FWIW the census is a huge boon to our descendants for genealogical purposes.
What practical purpose does genealogy have? Why would I give up my privacy to help those in the far future satisfy idle curiosity?
It is essential for understanding human genetics and disease. Iceland, with the world's best genealogical records, essentially complete all the way back to the settlement by the Vikings, is proving to be an unparalleled resource in understanding human genetics for example.
Genealogy also has another name, it is known as "history". It is history at a very detailed level, and like any fine grained body of knowledge, it offers powerful means of understanding that are not available through higher level, less detailed (i.e. typical historical) accounts.
I would argue also, that all human knowledge and accomplishment started as "idle curiosity". Focusing only on what seems of "practical value" does not lead you very far.
It looks like very few, if any, people here have picked up on the trollish sleight-of-hand by the summary submitter. The referenced article does not tie the national ID card to the Health Care Reform bill in any way, and indeed, the ID card proposal is unrelated to it. This is clearly a bit of red-meat baiting.
The ID card proposal is co-sponsored by a Republican (notable in their complete absence of support for HCR) and a Democrat and addresses an issue that is dear to the entire right wing, Tea Party "enthusiasts" as well: suppressing illegal immigration.
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself. While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for.
Today is different. As of now, you are officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone. You can bet the government will be interested that you're not filing returns that certify that you owe money for being uninsured.
The world is changed this morning, and I awake to applause. This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect.
For off-the-grid hermits everywhere, this would seem to be a bad thing. There is an obvious fix though. Extend health coverage to everyone automatically, just like other social programs, and pay for it through a progressive income tax. That way the hermit can go back to not filing his tax returns and no one caring. Better? (I suspect not...:-) ).
More seriously though -- someone with no ability to pay is technically indigent, and eligible for medicaid already. Do you really think this bill throws the entire roster medicaid-eligible individuals into jail, as sort of a debtors prison? Really?
(What do these off-the-grid hermits do when they get sick by the way? They are one log-splitting accident away from a painful death from gangrene after all.)
Yes, but you're all communists living under oppressive regimes that stifle individual creativity and deny people the impetus and ability to make the use of their God-given talents, instead encouraging laziness and crime.
Sadly there are tens of millions of Americans (I saw some of them cursing and spitting in front of the Capitol last night on TV) who would mod this "Insightful".
... Sure, the bill imposes fines to prevent people from remaining uninsured, but for many people those fines are cheaper than actually getting insurance.
I see this talking point a lot. It sounds like a strong point on casual hearing, it's bottom-line simplicity and all that, but it ignores a very important fact.
Even people who are reluctant to pay for a health plan are not actually opposed to having it! Except for small number of odd (or quite wealthy) individuals, they actually would very much like to have health coverage, just in case. When faced with the prospect of paying a fine, and getting nothing in return, and paying somewhat more and getting a valuable benefit - health coverage - people are very likely to go for the coverage. (Remember also that people on the low end of the economic ladder get assistance.)
When framed properly as a decision theory problem, the rational choice is very likely to be buying the insurance even if more money is spent.
NB. It is also easy to adjust the fine as experience dictates with routine legislation, and all such major legislation is modified after the fact. The apparent belief that mid-course adjustment will not occur is profoundly unrealistic.
Deceptive statistics 101! If you read the article you will find a number of interesting facts buried way down toward the bottom:
During this period the Bush Administration as in office for 25% of the reporting period;
"Much of the Obama administration's early effort seems to have been aimed at clearing out a backlog of old cases: The number of requests still waiting past deadlines spelled out in the open-records law fell from 124,019 in budget year 2008 to 67,764 at the end of the most recent budget year."
"..the Justice Department turned over all documents in information requests in more than 1,000 more cases than it had the previous year"
So for starters we have the unknown contribution of the Bush Administration stone-walling in its closing days, the elevated number of exemptions related to clearing the backlog of probably difficult to adjudicate requests, the fact that more cases are being cleared with no exemptions at all..
In short, this was written up as a sensationalistic hit piece rather than presenting any sort of balanced analysis. The stats offered make it very hard any firm conclusions without resorting to supplementary hypotheticals.
The implied assumption is that immigrants are worthless. You wouldn't be complaining about illegal immigration if the assumption were, instead, that each new immigrant is an added revenue source for the country.
Nonsense.
I am an example of a person who believes that a robust flow of immigrants - including poor (low-wage) immigrants - is vital to the U.S. economy and society. But who also believes that getting illegal immigration under control is essential for several different but interlocking reasons.
