The article talks about detecting 'massive' black holes, and goes on to add them to be around 30x the mass of the Sun.
Why call upon black holes, then? As far as I remember, you can have stars significantly more massive than that before the collapse into a black hole becomes the only explanation to describe what was observed.
With only that presented as evidence, it sounds like someone was a bit overeager to justify the LIGO's budget with claims of an extraordinary observation.
The first time I saw it, I didn't really pay attention and shelved like so many facts we hear.
And then, I started to think about it. So, what are the numbers? I used the CIA World Factbook as a source
Do note that I'm talking about native speakers here, like on that propaganda website
So, first, English native speakers. In Europe, that means British, Irish and a handful in Malta. Total number is about 69 millions
Italian speakers are basically in Italy and Switzerland. All together, it means around 64 millions.
Then, French speakers. That's France, and the French speakers in Belgium (There are also a number of them in Switzerland, but that country isn't part of the EU). That adds up to a bit more than 70 millions.
So they're giving percentage numbers that are clearly worthless
First time I saw that (years ago), I decided to assume it was some mistake on the part of someone. Considering the mistake is still there, I can only conclude this is actually deliberate to make English seem more legitimate than it actually is.
The program WAS presented as the ultimate fighter plane, able to excel and be superior to anything else despite being a multirole aircraft.
It has stealth capability, though because it must carry heavy bomb loads on hard points for it's ground attack role, it's not as stealthy as it could be.
Ah yes, the "stealth capability". That's the last argument, supposed to redeem every other flaws (along with it comes the following : "it isn't a good dogfighter ? that's alright, with its stealth capability, it won't need to")
Except, of course, that the supposed stealth is incredibly vulnerable to the elements, phenomenally costly and already made obsolete by the new radar systems of all the nations against which it would be any use.
It's true. The opponent doesn't win because of the costs. It wins because each bomb, with the "collateral damage" (read innocent victims) it causes creates more people who want to fight back against Western Nations.
But hey, oil and an opportunity to sell more weapon systems and keep the show going even longer. After all, GDP counts wars as positives, so overall a win, right?
Too bad for the various (poor bastards) countries that took part (financially, in a very significant way) to a program that would eventually deliver a superior air fighter. As to the vaunted stealth capability some talk of in the comments, it is so fragile it could seen as a joke if it wasn't a bottomless money pit, and it has already been beaten by modern radar systems.
Contrary to what you seem to believe (or want to convince someone of), a 4% difference is in no way a "narrow victory". To the contrary, it is always considered quite clear-cut.
You forgot one alternative (which is the one people were talking about 40-50 years ago and that was effectively swept under the carpet for the benefit of the 0.01%) : Diminishing the duration of legal work. Greatly. (as in, around 50%).
It is already becoming common knowledge that there is a large number of jobs that have simply no value for society at large. They exist to provide work (one of the greatest examples would be in Japan where you can see old guys standing at the exit of construction sites to stop cars when trucks get out/come in. The geezers often need the work because they have to wait a few years between the time they retire and the moment they get their retirement pension)
When I say "stay silent", I'm not talking about a kind of total interdiction of publishing about it. Simply, when comparing to the Nuremberg Trials, the very few actions taken against Japan as a whole and its war criminals in particular were more of a token actions than a real purge of the Japanese political system (then again, even in Germany many high level people, especially industrialists, escaped the trials even though it would have been quite easy to make a case against them).
One of the consequences is how little Japanese people know about what the imperial army was up to in the 1930's. Considering that, even today, Japan is essentially an US dominion, that was only possible because the American government allowed it.
The thing is, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instrumental in that, as the deal was: Japan doesn't attack the US (in some kind of court) about the use of the atomic bomb (and the fire bombings), and beside a very limited number of trials, the US will stay silent about the various atrocities the Japanese Empire did around South-East Asia.
However, when making that kind of judgement, or excuses, it is then necessary to wonder whether the position considered modern was expressed in any way at the time the person considered lived in.
Case in point, there were quite a few very vocal voices against slavery in the late 18th century. Enough to show that on that point at the very least, the US constitution is much less a semi-divine document and much more the result of haggling over specific interests. The point being that you shouldn't be so quick to excuse people because of the "different age" excuse.
I'm not going to discuss the merit of deciding to bomb Japan with atomic bombs, that would be for another post. That said, thinking that Japanese people have "accepted" the bombing as necessary and mostly positive is trying hard to convince yourself that the US are unanimously seen as the good guys, no matter what.
That's true. Most people in Western countries think of the Japanese emperor as someone along the lines of Julius Ceasar or Napoleon. In truth they were much more like the Catholic Pope. With one exception: their harem. It was completely official (if not called by that name), and it's the other reason they claim such a long dynasty: each generation they had a huge pool of sons to draw from to select the next emperor (that's actually the only thing that makes the whole over-2000-year-long dynasty believable, beside heavy tapering with records).
You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.
This is something I fail to understand with the US system.
To the best of my understanding, patents should squarely fall within the scope of inter-state commerce. As such, and even with the strictest, most conservative interpretation of the US Constitution, it feels like any case related to them ought to be treated according to Federal laws.
