"For over three decades the creation of these molecules have baffled the scientific community."
Statements like this are rather disingenuous to the scientific community and fail to accurately depict the scientific process. Certainly there are a large number of "baffling" topics under investigation, but I wouldn't necessarily characterize the investigators as being "baffled". The overuse of this word in the context of science reporting seems to imply inept bumbling rather than the actual methodical (and occasionally inspired) process of scientific investigation (observe->hypothesize->predict->experiment->evaluate->refine). Certainly, many hypotheses are created, tested and found wanting for any number of reasons, but the very fact that an hypothesis has been falsified or found to be incomplete adds to our knowledge of what isn't so, and narrows the field of possible explanations.
Certainly, some instances (such as the summary blurb above) can be explained away as laziness in reporting and the desire to reach the lowest common denominator. However, this popular media representation of "baffled" scientists is easily hijacked for the mis-characterization of inconvenient findings by politically, financially or ideologically motivated groups. Couple with the joyful glee with which young earth creationists, ufologists, ghost hunters, psi investigators, AGW denialists and other pseudo- or anti-science proponents claim that science is "baffled" by (or worse, suppressing) their various claims, it is no wonder that a frighteningly large number of people have little understanding of the scientific method, little trust in the scientific enterprise, little appreciation of the degree to which their lives have been improved by science and almost no concept of the time and effort required to move from an observation to a consistent theory to explain it or a practical application of a discovered principle. Scientific literacy seems to be trending sharply downward (at least here in the US, but probably many other countries as well), and the general population is less and less equipped for critically evaluating the endless stream of claims and counter-claims that appear in the marketplace of ideas. Perpetuating the baffled scientist meme is not particularly helpful in combating this trend.
Granted, this article is a single example, and the case is rather benign, but I am increasingly dismayed by the inaccurate use of "baffled" in science reporting and felt I had to make my case. Perhaps a better statement would have been "The creation of these molecules has been a topic of intense investigation by the scientific community since their discovery in 1985"
Sounds like a good thing to me...apply the nanobot hunter-killers directly to the tumor, they do their job, then the host's own housekeeping systems clean up the nanobots.
Either that or develop nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killers (let's call them "snakebots") and when those start to overrun the place, apply nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killer hunter-killers ("gorillabots" perhaps?) and when wintertime rolls around they simply freeze to death
Flying cars have been around since the 30's. The problems is not that no one has invented a flying car, but rather that the demand is insufficient and the safety/regulatory issues are truly daunting. Until a flying car can be made foolproof and fail-safe, there isn't going to be a Cessna in everyone's garage. We already lose something like 35,000 people a year to car accidents, and they only move in two dimensions, along generally well-defined routes at (usually) a few tens of miles per hour and zero feet off the ground. Also, if your car's engine dies or you run out of gas, you can generally coast to a stop on the shoulder rather than plow screaming into side of a building. Flying cars dramatically change the operating parameters and the safety issues multiply rapidly. Automation (even autonomy), obstacle avoidance, route conformity, operator certification and some sort of safe (for everyone, including on the ground) emergency landing capability have to be worked out before flying cars become a practical reality. Advances are being made on all these fronts, so it may be a foreseeable reality, but there's still a long way to go and I don't think the FAA is going to be too keen on an order or two of magnitude increase in the number of objects and operators they have to keep track of.
I had an interesting thought along these lines not long ago. To whit - what if all those nasty buggers that were burning heretics, enslaving Africans and slaughtering aboriginal populations in the Americas in the 1500's and 1600's were still around? Would their attitudes and social norms have adjusted, or would they still be world-class a-holes by our standards? What about folks from the Great War and Depression era in the US? A lot of people I know who grew up in a segregated US still have a strong, even vicious, racist bent, but they are steadily dying off and being replaced by people with a more egalitarian worldview. Racism is still a problem, to be sure, but I think it is less common now than it used to be and will continue to decline as more people are exposed to liberal views on the subject during their formative years.
