No, I don't mean to suggest that at all. I just meant to say that being a benevolent conqueror and trying to rebuild a country is much more difficult and complicated than mykos suggested it might be.
I think the same thing was said about Iraq: "Surely conquerors showing up with promises of food and infrastructure would be preferred to Saddam Hussein's government..." I would not bet on re-colonizing Haiti working out better than regime change in Iraq.
Although the way this was handled sounds incredibly stupid, I can guess what was going through the VP's mind: seven months ago, a student in another San Diego school successfully detonated five "bombs" that he made using Gatorade bottles.
With that being fairly fresh in authorities' minds, I can easily imagine them worrying that the Millenial Tech student had developed a new and improved version. It still sounds like they overreacted, but at least I can understand why.
Zero population growth actually requires more than 2 children per woman. It would be 1.0 if every woman gave birth to one girl who survived to have a baby girl of her own. But since you get 105 boys for every 100 girls, you need 2.1 children per woman. And then add a bit more to compensate for the children who don't survive to child-bearing age. (See replacement rate)
I expect you are thinking of demographic transition: when a population with high birth and death rates experiences a change (e.g. the invention of sanitation) to low birth and death rate, the death rate drops first so the population grows until the birth rate drops and a new equilibrium is reached, typically at a higher population. If you wanted to keep the population stable through a demographic transition, then you would indeed need to drop the birth rate dramatically. But once the birth and death rates stabilize again, the population will shrink unless the fertility rate goes back up to 2.
And that is what the article observes: as countries become wealthy, life expectancy shoots up, populations grow, and fertility rates drop to a low of 1.3. But once the easy gains have been made, life expectancy increases more slowly and fertility rates return towards the replacement rate of around 2.
No, the article suggests that with increasing development, fertility rate drops as low as 1.3 children per woman but then returns to 2 children per woman, in other words to approximately the zero population growth level. There is no evidence suggesting a further increase above zero population growth.
You may have been mislead by the graph shown in the article: it has a log scale which strongly exaggerates the rise from 1.3 to 2.0 compared with the decline from 8.0, and it tempts you to extend the trend line if you don't realise that the x axis is not time, but an index which ranges from 0 to 1. More and more countries are probably going to crowd into the space above 0.95 but the axis can't get longer and there's no reason to think the trend line is going to sharply rise as you get closer and closer to 1.0.
I think item B in your list is actually the thing that we're trying to test here. So more like:
A - My brother and my parents left the same destination within 2 seconds of each other B - Because of the difference in suspension between the two vehicles, if there had been any potholes bigger than a certain size, one vehicle would have had to travel slower than the other C - They arrived within 0.9 seconds of each other D - Therefore there were no potholes bigger than the size mentioned above
(There might possibly be smaller potholes, too small to affect either of the vehicles in this test. You could repeat the experiment with a bicycle, a skateboard, and one of those roller wheels you use to trace distances on a map.)
Yes, the mutations are random. Mutations that tend to make organisms die before breeding tend not to be passed on to offspring; we call these mutations maladaptive. Mutations that improve (or at least do not impair) the ability to have offspring do tend to be passed on to those offspring; we call these mutations adaptive.
Yes, the "adaptiveness" of a random mutation could be said to be random. However, there is no pool of "adaptiveness potential" to be used up. Think of it like flipping a coin: you can get five heads in a row, but that doesn't mean you've used up the heads potential; the next flip is still only 50% likely to be a tail.
Fossils are not necessarily indications of dead ends. We certainly have found fossils of creatures whose offspring evolved into something that is still around. For example we have found fossils of rabbit-sized things with big teeth whose offspring evolved into pig-sized tusked things whose offspring evolved into 50,000-year-ago elephants, whose offspring evolved into modern elephants.
And as the last example shows, the existence of fossils of a species doesn't necessarily mean the species is extinct. Most fossils are so old that their offspring have changed so much that we would not call them the same species. But in cases of recent fossilization (which is unusual, of course) it's possible that there could be fossils of a species as well as living modern examples of it.
