of realism is one reason why alternative energy sources are not taken as seriously as they should be.
...is the link to Art Bell's predictions. The man never found a conspiracy theory/alien abduction/perpetual motion scheme he didn't like. But for laughs, here it is - it does illustrate the principle that if you guess wildly about enough crap, by sheer luck you'll get something right.
"I study oil and gold extraction (I blog about gold mines, too) and I am amazed at how often scientists are proven wrong. I know that it is heretical to say that on slashdot (I was blasted about it earlier this morning on this very forum), but we as a society seem to have too much faith in scientific research finding facts that turn out to be just plain wrong."
That's true. Faith based reasoning is far more likely to lead us to correct results./sarcasm
The REASON we find out that scientific reasearch frequently turns out to be "wrong" is because the whole process of science is meant to test whether what we think to be true, is. Unless you are an omniscient being, you can never know for sure what is going on outside of your direct sensory range - so to be useful, to make predictions beyond that, science HAS to speculate and come up with theories. After a theory is put out there, then it is tested and probed. As our measurements become more precise, or we develop new tools to see in ways we could not before, we find that the theories may no longer match our expanded horizons. So we go back and attempt to improve the theory, which leads some amateurs to say the previous theories were "wrong" - a useless, emotional characterization, since no theory can be ever be "right" - the best one can be is consistent with all presently known data. Newton's theory of gravitation is "wrong", but for a "wrong" theory, it sure is accurate. And the whole "spherical earth" theory may be wrong, but it's good to 1 part in 1,000. Even the flat-earth theory was good for its time; when you live 99% of your life in a small patch of it, the difference between 8 inches of curvature per mile and 0 inches of curvature per mile is pretty small.
"It really bugs me, actually, that these "scientists" we so admire may be geniuses, or they might just be grant-hunters. I know I always look for the best income for the least amount of work."
In that case, it sounds like you should admire the grant-hunters. They are getting the best income for their minimal scientific amounts of work, right?
"What else have these same scientists theorized that may not be true? Is oil possibly a renewable resource (meaning there is near unlimited amounts deeper within the earth waiting to bubble up)? Is it possible to battle the build-up of CO2, or is much of it coming out of the earth and not manmade? How much of the global climate is an effect of heat expelled from inside our crust, and how much is from "eroding" atmosphere?"
All possible. But highly unlikely. At the temperatures and pressures found deeper in the earth, oil tends to break down and so we don't find large reserviors of it below a certain depth. But perhaps, through some mechanism (of which we have no clue nor any prima face evidence that it exists), there is oil being spontaneously generated deep in the earth. CO2? Possibly it is coming in significant quantites out of the crust. But atmospheric CO2 seems to correlate very closely with the industrial revolution and the first widespread use of heat-engines by humans. As for heat expelled from the crust, that's one of the more measurable variables, thanks to the infrared imaging capabilities of many geostationary wx satellites (funded publicly). The present amount of evidence indicates that it negligble, but it could be wrong. Of course, aliens could be deliberately screwing with our satellites and messing with the evidence....
Anything is possible. But when dollars for research, whether public or private, are limited, you have to make educated choices as for what is more likely and what is not, based on the best knowledge you presently have; and right now, those theories are pretty low down on the probability scale.
"I rarely thank AP writers for their research, but in this case I have to. I'm glad the spotlight is being shined on the fallacies that come out of the mouths of scientists looking for more research dollars (on the backs of the taxpayers). I believe we DO need
It really doesn't explain much about the problem, but it does do a nice job of explaining how some people wind up in mathematics:
"Hofmann majored in math, he said, "because it was the path of least resistance." While his friends were writing history papers that were many pages long or spending hours in a computer lab, "all I had to do was solve math problems, and it was something that came to me naturally," he said.
"By the time you get to graduate school, even if it comes naturally, it gets hard, and that is when you begin to develop a skill to go with the ability.""
It's nice to see an article about a mathematician that isn't a "look at the freaky math guy" or "look at the useless thing we're paying people to do" kind of writeup, but just about someone who was enjoyed playing with mathematics, and has done well by it.
Anyone have a better explanation of what he did or where it fits in? Is it more theoretical or applied? What stuff is it related to?