Considering that people seem to become more conservative and inflexible as they age (in general...there are exceptions) would we ever have achieved anything vaguely like the society we have today (not without it's problems, but certainly improved in many ways from earlier periods) if Ponce de Leon had discovered the Fountain of Youth? It seems to me that death, not only of the individual, but of norms and attitudes, is a vital component of societal maturation and that the achievement of immortality or greatly increased lifespan would essentially crystallize civilization and culture at a point in time, leading to stagnation. How long could human society continue if all the negative aspects simply carried forward indefinitely instead eventually yielding to new attitudes.
This, of course says nothing of the problems of limiting population growth, resource exploitation and generational power imbalances in a world where the old folks just keep getting older and the young folks have no room to grow and prosper
...if it has expanded provisions for public employees, particularly legislative, executive and judicial officers of the state. The expanded provisions would include publicly accessible, 24x365 audio/video/GPS monitoring, real-time transcription of all conversations (whether in person, by phone, email, telegraph, sign-language, semaphore, IP over Avian Carrier or whatever) and detailed, publicly accessible accounting of all cash, credit, loan, barter, swap, IOU, promissory and other transactions, transfers, exchanges, conveyances or transformations of wealth, goods, property, influence, information, intellectual property, favors or anything else of any conceivable value.
This is, of course, all in the interest of protecting the children (from growing up in a totalitarian surveillance state) and to curb terrorism (by the state, against it's people and their rights)
They are public employees after all, and since they should have nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear.
Netflix and Hulu on ROKU have completely obviated my need for cable (actually satellite, in my case). There were basically three reasons I wanted satellite in the first place: SciFi, Discovery and HBO. HBO and Discovery still have some good programming but the quality of the SyFy (lamest re-brand ever) lineup is approaching terminal velocity. They have a long sordid history of killing the few shows I do like (Farscape, Sliders, MST3K anyone?) while letting crap (Lexx, Tremors, John Edwards, etc, etc) go on far too long. Today they seem obsessed with wrasslin' and "let's freak each other out with spooky noises" shows. How about just airing some decent syndicated shows like B5 and old Dr Who? Meh, whatever. Screw SyFy.
There's tons of good stuff in the catalog of the streaming providers to keep me busy while I wait a season or two for the few current original series I like (Dexter, Spartacus, The Office, Eureka, Dr Who, etc) to come out on Netflix or I can get some of the more timely stuff like Colbert Report or shows like MythBusters on Hulu. I used to be all about the Tivo because it was TV the way I wanted it, when I wanted it. But that is beginning to seem quaint and naive now that on-demand high-quality streaming is a reality.
Do you have a reference for Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research? I would be fascinated to see that.
To quote the woman herself, from her 10/24/2008 policy speech in support of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA):
"You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."
She made no specific reference but it can be presumed she is referring to the 2008 appropriation for research into controlling the olive fruit fly by California Rep Mike Thompson, of which ~$211,000 did in fact go to research performed in France. The olive fruit fly is a harmful pest that causes considerable damage to crops in California and many other places. Rep Thompson defended this appropriation and it's allocation as follows:
"The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries. I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”
This says nothing of the valuable research into genetics and other biological systems that frequently utilize the more common drosophilla fruit fly, such as this, which could actually lead to treatment for the very people she claims to be supporting in the aforementioned speech. This dismissive attitude toward legitimate and useful science is very disturbing in a publicly elected official who should have a mature and non-simplistic understanding of how science and technology policy lead to practical benefits. But it would appear she either has a grade school understanding of the topic, or she was attempting to manipulate her constituency through sound bites that give the impression of a scrappy everywoman fighting senseless waste of taxpayer money. If the former, she is unqualified to participate and should keep quiet. If the latter, her image is tarnished by hypocrisy. (WARNING: PDF. See $1.5M in FY08 and $400K in FY09 for fighting invasive species in Alaska)
...rather than a Daily Kos Obamista screed...
Your bias is evident and name calling simply makes your argument less credible
The first is a scathing indictment of BOTH parties for trying to force the square peg of science into the round holes of their ideologies. The second is simply evidence for more of the same on one side of the political spectrum. I'm not sure what your point is here...are you trying to counter my statement or simply restating what I said? Maybe I wasn't clear initially, so I'll make up for it now - I find the politically motivated manipulation of science to conform with an ideology to be a
All the comments I've read focus on laptops, but let's not forget that this readily includes smart-phones, PDAs, tablets, iPods, flash drives, Kindles, portable DVD players, Gameboy/PSP, digital cameras....anything with memory/storage. Heck it might even apply to programmable calculators and your uber-cool, geek-chic calculator watch.