My experience is quite different from yours. I use CFLs in my upside-down kitchen lights too: installed two years ago, still going strong. I use them in my bathroom too, and I shower daily: still going strong after two years. I have not tried them outdoors or in my dimmer fixture, but dimmable CFLs are available. My CFLs do not take "five minutes" to warm up; they are on and fully usable when I turn the switch on -- although I admit that some of my oldest ones (many years old) come on at near full brightness instantly but brighten a bit more over a second or two until they reach full. And frankly, as far as I can remember, I have never in ten years had a CFL die except from dropping it on the floor.
Someone once came to my house with a bloody nose asking for help because someone had punched him. I phoned the police and six cops showed up. That sounds like overkill but for safety's sake police do and should respond in large numbers until the situation on the ground is known and stable. Sending only one pair of cops to check up on someone carrying a gun in a way that aroused enough suspicion to make someone call 911 would not be an adequate response.
That's highly unrealistic. They couldn't just ignore the call by replying that AK-47's are legal. As Rogerborg pointed out, even if it is lawful to openly carry such a weapon, it is not lawful to "cause alarm" with it, and the fact that someone called 911 shows that at least that person was alarmed, and thus investigation is required. Even if the gun is legal, the police are very much justified in at least advising the person how to carry it so as not to cause alarm.
And from the 911 call-taker's point of view, they know that callers are often inaccurate or incorrect in their reports -- this one certainly was! -- and take that into account. They must err on the side of caution and send out real cops to check out a situation if there is any doubt at all about a possible risk to public safety. If there was ever a situation where someone called 911 to report something suspicious and the call-taker ignored the report and something bad happened, you can be sure the papers would be complaining about how the police sit around ignoring the public and eating donuts.
I suspect the real problem for the OP was not that it was a check; the problem was probably that it was an *international* check, a check from a USA bank being deposited in a European country. I've had similar issues clearing international checks. The fact of it being an international transaction introduces extra layers of complexity, and it probably had to go through one or two intermediate clearing banks in addition to Google's and the OP's. International checks are a hassle; wire transfer is easier.
That might be true, but there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures.
Different times make different terrorists. Today, when you think "terrorist", you think "Muslim". But from the 1970s to the 1990s, "terrorist" meant the IRA, who were of course Catholic Christians. In the 1950s and 1960s, the main terrorist group in the USA was the Ku Klux Klan, or to a lesser degree in terms of body count the Black Panthers. In each case, I suspect people at the time said the same thing you wrote above: "there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures."
Either that, or they would have been swept up and imprisoned for 28 days without even being charged with any crime. Why else would a bunch of Muslims get together in a field where they could talk without being overheard? Could go either way.
The comments to TFA (I guess I'm not a real./er either) include links to a properly rigorous academic study (and some news articles) that shows that downloaders spend more money, not less: for every CD downloaded, they buy 0.4 additional CDs. The study's authors also "find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to increase with music purchases."
And as far as skipping a night's sleep or a few meals goes, that's nowhere near the scale when used as torture. They don't equate. How often have you gone five days without sleep, or without food? Let us all know next week how easy it was to do.
It's well beyond that. Voluntary all-nighters involve you being in control (knowing that you could take a nap if you wanted to), eating when you want to, sitting comfortably, listening to your favourite music, drinking coffee so that you don't *want* to sleep, and perhaps most importantly, having something active to do that you are concentrating on. Sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique involves being prevented from sleep for days on end by hostile people who are shouting at you, threatening you, blasting headache-inducing noise and bright lights at you, making you move around, and ensuring that you have nothing to do or think about to take your mind off of an eternal present moment, so that in the end you are so fatigued that your willpower is destroyed. (Whether a person in that state can coherently remember and describe any useful information is another question.)
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No, I don't mean to suggest that at all. I just meant to say that being a benevolent conqueror and trying to rebuild a country is much more difficult and complicated than mykos suggested it might be.
I think the same thing was said about Iraq: "Surely conquerors showing up with promises of food and infrastructure would be preferred to Saddam Hussein's government..." I would not bet on re-colonizing Haiti working out better than regime change in Iraq.