Hmmm... I think your point is that certain powerful institutions (such as corporations and universities) implicitly know the value of science and will fund it, regardless of the prevailing public sentiment at the time. You may be correct. On the other hand, Universities were in existence when Bruno was burned at the stake for the heresy of declaring the stars as being distant suns rather than holes in the firmament revealing the light of heaven (admittely, he seemed rather a loudmouth), when Galileo wrote his defense of the Copernican system (again, rather obnoxiously labelling the fall guy in the book, "Simplico"), and the Scopes Monkey Trial that ruined a teacher's teaching career was less than 100 years ago.
I agree, the present system where the direction of science is chosen by the scientists more than by the politicos is good, but I don't quite trust in its solidity as much as you do. Ultimately, especially in a democracy, the direction that funds go is ultimately determined by the People, perhaps not immediately, but over the course of decades. Look at how the wailing about stem-cell reseach has chased a great deal of the research in that feild overseas (forgive, I'm USAean, so my overseas is different than yours). Now while a great deal of science in the past has been done solo on a shoestring budget, many of the advances presently are coming from Big Science, esp. in Biology - the marriage of computers with the ability to sequence genes has made projects that would have taken millions of man-years to accomplish possible in days, for instance - but for a very large price. Most papers in science today have multiple authors backed by multiple institutions. While "lone ranger" science still proceeds, it may be that we need bigger institutions to make bigger discoveries - only time will tell. But if we do need bigger institutions to advance science, that implies bigger funding, and at some level, public acceptance.
And as for being careful about dancing with the devil of media, you are absolutely correct. One of the problems with some defenses of evolution by well-meaning scientists on TV is that they were not prepared for the WWF style of "debate" (I'm using the word charitably), and appeared to lose to IDers who were well prepared for that style of argument. But while mass media may be a recent invention, I don't think it is going to vanish any time soon (of course, I could be wrong - perhaps in 50 years, we will all have our own newscasts tailored specifically to our exact interests narrowcast to just us), and it is a force in the world, one that is ignored at our peril. Perhaps most people ignore mass media anyway, and I am overestimating its impact on Joe Public. I seem to recall that in a survey in the US, scientists were trusted more than politicans, unions, doctors, lawyers, and priests - that's pretty good, actually.
Well, I seem to have/..ed half my day away - thanks for giving me some new ideas to chew on. Merry Christmas!
Be careful when you mention branches of pure mathematics as an example of something that will never have any practical application - as has been noted by various high-profile authors, mathematics is unreasonably effective in the sciences. Remeber number theory? It was seen as the "Queen of Mathematics, unsullied by practical applications" - (trying to find the author of the quote, I believe it was Gauss) - until the advent of the computer and the need for encryption.
Perhaps the greatest social advance of science is that the powers-that-be acknowledge that one can never quite tell what branch of research will lead to the next great breakthrough or revolution. So, it is wise to fund many channels, big and small, one step removed from application, and those that seem to live only in a half-dozen researchers' minds.
But I think that ultimately, it is the practical results of science that have encouraged such wholesale encouragement of them - people have been curious about the world for as long as we have written records, and in all probability far before that - playing with nature, trying to tease out her secrets for a long, long time, but mostly on an individual or small club basis. But only as science has resulted in real-world returns have populations and governments actively encouraged it wholesale. Big Physics in the US can be traced directly to the Manhattan Project, and it's spectacular (or horrific, depending on your POV) results - before that, research was something done in (and funded by) those funny universities or by corporations.
So while the results of science may not be dependent on a popular vote, its existence as a modern, well-funded institution ultimately is. A bit of promotion reminding people of why they should fund it I don't think is harmful. The fact is that working scientists do it (because they are curious and love it) for different reasons than people in general (practical results) want it to be done.
Indeed - but I do think people need to be reminded of that. We may think it glaringly obvious, but a large number of people just assume internal combustion engines, computers, power grids, antibiotics, plastics, air conditioning, etc. are just manna from heaven or naturally just grow out of the earth or something. An occasional reminder that when you touch a computer, you are touching the result of literally millions of man-years of design, science and research wouldn't hurt.
True - but all the money it gets and the research it does result in the same thing - nothing. There are no new compelling theories of ID (it really *IS* the Flying Spaghetti Monster who did it! Rivers are really the fossilized remains of his noodly apendages, filled up with rainwater! The evidence is the higher than normal quanities of starch found in riverbanks!), no large numbers of Ph.D. grads flocking to the exciting research area of ID, etc. So while ID'ers squawk on about the weaknesses of evolution, the real scientists go on discovering what makes live tick. I guess I find it inspiring and amazing to watch.
But your point is taken - we can't let our guard down either.
...from the article: "Not even the US President, George Bush, could ignore the historic hurricane season in the north Atlantic this year." - heh, heh, heh....