Two key and intertwined reasons are the poisonous effect that high rates of illegal immigration has on U.S. political discourse, and the crippling effect it has on formulating immigration policies that are both fair to all who seek entry, and effective at achieving U.S. national goals. Illegal immigrants are a scapegoat, but unfortunately the issue has proved to be highly effective at blocking any number of important policies that the U.S. sorely needs. And this issue regularly poisons policy debates about legal immigration.
After watching this subject being used for three decades as a means of corrupting civil discourse and rational policy making I have concluded that it is very important to bring illegal immigration under control.
Will U.S. row and tree crop agriculture collapse without the low wage labor of illegal immigrants? Possibly it will - in which case the necessity of bringing in these low wage workers as legal and properly protected workers will be instantly evident, and agribusiness will see to it that appropriate measures are passed into law. This will likely have the beneficial result of better working conditions, and better wages for the workers (while still low), and pushing up low end wages for all workers (a good thing for Americans in general, even if big business and its minions in Congress hate it).
The best use for this would be to put one on the ISS (or other "nearby" manned spacecraft where speed of light time-lag is not too long).
That way, you'll have an emergency "surgeon" available in case of a medical emergency. Nowhere near as good as a real live doc but better than nothing.
OTOH, in low Earth orbit you can bring the patient back to Earth very quickly (an emergency reentry vehicle is always available on the ISS) so the space surgery unit isn't needed. It might be useful on a lunar base, but the 2.5 second time lag would make using it tricky.
For extended space missions (e.g. a trip to Mars) I believe NASA intends to send two astronaut-surgeons (out of crew of 8 or so), so that one can operate on the other if needed.
I understand a few years ago, a female scientist had to be evacuated from the Antarctic base in the dead of the ANTARCTIC(!) winter because she had breast cancer. This could have prevented that (and eliminated the risk to the rescue crew. I think they had to keep the plane's engines on so that the skids wouldn't freeze to the ice).
Yes, she WAS the base doctor and thus could not operate on herself. Sending two surgeons to Antarctica, as in the NASA Mars plan, could have spared this rescue mission (they could have dropped any needed supplies without the hazard of landing). This is possibly a cheaper solution than a million dollar machine (the two surgeons would have other research duties and so are not just additional costs. Keeping the engines running was necessary for the engine's sake. They would not have been able to restart them in the cold.
Sadly, yes.
Previous president made big statements...without funding.
Previous president ^2 made big statement...without funding.
This president...defunding.
Defunding?? Clearly you have never bothered to read ANY coverage of this since Obama has INCREASED funding for NASA! The budget is going up by 3% in real terms, which in this fiscal environment is HUGE. And the effect of cutting the extremely expensive and scientifically unproductive (in fact, nearly useless) manned mission is to MASSIVELY redirect money to actual space science!
... while he was writing about the hopes he had on the space exploration and everything. It makes me sad. In some way I'm glad he's gone so he doesn't have to see this.
Having actually attended a lecture at JPL that Carl Sagan gave on exactly this topic - his views of space exploration, I am fairly certain he would be over joyed at this announcement.
His key point in the lecture was that space science - that is, genuine space exploration - did not require manned flight and was far more economical without it, but was politically dependent on manned flight in the U.S. Thus, support for manned flight was indeed necessary to support space science, but only because of the unfortunate realities of space science funding in the U.S.
Up until now his observation remained valid. He would be thrilled to see this extremely costly and anti-productive link broken.
The cries from the "Oh no! Obama is abandoning space!" crowd underscore the fact that manned space flight is a deadly political anchor on actual space exploration.
Small caviat: You can measure the rate of mutation, not the rate of "evolution", as "evolution" is a hindsight-only type of observation (ie X trait was evolved, ie X trait now exists in a sizable fraction of the species population). "Evolution" is mankind's way of describing beneficial mutation, but benefits are hard to measure a priori:)
Yes and no (mostly no). You can measure the rate at which the genome of a whole species is changing. In the absence of evolutionary pressure mutations fix and spread through the population through the sluggish process (for a large population) of random drift. If mutations fix and spread faster than the background drift rate than this is prima facie evidence of evolution. So measuring the speed of change of portions of a species genome is direct measurement of the rate of evolution.
What do these changes mean? That is a hard question that can only be answered in a small subset of cases, partly because we don't know the roles of most genes, and probably not all the roles of the genes we do now something about.
But to say: "Evolution is mankind's way of describing beneficial mutation" is simply wrong.
How does one balance an altruistic need to volunteer information to the police against the general "don't talk to the police" principle of avoiding self-incrimination?
Unfortunately, the answer has to be: you don't. (BTW, did you listen to the "Don't talk to the police" video? Everyone should.)
As a first approximation (without the benefit of law school and years as a practicing attorney, or years as a police detective this is what you have to go on) you must assume that law enforcement and the criminal justice system turns every expectation you have of fairness and reasonable behavior on its head.