I'm not going to do your research for you. Perhaps you could start with GOP energy policy, or the politicization of science and politically motivated alteration or withholding of scientific findings. It might be interesting to see if you can determine why Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research is based on ignorance and good sound bites rather than insight into what the goal of that research is.
Also, if evolution isn't tangible science, what exactly is your criteria? Science deals with naturalistic phenomena...saying God/Jaweh/Allah/Brahma/Ahuru Mazda/Quetzalcoatl/Damballah/FSM/(ad infinitum) did it is either an act of blind religious zealotry or an argument from ignorance...the equivalent to saying "Since we can't explain every last detail of evolution, it must be false and all the scientific disciplines that support it, including anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics, are wrong too." Please refer to my statement about improving science literacy and critical thinking skills.
One significant problem with this idea is that those who make public policy decisions can't be trusted to make wise decisions based on the evidence provided to them by the science community and the consensus opinions that emerge from analysis of the evidence.
Just look at the far-right in the US; they seem to consistently make public policy decisions that are completely counter to what the science indicates and just happen to be perfectly harmonious with certain popular dogmas, then try to change the science to conform with the policy. Before anyone accuses me of partisanship, I am also of the opinion that the far-left seems equally disposed to kowtowing to their supporters' ideologies rather than what the scientific consensus indicates.
On the other hand, science is a very cut-throat business in which only the strongest evidence and best supported interpretations get any serious consideration. Nearly every finding and conclusion is subjected to a brutal review process that is designed to identify and eliminate errors. It just so happens that this review process meshes very nicely with ambition and ego on the part of the reviewers...finding a flaw in the procedures, data or conclusions gains prestige and may open new doors. Even failure to find flaws can lead to new research opportunities by looking for unanswered questions in the original, which an either confirm or refute. In simple but not entirely accurate terms, scientists want to prove that some other scientist's piece of research is flawed or some conclusion is misguided.
So, how do you choose? Do you go with "We should do X, because I'm an expert and many other experts who actually have a vested interest in proving me wrong happen to agree with me" or "We should do X, because I think it will give me the biggest short term popularity/financial gain or happens to agree with your dogma"
The real answer is better science and critical thinking education. But we have to stop wasting court time with silly things like ID and getting our panties in a bunch because of some out-of-context emails that simply show that science is a messy process.
Perhaps you don't understand the sheer number and immensity of galaxies. The Milky Way Galaxy alone is estimated to have somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars. Andromeda is somewhat more populous than the Milky Way, and may have 0.5 to 1 trillion stars. By your statement in relation to the scale, the entire universe should only extend to the bounds of the local group, never mind the Virgo super-cluster or any of the hundreds of billions of other observable galaxies and clusters.
So, given an approximate number of stars in a typical galaxy (whatever definition is settled on) being something like 2x10^11 and 2x10^11 galaxies, the entire universe is more like 4x10^22 stars, than a number that would conform to your statement (1x10^12)
Let me know when full-motion color video comes to thin, flexible displays. eInk/ePaper isn't there yet and this doesn't even look like it's an advance in that direction, but rather off-the-shelf, conventional rigid LCD repackaged with a small battery and storage as a gimmick. Hardly more innovative than singing birthday cards.
That's simply not true. TNT is less energy dense than aluminum. Which one would you rather be standing next to when a blasting cap is fired on them?
Never heard of aluminum dust explosions? There's all kinds of ordinarily innocuous materials that are absolutely not safe around flame if powdered and disbursed in the air...even flour or rubber dust can be made to explode
It should be pointed out that this experiment clearly demonstrates that the uncertainty principle is not some fundamental property of the universe, but rather an artifact of our measurement instruments. This is the very point that Einstein tried so hard to prove back in 1927, and the one so throughly disputed by the evil Niels Bohr. Unfortunately, Bohr won the argument for some reason, perhaps just out of stubbornness, and the present unsightly state of the science of physics resulted.