Although the way this was handled sounds incredibly stupid, I can guess what was going through the VP's mind: seven months ago, a student in another San Diego school successfully detonated five "bombs" that he made using Gatorade bottles.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/jun/06/1m6bottle00527-student-arrested-3-blasts-school/?metro&zIndex=111931
With that being fairly fresh in authorities' minds, I can easily imagine them worrying that the Millenial Tech student had developed a new and improved version. It still sounds like they overreacted, but at least I can understand why.
I think you've hit the nail on the head
Zero population growth actually requires more than 2 children per woman. It would be 1.0 if every woman gave birth to one girl who survived to have a baby girl of her own. But since you get 105 boys for every 100 girls, you need 2.1 children per woman. And then add a bit more to compensate for the children who don't survive to child-bearing age. (See replacement rate)
I expect you are thinking of demographic transition: when a population with high birth and death rates experiences a change (e.g. the invention of sanitation) to low birth and death rate, the death rate drops first so the population grows until the birth rate drops and a new equilibrium is reached, typically at a higher population. If you wanted to keep the population stable through a demographic transition, then you would indeed need to drop the birth rate dramatically. But once the birth and death rates stabilize again, the population will shrink unless the fertility rate goes back up to 2.
And that is what the article observes: as countries become wealthy, life expectancy shoots up, populations grow, and fertility rates drop to a low of 1.3. But once the easy gains have been made, life expectancy increases more slowly and fertility rates return towards the replacement rate of around 2.
No, the article suggests that with increasing development, fertility rate drops as low as 1.3 children per woman but then returns to 2 children per woman, in other words to approximately the zero population growth level. There is no evidence suggesting a further increase above zero population growth.
You may have been mislead by the graph shown in the article: it has a log scale which strongly exaggerates the rise from 1.3 to 2.0 compared with the decline from 8.0, and it tempts you to extend the trend line if you don't realise that the x axis is not time, but an index which ranges from 0 to 1. More and more countries are probably going to crowd into the space above 0.95 but the axis can't get longer and there's no reason to think the trend line is going to sharply rise as you get closer and closer to 1.0.
I think item B in your list is actually the thing that we're trying to test here. So more like:
A - My brother and my parents left the same destination within 2 seconds of each other
B - Because of the difference in suspension between the two vehicles, if there had been any potholes bigger than a certain size, one vehicle would have had to travel slower than the other
C - They arrived within 0.9 seconds of each other
D - Therefore there were no potholes bigger than the size mentioned above
(There might possibly be smaller potholes, too small to affect either of the vehicles in this test. You could repeat the experiment with a bicycle, a skateboard, and one of those roller wheels you use to trace distances on a map.)
Zut alors! We are surrounded!
Yes, the mutations are random. Mutations that tend to make organisms die before breeding tend not to be passed on to offspring; we call these mutations maladaptive. Mutations that improve (or at least do not impair) the ability to have offspring do tend to be passed on to those offspring; we call these mutations adaptive.
Yes, the "adaptiveness" of a random mutation could be said to be random. However, there is no pool of "adaptiveness potential" to be used up. Think of it like flipping a coin: you can get five heads in a row, but that doesn't mean you've used up the heads potential; the next flip is still only 50% likely to be a tail.
Fossils are not necessarily indications of dead ends. We certainly have found fossils of creatures whose offspring evolved into something that is still around. For example we have found fossils of rabbit-sized things with big teeth whose offspring evolved into pig-sized tusked things whose offspring evolved into 50,000-year-ago elephants, whose offspring evolved into modern elephants.
And as the last example shows, the existence of fossils of a species doesn't necessarily mean the species is extinct. Most fossils are so old that their offspring have changed so much that we would not call them the same species. But in cases of recent fossilization (which is unusual, of course) it's possible that there could be fossils of a species as well as living modern examples of it.
You must be new here
CFLs hate...