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that science is alive, well, and thriving when reading all the ID and creationist nonsense that is circulating throught the media today - it's a nice reminder that while ID is getting some press, REAL science is getting money, time, top-notch researchers, and revealing ever more about how our amazing Universe works. Happy New Year!!!
While I like some of the things he has done, he also can be a grade-A asshole. He decided that AIG, the Starr Foundation, Hank Greenburg, and a few others responsible for building up AIG over the last 40 years were criminals, and so prosecuted them to get evidence for his suspicions.... and he is still looking for that pesky evidence, and gosh darnit, he hasn't found it yet. AIG has restated their earnings for the last 5 years (which is a massively big deal, for those of you who don't know), and in doing so, changed their estimated net worth from about 81 billion to 79 billion. Whooo-fucking-hooo. He is now trying to investigate transactions made between AIG and the Starr Foundation going back to 1967 in order to find something to justify the ruining of the lives of lots of people at those companies.
Don't get me wrong - I hate abuses by large corporations, and I think he has done many good things to protect consumers. But he has a large ego, and doesn't know when to quit. I think he was hoping AIG was the next Enron, and when it turned out it wasn't even close, he got vicious and couldn't let it go, despite the fact he is hurting a lot of innocent people in the process. Of course, I am a bit biased, since I personally know some of the people whose careers he has ruined and finances he has messed up.
Very nicely put - I'm glad SOMEONE caught the seriousness as well as the humor of my remark - but 9-11 was a pretty shocking experience for a country that has been pretty peaceful (well, internally) essentially since the Vietnam War.
But as to off-site backups, Democracy and a Constitutional form of government is/are a worldwide concept that is thriving in many places, certainly more places than throughout most of history... So in a sense, the off-site backup program has been very successful; it's just that the original is looking a bit weak right now....
Just when I think the Democratic Party is starting to grow a spine and stand up for some libertarian principles rather than pander.... No, this is not intended as flame-bait - it is an expression of frustration with a binary political system that has segmented every issue into a "They don't think it's right?!?! Then it MUST be right! Write up a bill legislating it for us to vote on, intern! Oh, and say it's to protect the children!!!" - mentality.
Here's a wacky idea - instead of legislating a bill "protecting [kids] from a coarsening culture" (Senator Bayh) in fictional video games, how about a bill protecting kids from real gun violence (Over 5,000 kids killed by guns in the US in 1997), real poverty (35,000,000 in 2003 in the U.S), and real rape (204,000 in the USA 2003-2004)? Oh, right, that would involve hard choices about civil liberties, responsibilities, Constitutional rights and freedom of choice, and other complicated things. Screw it, it won't get votes. Ban those nasty video games instead!!!
Funny, if I want to blow 20 bucks, I can go to a wide choice of bars and clubs with local acts, pay the cover and get a pair of beers and a couple of hours of entertainment with good company. I might even find a really good band that I never heard of before, and hell, I'd buy an album from them for a few bucks after their set was over.
If music is great, we don't need a leech-like promoter to tell us so. I'll hear them, or a friend will tell me, or a friend of a friend, they can send me an.mp3, and maybe I'll buy something from them because I like to hear them.
I just hope in the music companies' death throes they don't drag down our laws with I.P. and DMCA any more than they already have.
Slashdot Mirror
It has been recognized for a long time that driving (esp. long-distance driving), or flying, while sleepy, can be as dangerous, or more dangerous, than being drunk. This is probably because of the sustained attention that has to be paid to the job at hand in these professions, and the high and obvious consequences of mistakes. That's why there are federal rules governing the number of hours of work that can be done both short and long term, particularly in aviation. IIRC, truck drivers now may not drive longer than 12 hours at a stretch without a rest period, specifically because of the high proportion of truck accidents that occured after 12 hours on duty.
If we could actually make an easy, simple to administer test for sleepiness levels, it might provide a basis to stop encouraging the "60 hours a week means you are a wimp" mentality that seems prevalent at many corporations. Sleep is not an optional thing, and lack of sleep has definite effects on personality, performance, judgement, reasoning ability, and powers of concentration. While regularly forgoing enough sleep might appear to enhance productivity in the short term, in the long term it takes a toll on you. There are lots of rumors about the effects of long-term sleep deprivation, for instance this link which claims that for every year beyond 55 you work, you lose 2 years off of your lifespan http://www.fedex401k.com/News.html, but I would love to see links directly to comprehensive studies of the long term effects of sleep deprivation.