Um...no. Uncertainty has been experimentally verified repeatedly. There are still some questions, but this particular experiment does NOT conclusively disprove anything about QM.
If you would like to educate yourself a little on the topic, see this wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox. I would also highly recommend "Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, particularly Ch 4, which contains an in-depth discussion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument and it's refutation by QM, and ultimately by experimental observations.
Your statement about the "present unsightly state of the science of physics" is laughable, at best. Just because the properties and interactions of particles in the quantum realm are often counter-intuitive and alien to our everyday experience does not mean that QM is wrong. It doesn't mean that QM is 100% correct either, but the predictions are more accurate and useful than an EPR-based model of the quantum realm. Besides, where in the cosmic law books is it written that the functioning of the universe has to be "sightly" or even comprehensible to us?
"A minute's thought might convince us that a heliocentric model was available to them:"
Actually, a moment's investigation or familiarity with Greek philosphers might convince us that Aristarchus actually suggested a heliocentric model, contemporary with Aristotle's model.
It is also useful, perhaps, to consider that a geocentric view is more intuitive and comfortable in a world without telescopes or an understanding of gravity and that the math and geometry works for both systems, just using different assumptions. To an ancient Greek or 12th century Catholic monk with a bent for astronomy, it isn't a stretch at all to imagine the universe as a series of concentric spheres centered on the Earth and the heavenly bodies whirling around in epicycles, while imagining the Sun as the center is not only counter-intuitive, it also diminishes the significance of the Earth and, consequently, that of Man.
There's a fascinating book, "It Started With Copernicus", by Howard Margolis, that investigates the transformation from Ptolemaic to Copernican models in the 15th/16th centuries. While some of the conclusions Margolis draws about the beginnings of the "Scientific Revolution" are purely subjective, he seems to have done his homework about early astronomical philosophy.
"But it can't be the case that that right [1st Amendment] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said. "And so those two principles have to be accommodated."
Doubleplusgood example of doublethink. The Party must be proud, Comrade.
Big Brother Says:
War is Peace!
Freedom is Slavery!
Ignorance is Strength!
Light side of the Moon? Hunh? The lunar "day" is somewhere around 28 Earth days...fixed installations will be in shadow approximately 2 weeks at a time, and at unfavorable angles for some of the other 2 weeks.
Or do you mean build rails all the way around the Moon and motorize the panels so they can stay on the "light side". Or maybe position at the poles (too lazy to google it...does anybody know the axial tilt of the Moon? shallow enough to stay out of shadow at the poles?)
Better yet, unless you're planning on fabbing the stuff at the Moon, and maybe even if you are (to save on launch costs) just put them in geostationary orbits.
Oops
I tend to think much faster than I type and forget to include the whole thought process sometimes...such as how safe, clean, inexpensive and efficient power generation leads to cheap hydrogen production, which leads to hydrogen burning engines, which leads to less dependance on petroleum for power, which is how OPEC and big oil either get into other markets or find themselves pushed out of the picture.
Exactly!
Our current methods for nuclear generation and the treatment/disposal of spent nuclear fuels is short-sighted, wasteful and environmentally irresponsible. Anti "nook-yoo-ler" sentiment aside, nuclear generation is potentially far safer and far less environmentally devastating than fossil fuel generation. IANANE, but I'm at least moderately conversant for a lay-person and it seems to me that there are numerous options, including various types of 3rd and 4th generation breeder/fast reactors, that will result in greater safety (the Integral Fast Reactor design is virtually melt-down proof), less waste (virtually zero transuranics and actinides ever leave some types), higher output, higher fuel efficiency (from about 1% in current thermal reactor designs up to 95%+ for IFR and some other types) and significantly reduced expense (there is at least one lead-cooled design that is intended to be a turnkey operation for small-grid/developing country type deployments, requiring very little maintenance and with a 15-20 year refueling interval)
There was an interesting article on this subject in the December Scientific American and wikipedia( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor )has numerous articles, if you want a quick rundown on the operation, advantages and disadvantages of various designs.
Large-scale transition to safe, efficient, modern reactors could break the stanglehold that the #@$&ing oil companies and OPEC (Organized Petroleum Extortion Cartel) have on the energy market and, by extension, on much of the world's economy. Further, introducing smaller, inexpensive, self-contained designs could go a long way toward elevating living standards in much of the developing world.