It is as simple as this - if you are completely innocent of any wrong doing and tell nothing but the absolute objective truth, and the police come upon an erroneous piece of information (say, a mistaken witness) that contradicts anything you say, then the contradiction with the false data can by itself send you to jail. There is no way to protect yourself against this.
The idea itself may not be bad, but as a suggestion to open.gov it is bad simply because it is completely politically infeasible to implement at this time. You may as well be wishing for ponies.
The third highest ranked suggestion was not legalization of marijuana - it was merely removing it from Schedule I since the legal criteria for scheduling do not support it (never trust a Slashdot summary).
Expecting that existing law actually be followed may be a really radical notion in Washington, but I submit it is not "politically infeasible". Still, if it does not please the halls of power and money (and it doesn't) then we might better hope for ponies.
Alcohol is specifically exempted from the scheduling system so the law prohibits the system from ever being applied. There is no question that it would rank as Schedule 1.
And of course it is all about money and power. Challenges to money and power rarely succeed but challenges not made never do.
It is sad when the idea of the government simply obeying the law is viewed as dangerously radical.
No, one of the top ideas was NOT to "legalize marijuana"! The third most popular item was to remove marijuana from Schedule 1, where its placement violates federal law, the DEA's own internal regulations, and peer-reviewed science!
Click on the "marijuana link" in the summary and read the item for yourself.
This is a simple matter of paying attention to science and obeying the law as written.
The rules for Schedule I are:
A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
The best available scientific and medical evidence and opinion clearly shows that criteria B and C do not apply. The only way one can claim A applies is via a circular argument: all cannabis use DEFINED as abuse, therefore it has a high potential for abuse.
The logic of scheduling Cannabis at no higher than IV, and most accurately at Schedule V, is further shown by the DEA itself - by scheduling pure 100% THC at Schedule III!
Clearly a preparation that is only about 10% as potent should have a lower ranking. One should note that Schedule V consists ENTIRELY of drugs with higher rankings (from I down to III) in reduced potency preparations. This the reason that this low scheduling category exists.
If the rules of classification are objectively and scientifically applied the it would rank no higher than Schedule V, the lowest and least restrictive.
As others above have noted, this program continues today. 'Denatured' alcohol is just poisoned alcohol. This is a legal mandate, and was kept on after prohibition in order to support high alcohol taxes.
Ethanol is very cheap to produce and is used by industry as a solvent or antiseptic. The main additive is methanol, which causes blindless before it kills you -- classy.
True, but the situation changes when you have a legal supply of drinking alcohol and bootlegging has essentially vanished as a result. At the time they KNEW they were causing the poisoning of tens of thousands of people because this stuff was being diverted to the black market and relabeled. In addition - they now also add one of the bitterest compounds known - denatonium benzoate (named in honor of its principle use) so that it tastes really, really awful even in tiny amounts.
No they weren't poisoning methanol! They were poisoning industrial ethyl alcohol WITH methanol, up to 10% (plus other stuff). It is the methanol that was added that was the real killer (the lethal dose is around 20 ml or so).
Read TFA. In the fine tradition of/. summaries, it is an inaccurate condensation of the article.
From the website http://arora.ccs.neu.edu/
"We collect data from various sources and we show it to you in two windows,
- one window plots the actual data,
- the other plots the data randomly permuted (tech note: we permute the derivative of the data)."
So the test is really "can you recognize a natural data set from the same set with a randomly permuted derivative".
The notion of "randomness" is independent of the statistics of the distribution. And
since distributions with different statistics usually look quite different whether this is a surprising result depends entirely on what statistical model they have chosen.
Since plutonium, element 93, is found in uranium ores (being bred there by neutron capture) and Pu-244 (half-life 80.8 million years) has also survived in detectable quantities from the formation of the Earth, uranium is not the heaviest natural element on Earth.
Germany simply didn't have the spare industrial capacity to build installations of this magnitude without serious reprecussions on their war effort. As well the design of these facilities are pretty obvious (and large) making them perfect targets for the 8th Airforce
These exact same arguments can be made about the V-2 project, that consumed 2 billion Reichsmarks (1.2 billion US $ at the time, about 70% of the budget of the Manhattan Project during the war) late in the war for negligible real contribution to the war effort.
The Mittlewerk V-2 plant was bombed many times, but being built underground of reinformed concrete, it was never put out of operation.
These same resources could have provided a robust nuclear weapons program (but no bomb by the end of the war).
Most surprising is Germany's failure to have a vigorous R&D effort early in the war on uranium. The cost of such a project would have been small (compared to the huge costs of industrial production) a few tens of million of RM over 2-3 years. They had two strong motivations to do this, even if they thought no atomic bomb was possible during the war.