I think that a society that encourages a lack of proper rest has a lot of people only functioning at half-steam, but to change that, one needs to be able to scientifically quantify sleepiness, which as far as I know has not been done. Anyone know different?
For someone who brags in their sig about knowing the difference between "affect" and "effect", you should know about the difference between "ThermO Nuclear War" and "Thermal Nuclear War". The former is used to refer to warfare with hydrogen bombs (which use the extremely high temps in a "normal" atomic bomb to trigger fusion, thus a Thermonuclear weapon vs a plain ol' nuclear weapon), and the latter would probably be used by W.
;)
Just a friendly suggestion -
"To discover how prevalent counterfeit high-tech parts have become in the United States, PC World purchased seven hard drives, seven memory modules, and ten cell phone batteries online, using pricing search engines to find low prices. We then asked vendors to authenticate the gear. Of the two dozen products we bought, four (all cell phone batteries) were counterfeit. We also received at least one old or refurbished product masquerading as new, got one broken drive, and in a few cases ordered a specific brand but received a cheaper brand in its place. Worse, our reporter had his credit card number stolen and misused multiple times during the course of researching this story. Ultimately, only 15 of the 24 items we bought turned out to be exactly as advertised."
Damn - it's a jungle out there. It makes you wonder about the future of e-commerce vs. touch-it-before-you-buy-it stores if there is so much online fraud and it is such a PITA to fix/return the problem product.
OTOH, in years of buying hundreds of books from Amazon, they messed up my order only once, and they promptly "fixed" (refunded) it when I sent back the improper item.
It makes sense, though. When you don't have a physical location/person to track down, and your money is already in their bank, it is much harder to get a refund for defective goods, so the PITA factor means a lot of people wont bother. And thus, an online retailer has much less incentive (vs. a brick and mortar store) to be sure of the quality of their goods since the return percentage will be less anyway.
I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, there's no money in it. Apparently, Thomas Edison's first recorded patent in 1868 was for an electronic vote counter, which turned out to be a commercial disaster. Politicians wanted votes to come in slowly, so they could direct their "efforts" at the last second. I've just been reading up on it recently, and apparently (since Edison grew up in poverty) its financial failure made him promise to himself that he would never again invent something that didn't have monetary promise. (Sorry, I can't find a reliable link)
Sadly, today's pols are not much different. Wasn't it Stalin who said he had no problem with democracy so long as it was he who counted the votes?
Unfortunately, civiliation avionics are not better; the Embraer 145 is equiped with Honeywell units (part of the Primus 1000 package, also in use on several bizjets) for their FMSes that generally get MEL'ed about once per month per plane, for software glitches that freeze up the system. Every update seems to break some other part of the functionality, to the point where there is an unofficial list of functions on the FMS that nobody uses so the boxes don't lock up in flight. You would think dual FMSes would solve the problem, but the glitches tend to take down one after the other, so the redundancy is not very useful. Considering that using dual FMSes on the Embraer is approved as a sole source of navigation, this is pretty disturbing. If it only froze up, that would not be a bad failure mode; it's the ones that miscalculate fuel burn or silently throw the airplane outside of RNP by a factor of 3 with no annuncations (even though one is supposed to show up) that worry me. There has not been a passenger fatality yet on the EMB-145 fleet yet, but the software glitches on a pretty important system ain't helping....
Anyone else here know about the Tombstone agency? The one that only passes new regs when tombstones pop up? Wish there was a better way than waiting for that...
"LOL, I love slashdot. :-)
;-)"
If we converted to digital and left the poorest of our nation out in the cold, we'd devolve into some discussion about how the evil government was depriving the weakest among us from access to a free press, possibly even with a few stats peppered in about how TV is even more important for them because of illiteracy rates, and so on, and maybe some good socialism arguments to boot.
But when we DO help them, it's, of course, a conspiracy to spread propaganda and keep everyone under their thumbs! (After all, network television is nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the government!)
You guys are the best.
"I think this attitude is hilarious coming from slashdot. I have seen it almost too many times to count. From the "technology isn't bad, it's just technology" crowd, and indictment of a communication technology. And yes, one-way is still communication. Otherwise, we should trash newspapers and "Shakespear" (sic - hmm, maybe you're right about the dumbing down...), too."
You seem to have a confusion between the concept of "Slashdot" and individual Slashdotters. If we all had exactly the same opinions on everything, there really wouldn't be much of a point to reading Slashdot, would there?