Slashdot Mirror
"For over three decades the creation of these molecules have baffled the scientific community."
Statements like this are rather disingenuous to the scientific community and fail to accurately depict the scientific process. Certainly there are a large number of "baffling" topics under investigation, but I wouldn't necessarily characterize the investigators as being "baffled". The overuse of this word in the context of science reporting seems to imply inept bumbling rather than the actual methodical (and occasionally inspired) process of scientific investigation (observe->hypothesize->predict->experiment->evaluate->refine). Certainly, many hypotheses are created, tested and found wanting for any number of reasons, but the very fact that an hypothesis has been falsified or found to be incomplete adds to our knowledge of what isn't so, and narrows the field of possible explanations.
Certainly, some instances (such as the summary blurb above) can be explained away as laziness in reporting and the desire to reach the lowest common denominator. However, this popular media representation of "baffled" scientists is easily hijacked for the mis-characterization of inconvenient findings by politically, financially or ideologically motivated groups. Couple with the joyful glee with which young earth creationists, ufologists, ghost hunters, psi investigators, AGW denialists and other pseudo- or anti-science proponents claim that science is "baffled" by (or worse, suppressing) their various claims, it is no wonder that a frighteningly large number of people have little understanding of the scientific method, little trust in the scientific enterprise, little appreciation of the degree to which their lives have been improved by science and almost no concept of the time and effort required to move from an observation to a consistent theory to explain it or a practical application of a discovered principle. Scientific literacy seems to be trending sharply downward (at least here in the US, but probably many other countries as well), and the general population is less and less equipped for critically evaluating the endless stream of claims and counter-claims that appear in the marketplace of ideas. Perpetuating the baffled scientist meme is not particularly helpful in combating this trend.
Granted, this article is a single example, and the case is rather benign, but I am increasingly dismayed by the inaccurate use of "baffled" in science reporting and felt I had to make my case. Perhaps a better statement would have been "The creation of these molecules has been a topic of intense investigation by the scientific community since their discovery in 1985"
Sounds like a good thing to me...apply the nanobot hunter-killers directly to the tumor, they do their job, then the host's own housekeeping systems clean up the nanobots.
Either that or develop nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killers (let's call them "snakebots") and when those start to overrun the place, apply nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killer hunter-killers ("gorillabots" perhaps?) and when wintertime rolls around they simply freeze to death
Flying cars have been around since the 30's. The problems is not that no one has invented a flying car, but rather that the demand is insufficient and the safety/regulatory issues are truly daunting. Until a flying car can be made foolproof and fail-safe, there isn't going to be a Cessna in everyone's garage. We already lose something like 35,000 people a year to car accidents, and they only move in two dimensions, along generally well-defined routes at (usually) a few tens of miles per hour and zero feet off the ground. Also, if your car's engine dies or you run out of gas, you can generally coast to a stop on the shoulder rather than plow screaming into side of a building. Flying cars dramatically change the operating parameters and the safety issues multiply rapidly. Automation (even autonomy), obstacle avoidance, route conformity, operator certification and some sort of safe (for everyone, including on the ground) emergency landing capability have to be worked out before flying cars become a practical reality. Advances are being made on all these fronts, so it may be a foreseeable reality, but there's still a long way to go and I don't think the FAA is going to be too keen on an order or two of magnitude increase in the number of objects and operators they have to keep track of.
I had an interesting thought along these lines not long ago. To whit - what if all those nasty buggers that were burning heretics, enslaving Africans and slaughtering aboriginal populations in the Americas in the 1500's and 1600's were still around? Would their attitudes and social norms have adjusted, or would they still be world-class a-holes by our standards? What about folks from the Great War and Depression era in the US? A lot of people I know who grew up in a segregated US still have a strong, even vicious, racist bent, but they are steadily dying off and being replaced by people with a more egalitarian worldview. Racism is still a problem, to be sure, but I think it is less common now than it used to be and will continue to decline as more people are exposed to liberal views on the subject during their formative years.