1. If Germany had "won the war" (defeat of the USSR, undisputed control over continental Europe, and the Anglo-American world suing for peace) they still would face a hostile Britain and U.S. even after an armistice. Given the precedent of WWI and WWII another round 10-20 years down the road seemed likely. Staying ahead of the Anglo-Americans in atomic technology would have been essential even in a victorious scenario.
2. Using uranium as a source of power seemed much easier, and the French were actively pursuing this in 1940 before defeat. The US Navy started its own independent uranium program to build reactors to power submarines around this time. To Germany - outclassed in Naval power and needing to sever the sea supply line of the UK and USSR - the possibility of a uranium powered U-boat should have given the German Navy and Hitler thrills of a well-nigh sexual nature. Yet no serious effort was devoted to exploring this.
The fact this can be traced to production batches at Joachimstal during the war is interesting for the following reason: it was a mine incapable of supporting a nuclear weapon program.
Joachimstal (Jachymov today) is an ancient and famous mining district (others have noted here that Thaler == Dollar originated from its name) and due to radon gas in its mine is also the earliest recorded incidences of death from occupational radiation exposure - - - lung cancer was a common cause of death of underground miners from the 16th century onward. It was also a prominent source of material for the discovery of radiation and radioactive elements.
But it could only produce a few tens of tons of uranium annually! Something like a 1000 tons of uranium was needed to support an effective nuclear weapons program.
Germany had however a couple of thousand tons of already mined and processed ore from the Belgian Congo, captured at the outset of the war. This material was perfect for a nuclear weapons program - if it had one. This material was captured by the U.S. at the end of the war unused. A couple of thousand tons of ore from this same mine and shipped to the U.S. before the war in fact powered the Manhattan Project through most of its wartime operations.
That Germany was still relying on old pre-war supply arrangements through Joamchimstal to obtain research uranium is very interesting. It is another manifestation of the failure to create a real weapons program.
I recall watching a program about WWII. I don't remember the exact model but it was an american bomber that had mid flight problems on return to an allied base. So it was forced to land in russia, an at the time non-party to the war. So according to the 'rules of war' while the plane safely landed their, they can not be aided (can't get back in the air) nor returned to an involved party to the war.
So what ends up happening, is that there are a "few good russians" who help the crew back to allied territory while running the chance themselves of being caught and punished. But in the mean time, russian engineers were not re-verse engineering the bomber, but "replicating" it....
Finally, I'll agree that the plane itself is not enough to easily make more/similar versions of it. I knew a man for a while who worked on the development for several air craft. And he told me what he ended up doing was working with problem installations. So basically, the plans were there, the parts were there, but putting it all together didn't always go so well. Because as we all learn, the point of view of designers, engineers, manufacturers and assemblers are all different.
The plane in question was a B-29, "Ramp Tramp," that aborted to the Soviet Union on July 31, 1944. Subsequently three other B-29s landed (or crashed) there. The USSR was an ally of the U.S. at that time, and obligated to return the aircraft but refused to do so (and imprisoned the friendly air crews for 7 months to boot).
The plane that was created by exactly copying the B-29 was the Tupolev-4. But the story about the creation of the Tu-4 reveals who crucial the industrial infrastructure is: the U.S. airplane was designed to Customary Imperial units (feet, inches, fractions of an inch), the Soviets only had metric tooling. As a result, they could not produce sheet metal of the correct thickness and created an airplane that was 3,200 lb overweight, cutting its bomb load, and they also could not produce engines of the same specific fuel consumption, cutting its range even with a reduced payload. The net result was that to match the B-29's combat range (carrying 20,000 lb of bombs) the Tu-4 could only carry 3,000 lbs.
It was the best bomber the USSR had at the time and it remained in service until 1955, but the fact that it only had 15% of the payload capacity of the B-29 (at equal range) illustrates that this was far from being a successful replication.
You would be naive to think that an aircraft of this complexity can be "reverse engineered". I do not think, in fact, that history bears a single example since WWII at least of any foreign military aircraft being reverse engineered into a successful combat aircraft.
With any advanced aircraft the "secret" of success is not the plane itself so much than the whole vast production system that builds it. The tooling plans are actually some of the most valuable secrets.
Perhaps the closest example of a successful combat plane clone was Israel's Kfir, derived from the Dassault Mirage. But this success required Israel to steal the complete Mirage plans, including the all-important tooling plans, to be able to buy actual production equipment from France, and to buy the engines from the U.S.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW the census is a huge boon to our descendants for genealogical purposes.
What practical purpose does genealogy have? Why would I give up my privacy to help those in the far future satisfy idle curiosity?
