Sisyphus

I don't think that's what this is an example of. That would be true if we were making predictions, but we're not. We're assigning a definition. That four-component definition of life you give is, I agree, rather cheating. It's taking the things we already consider to be "life" and devising a definition merely so as to include those things. It reminds me of defining "man" as "a featherless biped." Yes, it includes man and only man, but it doesn't have anything to do with what a man actually is. Similarly, that definition doesn't seem to be about what makes life special, but is merely a set of characteristics that happen to be shared by all agreed-upon living things.

I think this is one occasion on which I would just ignore the blind lobby. I mean, come on. Maybe they should just stop jaywalking.

Yes, it should always be explained in plain English first, along with graphical representation where applicable. You should also be able to (and should be made to) explain in plain English what the equations represent at every step of the way. If you can't do that, you don't really know what you're talking about, and at best you're just playing a game with meaningless symbols.

I suspect that eventually "life" will be seen as a kind of process rather than a property of particular beings. That would address a lot of the ambiguities and and arbitrary demarcations we see currently, and probably help us deal with the uncertainties of exobiology.

I don't believe that biodiesel is a very good option. To it's advantage, it is a renewable resource, can be used in the same contexts as fossil fuels, and can be produced entirely domestically. On the downside, it is simply very inefficient. It does take a considerable amount of energy to produce, and it still causes significant pollution. More importantly, though, is the sheer amount of biomatter needed. Currently corn and soy are the biggest sources of biodiesel (largely because of the political influence of corn and soy farmers), and there isn't enough land in the world to grow enough to produce enough biofuels to replace fossil fuels as an energy source. That said, there is promising research towards using certain algaes instead, which could potentially be orders of magnitude more efficient in terms of land use. (But again, farmers, who have huge political influence and already know how to grow corn but not algae, have slowed things down quite a bit.) Also, even if it isn't practical as a full replacement (and it isn't), there's no reason it can't be one component of a much larger approach involving a range of different technologies. This is probably what will happen, actually. No one energy source is likely to be able to replace oil anytime soon. Luckily, we have a range of alternatives to share the load, with very rapid research in several areas. What I predict is that wind, solar, hydro, biofuel, tidal, and probably otheres as well will all compete in a patchwork system, with nuclear (which obviously has its own problems but can last a very long time and has the capacity to handle it) taking up the slack until better options are able to take over.

I think the idea is Ahm's rhetoric is reminiscent of Islamic terrorists', so he might just not care about retribution or even invite it intentionally as part of some crazy martyrdom scheme. Or, instead of "dropping" the bomb, they would use it to supply third-party terrorists, who would then smuggle it in or something. For the record, I don't think he is as crazy as he pretends to be (he needs the support of those who are, though), and I don't think they're close to developing a weapon, and I don't think Iran would use a weapon if it had one (it's far too valuable as a deterrent against invasion). But that is the rationale.

The answer, of course, is simple, and of course it is easier said than done. Renewable resources have to be rationed. Non-renewables have to be replaced with renewables. It is interesting to me the particular resources you choose to talk about. Fossil fuels are the only non-renewable resource you mention. Lumber, fisheries, and fresh water are all limitless if we manage them responsibly.

It depends on his reasons for having a low GPA. If he was just lazy he can still find a way to prove himself, but stupid is stupid....

News relating to the actual topic at hand: The House passed a bill today that would subject military contractors in Iraq to U.S. civilian law. It passed 389 to 30, so I guess I'm not alone in my concern. It hasn't gone to the Senate yet, but I don't think there's any doubt it will survive. pcollins: Is any of that stuff you actually believe and/or actually think are relevant points, or is it all just flame bait? Just wanted to say that I know what you're doing, I'm not going to take the bait, and you should probably find somebody else to antagonize. Maybe iNow - he's already being drawn and quartered, so you can probably poke him with a stick without fear of retribution.

Of course breed has to do with behavior. Anyone with any experience with dogs can tell you different breeds have different personalities associated with them. And yes, pitbulls are aggressive, though they obviously can be trained to be friendly. (You don't need such intentional training with, say, a golden retriever or a newfoundland, where you would have to try very hard to make it dangerous.) More importantly, though, pitbulls are bred to fight. It's what they're for, which means they're good at it, which means they are inherently more dangerous than almost any other dog which is just as mean but not a natural fighter. Incidentally, I'm not at all in favor of banning them, but come on. Be reasonable.

You're asking where coordinates are? How would one answer such a question?

Yikes. Good luck, man. I had a job one summer of twelve hour days of steelworking. It definitely gets a lot easier once you get used to it, but I wouldn't want to go back.

But that's just it. They did take a stand, and they didn't have to. We're talking about private communications to individuals who asked to receive them. On what grounds could anyone accuse them of anything if they hadn't blocked the messages? As is, they took the active role, and have therefore effectively claimed responsibility for what people say to one another over their network. Not only that, but they started doing so on just about the most controversial subject there is. Really stupid.