Considering that people seem to become more conservative and inflexible as they age (in general...there are exceptions) would we ever have achieved anything vaguely like the society we have today (not without it's problems, but certainly improved in many ways from earlier periods) if Ponce de Leon had discovered the Fountain of Youth? It seems to me that death, not only of the individual, but of norms and attitudes, is a vital component of societal maturation and that the achievement of immortality or greatly increased lifespan would essentially crystallize civilization and culture at a point in time, leading to stagnation. How long could human society continue if all the negative aspects simply carried forward indefinitely instead eventually yielding to new attitudes.
This, of course says nothing of the problems of limiting population growth, resource exploitation and generational power imbalances in a world where the old folks just keep getting older and the young folks have no room to grow and prosper
...if it has expanded provisions for public employees, particularly legislative, executive and judicial officers of the state. The expanded provisions would include publicly accessible, 24x365 audio/video/GPS monitoring, real-time transcription of all conversations (whether in person, by phone, email, telegraph, sign-language, semaphore, IP over Avian Carrier or whatever) and detailed, publicly accessible accounting of all cash, credit, loan, barter, swap, IOU, promissory and other transactions, transfers, exchanges, conveyances or transformations of wealth, goods, property, influence, information, intellectual property, favors or anything else of any conceivable value.
This is, of course, all in the interest of protecting the children (from growing up in a totalitarian surveillance state) and to curb terrorism (by the state, against it's people and their rights)
They are public employees after all, and since they should have nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear.
Netflix and Hulu on ROKU have completely obviated my need for cable (actually satellite, in my case). There were basically three reasons I wanted satellite in the first place: SciFi, Discovery and HBO. HBO and Discovery still have some good programming but the quality of the SyFy (lamest re-brand ever) lineup is approaching terminal velocity. They have a long sordid history of killing the few shows I do like (Farscape, Sliders, MST3K anyone?) while letting crap (Lexx, Tremors, John Edwards, etc, etc) go on far too long. Today they seem obsessed with wrasslin' and "let's freak each other out with spooky noises" shows. How about just airing some decent syndicated shows like B5 and old Dr Who? Meh, whatever. Screw SyFy.
There's tons of good stuff in the catalog of the streaming providers to keep me busy while I wait a season or two for the few current original series I like (Dexter, Spartacus, The Office, Eureka, Dr Who, etc) to come out on Netflix or I can get some of the more timely stuff like Colbert Report or shows like MythBusters on Hulu. I used to be all about the Tivo because it was TV the way I wanted it, when I wanted it. But that is beginning to seem quaint and naive now that on-demand high-quality streaming is a reality.
Do you have a reference for Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research? I would be fascinated to see that.
To quote the woman herself, from her 10/24/2008 policy speech in support of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA):
"You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."
She made no specific reference but it can be presumed she is referring to the 2008 appropriation for research into controlling the olive fruit fly by California Rep Mike Thompson, of which ~$211,000 did in fact go to research performed in France. The olive fruit fly is a harmful pest that causes considerable damage to crops in California and many other places. Rep Thompson defended this appropriation and it's allocation as follows:
"The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries. I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”
This says nothing of the valuable research into genetics and other biological systems that frequently utilize the more common drosophilla fruit fly, such as this, which could actually lead to treatment for the very people she claims to be supporting in the aforementioned speech. This dismissive attitude toward legitimate and useful science is very disturbing in a publicly elected official who should have a mature and non-simplistic understanding of how science and technology policy lead to practical benefits. But it would appear she either has a grade school understanding of the topic, or she was attempting to manipulate her constituency through sound bites that give the impression of a scrappy everywoman fighting senseless waste of taxpayer money. If the former, she is unqualified to participate and should keep quiet. If the latter, her image is tarnished by hypocrisy. (WARNING: PDF. See $1.5M in FY08 and $400K in FY09 for fighting invasive species in Alaska)
...rather than a Daily Kos Obamista screed...
Your bias is evident and name calling simply makes your argument less credible
Yes, let's talk about politicizing science:
Supporting your views I found:
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2007/03/21/politicizing-science/
Indeed, your entire argument appears to presented there.