It is essential for understanding human genetics and disease. Iceland, with the world's best genealogical records, essentially complete all the way back to the settlement by the Vikings, is proving to be an unparalleled resource in understanding human genetics for example.
Genealogy also has another name, it is known as "history". It is history at a very detailed level, and like any fine grained body of knowledge, it offers powerful means of understanding that are not available through higher level, less detailed (i.e. typical historical) accounts.
I would argue also, that all human knowledge and accomplishment started as "idle curiosity". Focusing only on what seems of "practical value" does not lead you very far.
It looks like very few, if any, people here have picked up on the trollish sleight-of-hand by the summary submitter. The referenced article does not tie the national ID card to the Health Care Reform bill in any way, and indeed, the ID card proposal is unrelated to it. This is clearly a bit of red-meat baiting.
The ID card proposal is co-sponsored by a Republican (notable in their complete absence of support for HCR) and a Democrat and addresses an issue that is dear to the entire right wing, Tea Party "enthusiasts" as well: suppressing illegal immigration.
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself. While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for.
Today is different. As of now, you are officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone. You can bet the government will be interested that you're not filing returns that certify that you owe money for being uninsured.
The world is changed this morning, and I awake to applause. This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect.
For off-the-grid hermits everywhere, this would seem to be a bad thing. There is an obvious fix though. Extend health coverage to everyone automatically, just like other social programs, and pay for it through a progressive income tax. That way the hermit can go back to not filing his tax returns and no one caring. Better? (I suspect not... :-) ).
More seriously though -- someone with no ability to pay is technically indigent, and eligible for medicaid already. Do you really think this bill throws the entire roster medicaid-eligible individuals into jail, as sort of a debtors prison? Really?
(What do these off-the-grid hermits do when they get sick by the way? They are one log-splitting accident away from a painful death from gangrene after all.)
Yes, but you're all communists living under oppressive regimes that stifle individual creativity and deny people the impetus and ability to make the use of their God-given talents, instead encouraging laziness and crime.
Sadly there are tens of millions of Americans (I saw some of them cursing and spitting in front of the Capitol last night on TV) who would mod this "Insightful".
... Sure, the bill imposes fines to prevent people from remaining uninsured, but for many people those fines are cheaper than actually getting insurance.
I see this talking point a lot. It sounds like a strong point on casual hearing, it's bottom-line simplicity and all that, but it ignores a very important fact.
Even people who are reluctant to pay for a health plan are not actually opposed to having it! Except for small number of odd (or quite wealthy) individuals, they actually would very much like to have health coverage, just in case. When faced with the prospect of paying a fine, and getting nothing in return, and paying somewhat more and getting a valuable benefit - health coverage - people are very likely to go for the coverage. (Remember also that people on the low end of the economic ladder get assistance.)
When framed properly as a decision theory problem, the rational choice is very likely to be buying the insurance even if more money is spent.
NB. It is also easy to adjust the fine as experience dictates with routine legislation, and all such major legislation is modified after the fact. The apparent belief that mid-course adjustment will not occur is profoundly unrealistic.
Deceptive statistics 101! If you read the article you will find a number of interesting facts buried way down toward the bottom:
So for starters we have the unknown contribution of the Bush Administration stone-walling in its closing days, the elevated number of exemptions related to clearing the backlog of probably difficult to adjudicate requests, the fact that more cases are being cleared with no exemptions at all..
In short, this was written up as a sensationalistic hit piece rather than presenting any sort of balanced analysis. The stats offered make it very hard any firm conclusions without resorting to supplementary hypotheticals.
The implied assumption is that immigrants are worthless. You wouldn't be complaining about illegal immigration if the assumption were, instead, that each new immigrant is an added revenue source for the country.
Nonsense.
I am an example of a person who believes that a robust flow of immigrants - including poor (low-wage) immigrants - is vital to the U.S. economy and society. But who also believes that getting illegal immigration under control is essential for several different but interlocking reasons.
Two key and intertwined reasons are the poisonous effect that high rates of illegal immigration has on U.S. political discourse, and the crippling effect it has on formulating immigration policies that are both fair to all who seek entry, and effective at achieving U.S. national goals. Illegal immigrants are a scapegoat, but unfortunately the issue has proved to be highly effective at blocking any number of important policies that the U.S. sorely needs. And this issue regularly poisons policy debates about legal immigration.
After watching this subject being used for three decades as a means of corrupting civil discourse and rational policy making I have concluded that it is very important to bring illegal immigration under control.