I agree that the present generation of electronic voting machines are crap. The idea of federally mandated standards, In theory, is a great idea. In reality, our federal government has little interest in an accurate vote tally presently - I'm not saying they ARE, WERE or ARE NOT, or WERE NOT interested in vote manipulation - this is not meant as a Troll. I am simply saying that cleaning up the messy details of governing (good governance) is just not interesting or a priority for the present administration.
This is an example where states' rights are quite vital. Rather than being hamstrung by the Feds, different experiments by different states may finally result in a very good solution, which may ultimately be made nationwide.
Remember, if the Federal government could mandate how states are supposed to count their votes, they could say all states must use present Diebold machines. Wouldn't that be lovely?
As for why stock sales, bank transfers and on-line purchaces occur so regularly and reliably, remember there is money to be made in those. There is no money in insuring an accurate and verified tamper-proof vote count, a fact Thomas Edison discovered when he applied for his very first patent. It was on a fast and accurate voting machine. Nobody wanted them; it was a commercial disaster. Pols liked the slow counts, because they could campain at the last minute in "weak" districts (or recruit bosses to get out the troops to vote), not to mention many more opportunites for ballot stuffing, bribery, and general corruption. Not much has changed....
Ah - thank you very much for the reference. I was referring to direct evidence that the Standard Model was incorrect or incomplete - all the things you mentioned (I believe) are problems with GR or (in the case of Pioneer) who knows what. Nonetheless, I really hope we manage to figure out a few in my lifetime!
In most cases, the major advances in physics were preceded by the discovery and measurement of new phenomena, or old phenomena to a new & unprecedented level of accuracy. A great deal of Galileo's insights were inspired by the telescope, which allowed him to see, in great detail, that the old "imperfect earth/perfect heavens" dichotomy of Aristotle and Official Church Dogma were patiently not so. This led to rapid-fire advances in astronomy, which in turn gave Newton the crucial data to test his theory of gravitation; it's easy to assume big things attract other big things - it is the exact AMOUNT that was crucial, and when he first compared the acceleration at the Earth's surface vs. the acceleration the Moon was undergoing to keep in orbit around the Earth, he found that his inverse square force assumption was way off. He stayed quiet for a decade, when new and much more accurate data came in, correcting the previous estimates of the size, and therefore the distance of the moon. And then the acceleration of the moon towards the earth was exactly right to fit the acceleration of objects near the earth's surface and the assumption of fall off of force by the square. Then he started talking about Universal Gravitation a bit more.
Einstein, and the rest of the quantum physicists, were following up on the recent discovery of both radioactivity and the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell.
The point I am (longwindedly) making is that ultimately new data drove the physics. We are at a point right now where it is so expensive to probe in areas we have not looked that we have an embarrassing richness of theories to match a paucity of data. The only clear-cut result that I know of that is outside the bounds of the Standard Model of particle physics is the recent revelation that neutrinos seem to change their type (electron, mu, and tau) as time passes, based on the distribution of neutrinos received on opposite sides of the Earth from the Sun (Sci-Am, I think about a year or two ago). In biology, OTOH, we have just recently been able (due to computer horsepower) to sequence massive numbers of genes, as well as make crude computer simulations of what kind of proteins these genes would construct. It is a new tool, the computer, that is allowing biology to seize the spotlight.
There will be more Einsteins, but perhaps in biology rather than physics for a while....
(DISCLAIMER: IANA scientist, but sometimes wish I was....)
This is very true - we are living in an unsual period of human history, namely one where the Quality of Life of your average human has been increasing for several centuries. I think this has led to the near absence of the "consume less" vs. "more stuff/energy" mentality. The oil bump (Hubbard's Peak) has been responsible for so many of our advances this past century that it may not be possible to maintain the same increases in QoL once cheap oil passes, which it is doing. Sadly, I think the mental adjustment to a "consume less" mentality is going to be very painful and politically disruptive over the next two decades... by which point it may not be as necessary!
/.ers to solve, eh?
As for transportation, I don't know if you are in the US, but in large swaths of the country, cars are the ONLY method available. I have several friends in Houston, one of the largest cities, who drive 100+ miles every day. This built-in energy inefficency makes it quite hard to change one's overall energy consumption quickly. So it is not just technology, but culture, infrastructure, location of jobs, etc.
No shortage of problems for bright
One should keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.* I think some of the folks doing alternative energy research really need to keep this thought in mind a bit more. RTFA and see what I mean.