The left does it even more egregiously:
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/08/is-there-no-limit-to-obama-epas-politicization-of-science/
The first is a scathing indictment of BOTH parties for trying to force the square peg of science into the round holes of their ideologies. The second is simply evidence for more of the same on one side of the political spectrum. I'm not sure what your point is here...are you trying to counter my statement or simply restating what I said? Maybe I wasn't clear initially, so I'll make up for it now - I find the politically motivated manipulation of science to conform with an ideology to be a
All the comments I've read focus on laptops, but let's not forget that this readily includes smart-phones, PDAs, tablets, iPods, flash drives, Kindles, portable DVD players, Gameboy/PSP, digital cameras....anything with memory/storage. Heck it might even apply to programmable calculators and your uber-cool, geek-chic calculator watch.
I'm not going to do your research for you. Perhaps you could start with GOP energy policy, or the politicization of science and politically motivated alteration or withholding of scientific findings. It might be interesting to see if you can determine why Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research is based on ignorance and good sound bites rather than insight into what the goal of that research is.
Also, if evolution isn't tangible science, what exactly is your criteria? Science deals with naturalistic phenomena...saying God/Jaweh/Allah/Brahma/Ahuru Mazda/Quetzalcoatl/Damballah/FSM/(ad infinitum) did it is either an act of blind religious zealotry or an argument from ignorance...the equivalent to saying "Since we can't explain every last detail of evolution, it must be false and all the scientific disciplines that support it, including anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics, are wrong too." Please refer to my statement about improving science literacy and critical thinking skills.
One significant problem with this idea is that those who make public policy decisions can't be trusted to make wise decisions based on the evidence provided to them by the science community and the consensus opinions that emerge from analysis of the evidence. Just look at the far-right in the US; they seem to consistently make public policy decisions that are completely counter to what the science indicates and just happen to be perfectly harmonious with certain popular dogmas, then try to change the science to conform with the policy. Before anyone accuses me of partisanship, I am also of the opinion that the far-left seems equally disposed to kowtowing to their supporters' ideologies rather than what the scientific consensus indicates. On the other hand, science is a very cut-throat business in which only the strongest evidence and best supported interpretations get any serious consideration. Nearly every finding and conclusion is subjected to a brutal review process that is designed to identify and eliminate errors. It just so happens that this review process meshes very nicely with ambition and ego on the part of the reviewers...finding a flaw in the procedures, data or conclusions gains prestige and may open new doors. Even failure to find flaws can lead to new research opportunities by looking for unanswered questions in the original, which an either confirm or refute. In simple but not entirely accurate terms, scientists want to prove that some other scientist's piece of research is flawed or some conclusion is misguided. So, how do you choose? Do you go with "We should do X, because I'm an expert and many other experts who actually have a vested interest in proving me wrong happen to agree with me" or "We should do X, because I think it will give me the biggest short term popularity/financial gain or happens to agree with your dogma" The real answer is better science and critical thinking education. But we have to stop wasting court time with silly things like ID and getting our panties in a bunch because of some out-of-context emails that simply show that science is a messy process.
Perhaps you don't understand the sheer number and immensity of galaxies. The Milky Way Galaxy alone is estimated to have somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars. Andromeda is somewhat more populous than the Milky Way, and may have 0.5 to 1 trillion stars. By your statement in relation to the scale, the entire universe should only extend to the bounds of the local group, never mind the Virgo super-cluster or any of the hundreds of billions of other observable galaxies and clusters. So, given an approximate number of stars in a typical galaxy (whatever definition is settled on) being something like 2x10^11 and 2x10^11 galaxies, the entire universe is more like 4x10^22 stars, than a number that would conform to your statement (1x10^12)
Let me know when full-motion color video comes to thin, flexible displays. eInk/ePaper isn't there yet and this doesn't even look like it's an advance in that direction, but rather off-the-shelf, conventional rigid LCD repackaged with a small battery and storage as a gimmick. Hardly more innovative than singing birthday cards.
No, Bohr invented the atom...Einstein invented speed limits
That's simply not true. TNT is less energy dense than aluminum. Which one would you rather be standing next to when a blasting cap is fired on them?