How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?
There is one basic mistake in your assertion, one that stems directly from the article: equating subjects like economics with science.
Science is topics such as maths, physics biology and the like. Don't be fooled by the use of statistics: economics is anything but a real science (despite the continued propaganda about that). If it were a real science, you couldn't analyse events with theories based on exactly opposite axioms, and it could predict future events accurately (as opposed to only accurately predicting past events, as does now).
Since the very words "intellectual property" have been coined by copyrights lawyer in order to make the argument that copyright infringement was theft, no, we can't all agree on that preposterous assertion.
People who are at the origin of intellectual creation have to come to term with one very simple fact: they lose any kind of proprietary rights the moment they release their creation to the public (whatever it is you've made, however it inspires me, what's inside my head isn't yours). That is the very nature of such things. What society has decided is to grant them a monopoly in the reproduction rights of said work. Of course, when compared with what this right was originally, it has been abused on a scale beyond imagination (but commensurate with the wish most people have to get a rent of whatever kind forever).
The problem here is that design principle is going down (has gone down?) the drain: radar suites have evolved as well and modern ones are able to pick up and recognize the radar signature of the so-called "stealth fighters". That is very far from being a secret, by the way. Here is one article reporting it, but there are quite a lot of others:
That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on slashdot, really. "Stealth" technology has nothing in common with Star Trek like cloaking, it simply is a matter of reducing the signature. With greater computer power available, it was only a question of time until it became obsolete.
Of course, all of that is without even talking about how unreliable and fragile the stealth tech really is (the coating must be redone after each sortie and is vulnerable to rain, among other problems)...
A slight problem, though: it completely ignores decades of studies that show and prove that, indeed, although they are not children anymore, adolescent are not yet adults. Are they able to reproduce or, more generally to take some decisions related to themselves? Sure they are. That doesn't mean they're adults. Among a bunch of other things, not being an adult means still having a very high plasticity allowing for quick personal development (in whichever direction). This, adolescent have.
In essence, a child has high plasticity and limited personal assertion. An adolescent retains a great part of the plasticity but asserts their own wishes (but still need guidance in doing so. An adult loses such high degree of plasticity (it doesn't mean there is none), and keeps asserting their own personality and wishes (society allowing.
Now, to answer the specific point you made about forbidden activities. The problem is that, in essence, those activities are seen as evil/dirty etc. Of course, it is impossible to forbid adults to practice them in modern Western societies but, to various degrees, the same society can't but want to protect from them those identified as vulnerable (the non-adults). It is a perfectly valid position, as long as you accept that those activities have negative consequences, which is true to an extent:
- Alcohool, smoking and the like do have negative health consequences
- With the possibility of pregnancy (especially when abortion is seen in an only negative light), sex can bring its own problems. However, this could easily be corrected with proper sexual education. But in most countries, having a scene in a movie with a couple having sex under blankets is considered much worse than some scene of violence such as a gory murder.
So yes, there is a problem with what teens are prevented from doing, but that's not because they're adults but because society is, overall, insane on these things.
Slashdot Mirror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As a matter of fact, the very same LIGO let us see two neutron stars doing that exactly back in 2017.
On the other hand, as far as I'm aware, there are no conclusive observation of black holes, which makes for a much more spectacular headline.
overenthUsiastic
Why call upon black holes, then? As far as I remember, you can have stars significantly more massive than that before the collapse into a black hole becomes the only explanation to describe what was observed.
With only that presented as evidence, it sounds like someone was a bit overeager to justify the LIGO's budget with claims of an extraordinary observation.
The first time I saw it, I didn't really pay attention and shelved like so many facts we hear.
And then, I started to think about it. So, what are the numbers? I used the CIA World Factbook as a source
Do note that I'm talking about native speakers here, like on that propaganda website
So, first, English native speakers. In Europe, that means British, Irish and a handful in Malta. Total number is about 69 millions
Italian speakers are basically in Italy and Switzerland. All together, it means around 64 millions.
Then, French speakers. That's France, and the French speakers in Belgium (There are also a number of them in Switzerland, but that country isn't part of the EU). That adds up to a bit more than 70 millions.
So they're giving percentage numbers that are clearly worthless
First time I saw that (years ago), I decided to assume it was some mistake on the part of someone. Considering the mistake is still there, I can only conclude this is actually deliberate to make English seem more legitimate than it actually is.
Too bad the planet won't take much more of it, but hey, you gotta mind the next quarter's results, that's what is really important...
That has nothing to do with the intrinsic quality of the higher education there, and everything with preconceived biases.
It has stealth capability, though because it must carry heavy bomb loads on hard points for it's ground attack role, it's not as stealthy as it could be.
Ah yes, the "stealth capability". That's the last argument, supposed to redeem every other flaws (along with it comes the following : "it isn't a good dogfighter ? that's alright, with its stealth capability, it won't need to")
Except, of course, that the supposed stealth is incredibly vulnerable to the elements, phenomenally costly and already made obsolete by the new radar systems of all the nations against which it would be any use.
But hey, oil and an opportunity to sell more weapon systems and keep the show going even longer. After all, GDP counts wars as positives, so overall a win, right?