Will U.S. row and tree crop agriculture collapse without the low wage labor of illegal immigrants? Possibly it will - in which case the necessity of bringing in these low wage workers as legal and properly protected workers will be instantly evident, and agribusiness will see to it that appropriate measures are passed into law. This will likely have the beneficial result of better working conditions, and better wages for the workers (while still low), and pushing up low end wages for all workers (a good thing for Americans in general, even if big business and its minions in Congress hate it).
The best use for this would be to put one on the ISS (or other "nearby" manned spacecraft where speed of light time-lag is not too long).
That way, you'll have an emergency "surgeon" available in case of a medical emergency. Nowhere near as good as a real live doc but better than nothing.
OTOH, in low Earth orbit you can bring the patient back to Earth very quickly (an emergency reentry vehicle is always available on the ISS) so the space surgery unit isn't needed. It might be useful on a lunar base, but the 2.5 second time lag would make using it tricky.
For extended space missions (e.g. a trip to Mars) I believe NASA intends to send two astronaut-surgeons (out of crew of 8 or so), so that one can operate on the other if needed.
I understand a few years ago, a female scientist had to be evacuated from the Antarctic base in the dead of the ANTARCTIC(!) winter because she had breast cancer. This could have prevented that (and eliminated the risk to the rescue crew. I think they had to keep the plane's engines on so that the skids wouldn't freeze to the ice).
Yes, she WAS the base doctor and thus could not operate on herself. Sending two surgeons to Antarctica, as in the NASA Mars plan, could have spared this rescue mission (they could have dropped any needed supplies without the hazard of landing). This is possibly a cheaper solution than a million dollar machine (the two surgeons would have other research duties and so are not just additional costs. Keeping the engines running was necessary for the engine's sake. They would not have been able to restart them in the cold.
BTW - the doctor in question, Dr Jerri Nielson Fitzgerald, died from a recurrence of her cancer last year (ten years after the rescue): http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/25/2608384.htm
Sadly, yes. Previous president made big statements...without funding.
Previous president ^2 made big statement...without funding.
This president...defunding.
Defunding?? Clearly you have never bothered to read ANY coverage of this since Obama has INCREASED funding for NASA! The budget is going up by 3% in real terms, which in this fiscal environment is HUGE. And the effect of cutting the extremely expensive and scientifically unproductive (in fact, nearly useless) manned mission is to MASSIVELY redirect money to actual space science!
... while he was writing about the hopes he had on the space exploration and everything. It makes me sad. In some way I'm glad he's gone so he doesn't have to see this.
Having actually attended a lecture at JPL that Carl Sagan gave on exactly this topic - his views of space exploration, I am fairly certain he would be over joyed at this announcement.
His key point in the lecture was that space science - that is, genuine space exploration - did not require manned flight and was far more economical without it, but was politically dependent on manned flight in the U.S. Thus, support for manned flight was indeed necessary to support space science, but only because of the unfortunate realities of space science funding in the U.S.
Up until now his observation remained valid. He would be thrilled to see this extremely costly and anti-productive link broken.
The cries from the "Oh no! Obama is abandoning space!" crowd underscore the fact that manned space flight is a deadly political anchor on actual space exploration.
Hate to break it to ya pal, but going to church once a year does not make you christian...
Indeed.
Attending church services is not required at all to be a Christian. Not does attending a Christian church every single day make you a Christian.
It is solely a matter of faith in the fundamental Christian doctrine of salvation though belief in and acceptance of Jesus and his teachings.
There is no political test for Christianity, nor any other doctrinal test.
most women would have DDD breasts and men would have penises that hang to the knee...
In fact, those organs are already much larger than comparative anatomy with other primates would lead you to expect.
Give us another few millenia. Of course, surgical enhancement will likely remove any selective pressure on actual genotypes.
Small caviat: You can measure the rate of mutation, not the rate of "evolution", as "evolution" is a hindsight-only type of observation (ie X trait was evolved, ie X trait now exists in a sizable fraction of the species population). "Evolution" is mankind's way of describing beneficial mutation, but benefits are hard to measure a priori :)
Yes and no (mostly no). You can measure the rate at which the genome of a whole species is changing. In the absence of evolutionary pressure mutations fix and spread through the population through the sluggish process (for a large population) of random drift. If mutations fix and spread faster than the background drift rate than this is prima facie evidence of evolution. So measuring the speed of change of portions of a species genome is direct measurement of the rate of evolution.
What do these changes mean? That is a hard question that can only be answered in a small subset of cases, partly because we don't know the roles of most genes, and probably not all the roles of the genes we do now something about.
But to say: "Evolution is mankind's way of describing beneficial mutation" is simply wrong.
Unfortunately, the answer has to be: you don't. (BTW, did you listen to the "Don't talk to the police" video? Everyone should.)