Never heard of aluminum dust explosions? There's all kinds of ordinarily innocuous materials that are absolutely not safe around flame if powdered and disbursed in the air...even flour or rubber dust can be made to explode
If you would like to educate yourself a little on the topic, see this wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox. I would also highly recommend "Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, particularly Ch 4, which contains an in-depth discussion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument and it's refutation by QM, and ultimately by experimental observations.
Your statement about the "present unsightly state of the science of physics" is laughable, at best. Just because the properties and interactions of particles in the quantum realm are often counter-intuitive and alien to our everyday experience does not mean that QM is wrong. It doesn't mean that QM is 100% correct either, but the predictions are more accurate and useful than an EPR-based model of the quantum realm. Besides, where in the cosmic law books is it written that the functioning of the universe has to be "sightly" or even comprehensible to us?
"A minute's thought might convince us that a heliocentric model was available to them:"
Actually, a moment's investigation or familiarity with Greek philosphers might convince us that Aristarchus actually suggested a heliocentric model, contemporary with Aristotle's model.
It is also useful, perhaps, to consider that a geocentric view is more intuitive and comfortable in a world without telescopes or an understanding of gravity and that the math and geometry works for both systems, just using different assumptions. To an ancient Greek or 12th century Catholic monk with a bent for astronomy, it isn't a stretch at all to imagine the universe as a series of concentric spheres centered on the Earth and the heavenly bodies whirling around in epicycles, while imagining the Sun as the center is not only counter-intuitive, it also diminishes the significance of the Earth and, consequently, that of Man.
There's a fascinating book, "It Started With Copernicus", by Howard Margolis, that investigates the transformation from Ptolemaic to Copernican models in the 15th/16th centuries. While some of the conclusions Margolis draws about the beginnings of the "Scientific Revolution" are purely subjective, he seems to have done his homework about early astronomical philosophy.
"But it can't be the case that that right [1st Amendment] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said. "And so those two principles have to be accommodated." Doubleplusgood example of doublethink. The Party must be proud, Comrade. Big Brother Says: War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!
Light side of the Moon? Hunh? The lunar "day" is somewhere around 28 Earth days...fixed installations will be in shadow approximately 2 weeks at a time, and at unfavorable angles for some of the other 2 weeks.
Or do you mean build rails all the way around the Moon and motorize the panels so they can stay on the "light side". Or maybe position at the poles (too lazy to google it...does anybody know the axial tilt of the Moon? shallow enough to stay out of shadow at the poles?)
Better yet, unless you're planning on fabbing the stuff at the Moon, and maybe even if you are (to save on launch costs) just put them in geostationary orbits.
Oops
I tend to think much faster than I type and forget to include the whole thought process sometimes...such as how safe, clean, inexpensive and efficient power generation leads to cheap hydrogen production, which leads to hydrogen burning engines, which leads to less dependance on petroleum for power, which is how OPEC and big oil either get into other markets or find themselves pushed out of the picture.
Exactly!
Our current methods for nuclear generation and the treatment/disposal of spent nuclear fuels is short-sighted, wasteful and environmentally irresponsible. Anti "nook-yoo-ler" sentiment aside, nuclear generation is potentially far safer and far less environmentally devastating than fossil fuel generation. IANANE, but I'm at least moderately conversant for a lay-person and it seems to me that there are numerous options, including various types of 3rd and 4th generation breeder/fast reactors, that will result in greater safety (the Integral Fast Reactor design is virtually melt-down proof), less waste (virtually zero transuranics and actinides ever leave some types), higher output, higher fuel efficiency (from about 1% in current thermal reactor designs up to 95%+ for IFR and some other types) and significantly reduced expense (there is at least one lead-cooled design that is intended to be a turnkey operation for small-grid/developing country type deployments, requiring very little maintenance and with a 15-20 year refueling interval)
There was an interesting article on this subject in the December Scientific American and wikipedia( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor )has numerous articles, if you want a quick rundown on the operation, advantages and disadvantages of various designs.
Large-scale transition to safe, efficient, modern reactors could break the stanglehold that the #@$&ing oil companies and OPEC (Organized Petroleum Extortion Cartel) have on the energy market and, by extension, on much of the world's economy. Further, introducing smaller, inexpensive, self-contained designs could go a long way toward elevating living standards in much of the developing world.