My experience is quite different from yours. I use CFLs in my upside-down kitchen lights too: installed two years ago, still going strong. I use them in my bathroom too, and I shower daily: still going strong after two years. I have not tried them outdoors or in my dimmer fixture, but dimmable CFLs are available. My CFLs do not take "five minutes" to warm up; they are on and fully usable when I turn the switch on -- although I admit that some of my oldest ones (many years old) come on at near full brightness instantly but brighten a bit more over a second or two until they reach full. And frankly, as far as I can remember, I have never in ten years had a CFL die except from dropping it on the floor.
Yes. Pick-up artists call this social proof.
It sure would be remarkable! People would be remarking about it on all of the major TV news networks!
Someone once came to my house with a bloody nose asking for help because someone had punched him. I phoned the police and six cops showed up. That sounds like overkill but for safety's sake police do and should respond in large numbers until the situation on the ground is known and stable. Sending only one pair of cops to check up on someone carrying a gun in a way that aroused enough suspicion to make someone call 911 would not be an adequate response.
That's highly unrealistic. They couldn't just ignore the call by replying that AK-47's are legal. As Rogerborg pointed out, even if it is lawful to openly carry such a weapon, it is not lawful to "cause alarm" with it, and the fact that someone called 911 shows that at least that person was alarmed, and thus investigation is required. Even if the gun is legal, the police are very much justified in at least advising the person how to carry it so as not to cause alarm.
And from the 911 call-taker's point of view, they know that callers are often inaccurate or incorrect in their reports -- this one certainly was! -- and take that into account. They must err on the side of caution and send out real cops to check out a situation if there is any doubt at all about a possible risk to public safety. If there was ever a situation where someone called 911 to report something suspicious and the call-taker ignored the report and something bad happened, you can be sure the papers would be complaining about how the police sit around ignoring the public and eating donuts.
Doesn't matter where the ex got the password -- taped to the monitor or whatever, it's still unauthorized access to a computer system.
I suspect the real problem for the OP was not that it was a check; the problem was probably that it was an *international* check, a check from a USA bank being deposited in a European country. I've had similar issues clearing international checks. The fact of it being an international transaction introduces extra layers of complexity, and it probably had to go through one or two intermediate clearing banks in addition to Google's and the OP's. International checks are a hassle; wire transfer is easier.
That might be true, but there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures.
Different times make different terrorists. Today, when you think "terrorist", you think "Muslim". But from the 1970s to the 1990s, "terrorist" meant the IRA, who were of course Catholic Christians. In the 1950s and 1960s, the main terrorist group in the USA was the Ku Klux Klan, or to a lesser degree in terms of body count the Black Panthers. In each case, I suspect people at the time said the same thing you wrote above: "there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures."
Either that, or they would have been swept up and imprisoned for 28 days without even being charged with any crime. Why else would a bunch of Muslims get together in a field where they could talk without being overheard? Could go either way.
The comments to TFA (I guess I'm not a real ./er either) include links to a properly rigorous academic study (and some news articles) that shows that downloaders spend more money, not less: for every CD downloaded, they buy 0.4 additional CDs. The study's authors also "find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to increase with music purchases."
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/ip01457.html
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/03/6418.ars
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4718249.stm
Some people put a drip-irrigation tube down first, then the plastic on top of that.
And as far as skipping a night's sleep or a few meals goes, that's nowhere near the scale when used as torture. They don't equate. How often have you gone five days without sleep, or without food? Let us all know next week how easy it was to do.
It's well beyond that. Voluntary all-nighters involve you being in control (knowing that you could take a nap if you wanted to), eating when you want to, sitting comfortably, listening to your favourite music, drinking coffee so that you don't *want* to sleep, and perhaps most importantly, having something active to do that you are concentrating on. Sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique involves being prevented from sleep for days on end by hostile people who are shouting at you, threatening you, blasting headache-inducing noise and bright lights at you, making you move around, and ensuring that you have nothing to do or think about to take your mind off of an eternal present moment, so that in the end you are so fatigued that your willpower is destroyed. (Whether a person in that state can coherently remember and describe any useful information is another question.)
There is a difference between a terrorist and a saboteur.
One person clapping in an audience of 2,000 doesn't make a damn bit of difference. So why do you bother to clap?