Too bad for the various (poor bastards) countries that took part (financially, in a very significant way) to a program that would eventually deliver a superior air fighter. As to the vaunted stealth capability some talk of in the comments, it is so fragile it could seen as a joke if it wasn't a bottomless money pit, and it has already been beaten by modern radar systems.
More like a reward for services to the private sector, working in public positions.
Just a thought.
Contrary to what you seem to believe (or want to convince someone of), a 4% difference is in no way a "narrow victory". To the contrary, it is always considered quite clear-cut.
It is already becoming common knowledge that there is a large number of jobs that have simply no value for society at large. They exist to provide work (one of the greatest examples would be in Japan where you can see old guys standing at the exit of construction sites to stop cars when trucks get out/come in. The geezers often need the work because they have to wait a few years between the time they retire and the moment they get their retirement pension)
One of the consequences is how little Japanese people know about what the imperial army was up to in the 1930's. Considering that, even today, Japan is essentially an US dominion, that was only possible because the American government allowed it.
The thing is, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instrumental in that, as the deal was: Japan doesn't attack the US (in some kind of court) about the use of the atomic bomb (and the fire bombings), and beside a very limited number of trials, the US will stay silent about the various atrocities the Japanese Empire did around South-East Asia.
However, when making that kind of judgement, or excuses, it is then necessary to wonder whether the position considered modern was expressed in any way at the time the person considered lived in.
Case in point, there were quite a few very vocal voices against slavery in the late 18th century. Enough to show that on that point at the very least, the US constitution is much less a semi-divine document and much more the result of haggling over specific interests. The point being that you shouldn't be so quick to excuse people because of the "different age" excuse.
I'm not going to discuss the merit of deciding to bomb Japan with atomic bombs, that would be for another post. That said, thinking that Japanese people have "accepted" the bombing as necessary and mostly positive is trying hard to convince yourself that the US are unanimously seen as the good guys, no matter what.
That's true. Most people in Western countries think of the Japanese emperor as someone along the lines of Julius Ceasar or Napoleon. In truth they were much more like the Catholic Pope. With one exception: their harem. It was completely official (if not called by that name), and it's the other reason they claim such a long dynasty: each generation they had a huge pool of sons to draw from to select the next emperor (that's actually the only thing that makes the whole over-2000-year-long dynasty believable, beside heavy tapering with records).
You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.
If they were federal and not some federal-in-name-only, they would all operate under the exact same rules.
To the best of my understanding, patents should squarely fall within the scope of inter-state commerce. As such, and even with the strictest, most conservative interpretation of the US Constitution, it feels like any case related to them ought to be treated according to Federal laws.
How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?
Science is topics such as maths, physics biology and the like. Don't be fooled by the use of statistics: economics is anything but a real science (despite the continued propaganda about that). If it were a real science, you couldn't analyse events with theories based on exactly opposite axioms, and it could predict future events accurately (as opposed to only accurately predicting past events, as does now).
People who are at the origin of intellectual creation have to come to term with one very simple fact: they lose any kind of proprietary rights the moment they release their creation to the public (whatever it is you've made, however it inspires me, what's inside my head isn't yours). That is the very nature of such things. What society has decided is to grant them a monopoly in the reproduction rights of said work. Of course, when compared with what this right was originally, it has been abused on a scale beyond imagination (but commensurate with the wish most people have to get a rent of whatever kind forever).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on slashdot, really. "Stealth" technology has nothing in common with Star Trek like cloaking, it simply is a matter of reducing the signature. With greater computer power available, it was only a question of time until it became obsolete.
Of course, all of that is without even talking about how unreliable and fragile the stealth tech really is (the coating must be redone after each sortie and is vulnerable to rain, among other problems)...
A slight problem, though: it completely ignores decades of studies that show and prove that, indeed, although they are not children anymore, adolescent are not yet adults. Are they able to reproduce or, more generally to take some decisions related to themselves? Sure they are. That doesn't mean they're adults. Among a bunch of other things, not being an adult means still having a very high plasticity allowing for quick personal development (in whichever direction). This, adolescent have.
In essence, a child has high plasticity and limited personal assertion. An adolescent retains a great part of the plasticity but asserts their own wishes (but still need guidance in doing so. An adult loses such high degree of plasticity (it doesn't mean there is none), and keeps asserting their own personality and wishes (society allowing.
Now, to answer the specific point you made about forbidden activities. The problem is that, in essence, those activities are seen as evil/dirty etc. Of course, it is impossible to forbid adults to practice them in modern Western societies but, to various degrees, the same society can't but want to protect from them those identified as vulnerable (the non-adults). It is a perfectly valid position, as long as you accept that those activities have negative consequences, which is true to an extent :
- Alcohool, smoking and the like do have negative health consequences
- With the possibility of pregnancy (especially when abortion is seen in an only negative light), sex can bring its own problems. However, this could easily be corrected with proper sexual education. But in most countries, having a scene in a movie with a couple having sex under blankets is considered much worse than some scene of violence such as a gory murder.
So yes, there is a problem with what teens are prevented from doing, but that's not because they're adults but because society is, overall, insane on these things.