As a first approximation (without the benefit of law school and years as a practicing attorney, or years as a police detective this is what you have to go on) you must assume that law enforcement and the criminal justice system turns every expectation you have of fairness and reasonable behavior on its head.
It is as simple as this - if you are completely innocent of any wrong doing and tell nothing but the absolute objective truth, and the police come upon an erroneous piece of information (say, a mistaken witness) that contradicts anything you say, then the contradiction with the false data can by itself send you to jail. There is no way to protect yourself against this.
The idea itself may not be bad, but as a suggestion to open.gov it is bad simply because it is completely politically infeasible to implement at this time. You may as well be wishing for ponies.
The third highest ranked suggestion was not legalization of marijuana - it was merely removing it from Schedule I since the legal criteria for scheduling do not support it (never trust a Slashdot summary).
Expecting that existing law actually be followed may be a really radical notion in Washington, but I submit it is not "politically infeasible". Still, if it does not please the halls of power and money (and it doesn't) then we might better hope for ponies.
Alcohol is specifically exempted from the scheduling system so the law prohibits the system from ever being applied. There is no question that it would rank as Schedule 1.
And of course it is all about money and power. Challenges to money and power rarely succeed but challenges not made never do.
It is sad when the idea of the government simply obeying the law is viewed as dangerously radical.
No, one of the top ideas was NOT to "legalize marijuana"! The third most popular item was to remove marijuana from Schedule 1, where its placement violates federal law, the DEA's own internal regulations, and peer-reviewed science!
Click on the "marijuana link" in the summary and read the item for yourself.
This is a simple matter of paying attention to science and obeying the law as written.
The rules for Schedule I are:
A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
The best available scientific and medical evidence and opinion clearly shows that criteria B and C do not apply. The only way one can claim A applies is via a circular argument: all cannabis use DEFINED as abuse, therefore it has a high potential for abuse.
The logic of scheduling Cannabis at no higher than IV, and most accurately at Schedule V, is further shown by the DEA itself - by scheduling pure 100% THC at Schedule III!
Clearly a preparation that is only about 10% as potent should have a lower ranking. One should note that Schedule V consists ENTIRELY of drugs with higher rankings (from I down to III) in reduced potency preparations. This the reason that this low scheduling category exists.
If the rules of classification are objectively and scientifically applied the it would rank no higher than Schedule V, the lowest and least restrictive.
As others above have noted, this program continues today. 'Denatured' alcohol is just poisoned alcohol. This is a legal mandate, and was kept on after prohibition in order to support high alcohol taxes.
Ethanol is very cheap to produce and is used by industry as a solvent or antiseptic. The main additive is methanol, which causes blindless before it kills you -- classy.
True, but the situation changes when you have a legal supply of drinking alcohol and bootlegging has essentially vanished as a result. At the time they KNEW they were causing the poisoning of tens of thousands of people because this stuff was being diverted to the black market and relabeled. In addition - they now also add one of the bitterest compounds known - denatonium benzoate (named in honor of its principle use) so that it tastes really, really awful even in tiny amounts.
No they weren't poisoning methanol! They were poisoning industrial ethyl alcohol WITH methanol, up to 10% (plus other stuff). It is the methanol that was added that was the real killer (the lethal dose is around 20 ml or so).
Read TFA. In the fine tradition of /. summaries, it is an inaccurate condensation of the article.
From the website http://arora.ccs.neu.edu/ "We collect data from various sources and we show it to you in two windows, - one window plots the actual data, - the other plots the data randomly permuted (tech note: we permute the derivative of the data)."
So the test is really "can you recognize a natural data set from the same set with a randomly permuted derivative".
The notion of "randomness" is independent of the statistics of the distribution. And since distributions with different statistics usually look quite different whether this is a surprising result depends entirely on what statistical model they have chosen.
Since plutonium, element 93, is found in uranium ores (being bred there by neutron capture) and Pu-244 (half-life 80.8 million years) has also survived in detectable quantities from the formation of the Earth, uranium is not the heaviest natural element on Earth.
Germany simply didn't have the spare industrial capacity to build installations of this magnitude without serious reprecussions on their war effort. As well the design of these facilities are pretty obvious (and large) making them perfect targets for the 8th Airforce
These exact same arguments can be made about the V-2 project, that consumed 2 billion Reichsmarks (1.2 billion US $ at the time, about 70% of the budget of the Manhattan Project during the war) late in the war for negligible real contribution to the war effort.
The Mittlewerk V-2 plant was bombed many times, but being built underground of reinformed concrete, it was never put out of operation.
These same resources could have provided a robust nuclear weapons program (but no bomb by the end of the war).