Will we need to replace oil and its fossil fuel cousins at some point? Definitely.
In our lifetimes? If we are talking strictly about oil, probably. Coal? Probably not.
Does such a substitute exist that a) Can be stored, b) Can be transported, c) Can be used, and d) Is energy positive (meaning we get more energy out of it than we put in to extract/grow/create it) in our current engines, machinery and infrastructure? No.
Is one close? No.
Can we fund every idea in creation to find a substitute? No.
So we have to pick and choose, and it is VERY HELPFUL to have a grounding in basic physics and chemistry so we can intellegently develop alternatives. This journalist seems to be a bit deficient in the basic physics and chemistry department. He doesn't want to pick and choose, he wants to report that magic is just around the corner. This lack of realism is one reason why alternative energy sources are not taken as seriously as they should be.
* Carl Sagan
...is the link to Art Bell's predictions. The man never found a conspiracy theory/alien abduction/perpetual motion scheme he didn't like. But for laughs, here it is - it does illustrate the principle that if you guess wildly about enough crap, by sheer luck you'll get something right.
e ar.html
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/aspie/trueorfalse/newy
"I study oil and gold extraction (I blog about gold mines, too) and I am amazed at how often scientists are proven wrong. I know that it is heretical to say that on slashdot (I was blasted about it earlier this morning on this very forum), but we as a society seem to have too much faith in scientific research finding facts that turn out to be just plain wrong."
/sarcasm
That's true. Faith based reasoning is far more likely to lead us to correct results.
The REASON we find out that scientific reasearch frequently turns out to be "wrong" is because the whole process of science is meant to test whether what we think to be true, is. Unless you are an omniscient being, you can never know for sure what is going on outside of your direct sensory range - so to be useful, to make predictions beyond that, science HAS to speculate and come up with theories. After a theory is put out there, then it is tested and probed. As our measurements become more precise, or we develop new tools to see in ways we could not before, we find that the theories may no longer match our expanded horizons. So we go back and attempt to improve the theory, which leads some amateurs to say the previous theories were "wrong" - a useless, emotional characterization, since no theory can be ever be "right" - the best one can be is consistent with all presently known data. Newton's theory of gravitation is "wrong", but for a "wrong" theory, it sure is accurate. And the whole "spherical earth" theory may be wrong, but it's good to 1 part in 1,000. Even the flat-earth theory was good for its time; when you live 99% of your life in a small patch of it, the difference between 8 inches of curvature per mile and 0 inches of curvature per mile is pretty small.
"It really bugs me, actually, that these "scientists" we so admire may be geniuses, or they might just be grant-hunters. I know I always look for the best income for the least amount of work."
In that case, it sounds like you should admire the grant-hunters. They are getting the best income for their minimal scientific amounts of work, right?
"What else have these same scientists theorized that may not be true? Is oil possibly a renewable resource (meaning there is near unlimited amounts deeper within the earth waiting to bubble up)? Is it possible to battle the build-up of CO2, or is much of it coming out of the earth and not manmade? How much of the global climate is an effect of heat expelled from inside our crust, and how much is from "eroding" atmosphere?"
All possible. But highly unlikely. At the temperatures and pressures found deeper in the earth, oil tends to break down and so we don't find large reserviors of it below a certain depth. But perhaps, through some mechanism (of which we have no clue nor any prima face evidence that it exists), there is oil being spontaneously generated deep in the earth. CO2? Possibly it is coming in significant quantites out of the crust. But atmospheric CO2 seems to correlate very closely with the industrial revolution and the first widespread use of heat-engines by humans. As for heat expelled from the crust, that's one of the more measurable variables, thanks to the infrared imaging capabilities of many geostationary wx satellites (funded publicly). The present amount of evidence indicates that it negligble, but it could be wrong. Of course, aliens could be deliberately screwing with our satellites and messing with the evidence....
Anything is possible. But when dollars for research, whether public or private, are limited, you have to make educated choices as for what is more likely and what is not, based on the best knowledge you presently have; and right now, those theories are pretty low down on the probability scale.
"I rarely thank AP writers for their research, but in this case I have to. I'm glad the spotlight is being shined on the fallacies that come out of the mouths of scientists looking for more research dollars (on the backs of the taxpayers). I believe we DO need
It really doesn't explain much about the problem, but it does do a nice job of explaining how some people wind up in mathematics:
"Hofmann majored in math, he said, "because it was the path of least resistance." While his friends were writing history papers that were many pages long or spending hours in a computer lab, "all I had to do was solve math problems, and it was something that came to me naturally," he said.
"By the time you get to graduate school, even if it comes naturally, it gets hard, and that is when you begin to develop a skill to go with the ability.""
It's nice to see an article about a mathematician that isn't a "look at the freaky math guy" or "look at the useless thing we're paying people to do" kind of writeup, but just about someone who was enjoyed playing with mathematics, and has done well by it.
Anyone have a better explanation of what he did or where it fits in? Is it more theoretical or applied? What stuff is it related to?
Hmmm... I think your point is that certain powerful institutions (such as corporations and universities) implicitly know the value of science and will fund it, regardless of the prevailing public sentiment at the time. You may be correct. On the other hand, Universities were in existence when Bruno was burned at the stake for the heresy of declaring the stars as being distant suns rather than holes in the firmament revealing the light of heaven (admittely, he seemed rather a loudmouth), when Galileo wrote his defense of the Copernican system (again, rather obnoxiously labelling the fall guy in the book, "Simplico"), and the Scopes Monkey Trial that ruined a teacher's teaching career was less than 100 years ago.
/..ed half my day away - thanks for giving me some new ideas to chew on. Merry Christmas!
I agree, the present system where the direction of science is chosen by the scientists more than by the politicos is good, but I don't quite trust in its solidity as much as you do. Ultimately, especially in a democracy, the direction that funds go is ultimately determined by the People, perhaps not immediately, but over the course of decades. Look at how the wailing about stem-cell reseach has chased a great deal of the research in that feild overseas (forgive, I'm USAean, so my overseas is different than yours). Now while a great deal of science in the past has been done solo on a shoestring budget, many of the advances presently are coming from Big Science, esp. in Biology - the marriage of computers with the ability to sequence genes has made projects that would have taken millions of man-years to accomplish possible in days, for instance - but for a very large price. Most papers in science today have multiple authors backed by multiple institutions. While "lone ranger" science still proceeds, it may be that we need bigger institutions to make bigger discoveries - only time will tell. But if we do need bigger institutions to advance science, that implies bigger funding, and at some level, public acceptance.
And as for being careful about dancing with the devil of media, you are absolutely correct. One of the problems with some defenses of evolution by well-meaning scientists on TV is that they were not prepared for the WWF style of "debate" (I'm using the word charitably), and appeared to lose to IDers who were well prepared for that style of argument. But while mass media may be a recent invention, I don't think it is going to vanish any time soon (of course, I could be wrong - perhaps in 50 years, we will all have our own newscasts tailored specifically to our exact interests narrowcast to just us), and it is a force in the world, one that is ignored at our peril. Perhaps most people ignore mass media anyway, and I am overestimating its impact on Joe Public. I seem to recall that in a survey in the US, scientists were trusted more than politicans, unions, doctors, lawyers, and priests - that's pretty good, actually.
Well, I seem to have
Be careful when you mention branches of pure mathematics as an example of something that will never have any practical application - as has been noted by various high-profile authors, mathematics is unreasonably effective in the sciences. Remeber number theory? It was seen as the "Queen of Mathematics, unsullied by practical applications" - (trying to find the author of the quote, I believe it was Gauss) - until the advent of the computer and the need for encryption.
Perhaps the greatest social advance of science is that the powers-that-be acknowledge that one can never quite tell what branch of research will lead to the next great breakthrough or revolution. So, it is wise to fund many channels, big and small, one step removed from application, and those that seem to live only in a half-dozen researchers' minds.
But I think that ultimately, it is the practical results of science that have encouraged such wholesale encouragement of them - people have been curious about the world for as long as we have written records, and in all probability far before that - playing with nature, trying to tease out her secrets for a long, long time, but mostly on an individual or small club basis. But only as science has resulted in real-world returns have populations and governments actively encouraged it wholesale. Big Physics in the US can be traced directly to the Manhattan Project, and it's spectacular (or horrific, depending on your POV) results - before that, research was something done in (and funded by) those funny universities or by corporations.
So while the results of science may not be dependent on a popular vote, its existence as a modern, well-funded institution ultimately is. A bit of promotion reminding people of why they should fund it I don't think is harmful. The fact is that working scientists do it (because they are curious and love it) for different reasons than people in general (practical results) want it to be done.
Indeed - but I do think people need to be reminded of that. We may think it glaringly obvious, but a large number of people just assume internal combustion engines, computers, power grids, antibiotics, plastics, air conditioning, etc. are just manna from heaven or naturally just grow out of the earth or something. An occasional reminder that when you touch a computer, you are touching the result of literally millions of man-years of design, science and research wouldn't hurt.