Most surprising is Germany's failure to have a vigorous R&D effort early in the war on uranium. The cost of such a project would have been small (compared to the huge costs of industrial production) a few tens of million of RM over 2-3 years. They had two strong motivations to do this, even if they thought no atomic bomb was possible during the war.
1. If Germany had "won the war" (defeat of the USSR, undisputed control over continental Europe, and the Anglo-American world suing for peace) they still would face a hostile Britain and U.S. even after an armistice. Given the precedent of WWI and WWII another round 10-20 years down the road seemed likely. Staying ahead of the Anglo-Americans in atomic technology would have been essential even in a victorious scenario.
2. Using uranium as a source of power seemed much easier, and the French were actively pursuing this in 1940 before defeat. The US Navy started its own independent uranium program to build reactors to power submarines around this time. To Germany - outclassed in Naval power and needing to sever the sea supply line of the UK and USSR - the possibility of a uranium powered U-boat should have given the German Navy and Hitler thrills of a well-nigh sexual nature. Yet no serious effort was devoted to exploring this.
The fact this can be traced to production batches at Joachimstal during the war is interesting for the following reason: it was a mine incapable of supporting a nuclear weapon program.
Joachimstal (Jachymov today) is an ancient and famous mining district (others have noted here that Thaler == Dollar originated from its name) and due to radon gas in its mine is also the earliest recorded incidences of death from occupational radiation exposure - - - lung cancer was a common cause of death of underground miners from the 16th century onward. It was also a prominent source of material for the discovery of radiation and radioactive elements.
But it could only produce a few tens of tons of uranium annually! Something like a 1000 tons of uranium was needed to support an effective nuclear weapons program.
Germany had however a couple of thousand tons of already mined and processed ore from the Belgian Congo, captured at the outset of the war. This material was perfect for a nuclear weapons program - if it had one. This material was captured by the U.S. at the end of the war unused. A couple of thousand tons of ore from this same mine and shipped to the U.S. before the war in fact powered the Manhattan Project through most of its wartime operations.
That Germany was still relying on old pre-war supply arrangements through Joamchimstal to obtain research uranium is very interesting. It is another manifestation of the failure to create a real weapons program.
I recall watching a program about WWII. I don't remember the exact model but it was an american bomber that had mid flight problems on return to an allied base. So it was forced to land in russia, an at the time non-party to the war. So according to the 'rules of war' while the plane safely landed their, they can not be aided (can't get back in the air) nor returned to an involved party to the war. So what ends up happening, is that there are a "few good russians" who help the crew back to allied territory while running the chance themselves of being caught and punished. But in the mean time, russian engineers were not re-verse engineering the bomber, but "replicating" it. ...
Finally, I'll agree that the plane itself is not enough to easily make more/similar versions of it. I knew a man for a while who worked on the development for several air craft. And he told me what he ended up doing was working with problem installations. So basically, the plans were there, the parts were there, but putting it all together didn't always go so well. Because as we all learn, the point of view of designers, engineers, manufacturers and assemblers are all different.
The plane in question was a B-29, "Ramp Tramp," that aborted to the Soviet Union on July 31, 1944. Subsequently three other B-29s landed (or crashed) there. The USSR was an ally of the U.S. at that time, and obligated to return the aircraft but refused to do so (and imprisoned the friendly air crews for 7 months to boot).
The plane that was created by exactly copying the B-29 was the Tupolev-4. But the story about the creation of the Tu-4 reveals who crucial the industrial infrastructure is: the U.S. airplane was designed to Customary Imperial units (feet, inches, fractions of an inch), the Soviets only had metric tooling. As a result, they could not produce sheet metal of the correct thickness and created an airplane that was 3,200 lb overweight, cutting its bomb load, and they also could not produce engines of the same specific fuel consumption, cutting its range even with a reduced payload. The net result was that to match the B-29's combat range (carrying 20,000 lb of bombs) the Tu-4 could only carry 3,000 lbs.
It was the best bomber the USSR had at the time and it remained in service until 1955, but the fact that it only had 15% of the payload capacity of the B-29 (at equal range) illustrates that this was far from being a successful replication.
You would be naive to think that an aircraft of this complexity can be "reverse engineered". I do not think, in fact, that history bears a single example since WWII at least of any foreign military aircraft being reverse engineered into a successful combat aircraft.
With any advanced aircraft the "secret" of success is not the plane itself so much than the whole vast production system that builds it. The tooling plans are actually some of the most valuable secrets.
Perhaps the closest example of a successful combat plane clone was Israel's Kfir, derived from the Dassault Mirage. But this success required Israel to steal the complete Mirage plans, including the all-important tooling plans, to be able to buy actual production equipment from France, and to buy the engines from the U.S.