Cheers!
True - but all the money it gets and the research it does result in the same thing - nothing. There are no new compelling theories of ID (it really *IS* the Flying Spaghetti Monster who did it! Rivers are really the fossilized remains of his noodly apendages, filled up with rainwater! The evidence is the higher than normal quanities of starch found in riverbanks!), no large numbers of Ph.D. grads flocking to the exciting research area of ID, etc. So while ID'ers squawk on about the weaknesses of evolution, the real scientists go on discovering what makes live tick. I guess I find it inspiring and amazing to watch.
But your point is taken - we can't let our guard down either.
...from the article: "Not even the US President, George Bush, could ignore the historic hurricane season in the north Atlantic this year." - heh, heh, heh....
[Ducks and applies SPF50 flame-block]
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that science is alive, well, and thriving when reading all the ID and creationist nonsense that is circulating throught the media today - it's a nice reminder that while ID is getting some press, REAL science is getting money, time, top-notch researchers, and revealing ever more about how our amazing Universe works. Happy New Year!!!
While I like some of the things he has done, he also can be a grade-A asshole. He decided that AIG, the Starr Foundation, Hank Greenburg, and a few others responsible for building up AIG over the last 40 years were criminals, and so prosecuted them to get evidence for his suspicions.... and he is still looking for that pesky evidence, and gosh darnit, he hasn't found it yet. AIG has restated their earnings for the last 5 years (which is a massively big deal, for those of you who don't know), and in doing so, changed their estimated net worth from about 81 billion to 79 billion. Whooo-fucking-hooo. He is now trying to investigate transactions made between AIG and the Starr Foundation going back to 1967 in order to find something to justify the ruining of the lives of lots of people at those companies.
Don't get me wrong - I hate abuses by large corporations, and I think he has done many good things to protect consumers. But he has a large ego, and doesn't know when to quit. I think he was hoping AIG was the next Enron, and when it turned out it wasn't even close, he got vicious and couldn't let it go, despite the fact he is hurting a lot of innocent people in the process. Of course, I am a bit biased, since I personally know some of the people whose careers he has ruined and finances he has messed up.
He's better than many, but he ain't no saint.
Very nicely put - I'm glad SOMEONE caught the seriousness as well as the humor of my remark - but 9-11 was a pretty shocking experience for a country that has been pretty peaceful (well, internally) essentially since the Vietnam War.
But as to off-site backups, Democracy and a Constitutional form of government is/are a worldwide concept that is thriving in many places, certainly more places than throughout most of history... So in a sense, the off-site backup program has been very successful; it's just that the original is looking a bit weak right now....
Merry Christmas!
...not just two branches of government - three! May not be efficent, but it sure seems a lot safer....
Just when I think the Democratic Party is starting to grow a spine and stand up for some libertarian principles rather than pander.... No, this is not intended as flame-bait - it is an expression of frustration with a binary political system that has segmented every issue into a "They don't think it's right?!?! Then it MUST be right! Write up a bill legislating it for us to vote on, intern! Oh, and say it's to protect the children!!!" - mentality.
i ds#1
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U NS/GUNSTAT.html
Here's a wacky idea - instead of legislating a bill "protecting [kids] from a coarsening culture" (Senator Bayh) in fictional video games, how about a bill protecting kids from real gun violence (Over 5,000 kids killed by guns in the US in 1997), real poverty (35,000,000 in 2003 in the U.S), and real rape (204,000 in the USA 2003-2004)? Oh, right, that would involve hard choices about civil liberties, responsibilities, Constitutional rights and freedom of choice, and other complicated things. Screw it, it won't get votes. Ban those nasty video games instead!!!
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/issues/?page=k
http://www.rainn.org/statistics/
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/
http://www-medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/G
Funny, if I want to blow 20 bucks, I can go to a wide choice of bars and clubs with local acts, pay the cover and get a pair of beers and a couple of hours of entertainment with good company. I might even find a really good band that I never heard of before, and hell, I'd buy an album from them for a few bucks after their set was over.
.mp3, and maybe I'll buy something from them because I like to hear them.
If music is great, we don't need a leech-like promoter to tell us so. I'll hear them, or a friend will tell me, or a friend of a friend, they can send me an
I just hope in the music companies' death throes they don't drag down our laws with I.P. and DMCA any more than they already have.