Ah. That makes sense. Of course, it was still a stupid move...

I'm aware that they are a minority. Roughly 10,000 are private security personnel. They regularly engage the same enemies the military is fighting. To me, that's a mercenary. You can call it what you want. That they're only in defensive roles doesn't seem relevant to me, but I'm sure the Romans made similar rationalizations about the Visigoths and so forth. I misunderstood. I thought you meant that you would need to allow for that many Iraqis in order to outnumber the U.S. military (implying that only 10,000 are non-Iraqi). I agree completely, I'm just not sure it's having the desired effect. Recruiting "collaborators" seems like it would be neutral at best, public relations-wise. On the other hand, pumping money into the Iraqi economy is probably a good idea, just because those with more to lose seek more stability. It just seems that hiring by the U.S. just sets us up as looking like the real, long-term rulers of Iraq, when we're trying to help the Iraqi government appear legitimate. Let them do the hiring, let them offer an alternative, let the Iraqis become invested in their own success, as opposed to our continued occupation. Give them the funds for it if we have to. Perhaps what Iraq needs is a New Deal of its own, as opposed to jobs working for the colonials. The government doesn't pay their health insurance because the government is not their employer. The government pays their employers, and their employers pay their health insurance. I don't know how their benefits structure works compared with military, or how much of the companies' contracts goes towards administrative costs, or anything. I'm guessing you don't either. But whatever those facts may be, I think you'd have to be extremely biased to assume that all of that more than compensates for what is, after all, the tremendous difference in pay that we do see. As for how much an individual works, surely somebody is working 7 days a week, making that much money, doing a job that would otherwise be done by a soldier or marine, and so a direct day-by-day comparison is appropriate when considering how much money is spent, if not how much an individual makes. Also, I may as well admit that one of the reasons I think they make more money is because that's what I've been told by people who would know. I've heard soldiers speaking resentfully about these contractors who have less dangerous jobs, and make more money. (Maybe they're wrong?) Even more relevantly, a brother of a friend actually is one of these security contractors, and he left the marines specifically because he could make a lot more money at his present job. Now, those are anecdotal, obviously, but such anecdotes are very easy to find, no? I'm sorry, are we in a debate? If you stay here at SFN for a while, you'll probably notice that one of the great things about it is that we like to have discussions about things. I'm not trying to prove you wrong or to appear right. I'm trying to be right, which very often means changing one's mind about things. I don't think that's obvious at all. It would be obvious if we actually had some real numbers from a credible source to refer to, but those don't appear to exist. Interesting. Ok, then, so anything relating to budgets is a relevant point here? Well then, I paid off my student loan debts well ahead of schedule, so point for me. This is fun. Except that some of them are exempt from both U.S. and Iraqi law, and they are the ones I'm concerned about, since there doesn't appear to be much accountability at all. This is especially worrying considering that they are in fighting roles much of the time. You wouldn't want them in all those positions, but you would definitely want them in some. Like anything that involves fighting. And, of course, you want reliability and oversight in any service that the military is depending on to do its job. As for the matters of expense, you know where I stand. Fair enough, it's not about recruitment, it's about getting around the law. Oh, please. A variation of "he doesn't support the troops" ad hominem. Yawn. I would call it "serious concern" more than "outrage," but anyway, what would you like me to explain that I have not?

It really depends on the context of what was going on. If it's a history class and a student says "it didn't happen that way, because the Bible says this," that really forces the issue, and the teacher has an obligation to set the record straight. I don't know that that's what happened, mind you. More importantly, though, is the issue of what counts as "endorsement by government." There are a number Congressmen who regularly speak explicitly of the Bible being literally true. Is this a government endorsement of Christianity? No, it isn't, because they're not making laws favoring Christians or using government funds to advance it. (Granted most of them would like to, but the point is that it's a separate issue.) That seems to be the consensus threshold for endorsement. Is that threshold crossed here? I don't think so. This professor is guilty of foolishness and insensitivity, perhaps, but no legal or ethical wrongdoing.

I don't understand what you mean. You're saying they knowingly set themselves up as a bully rather than have people mistakenly think they're endorsing a cause?

But that's just it. We don't have that data precisely because they're not accountable. Believe me, I've been looking for the kind of objective analysis you're talking about, and it doesn't exist. Or at least, if it does, then it's a secret, and that amounts to the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. Isn't that in itself a major problem? Doesn't that in itself demonstrate lack of accountability? Also, what objective facts we do have, that, for example, we have literally lawless mercenaries (pcollins, I'll get to that word in a moment) running around, is not terribly encouraging, no? I don't really care about anecdotal stuff except inasmuch as it draws attention to non-anecdotal problems. I think you're playing with semantics, here. They're non-military, non-government armed guards hired by the government. Well first of all, that's not true. Many are Iraqis, but not that many. Secondly, what's your point? Is it preferable to make our military dependent on foreign workers instead of Americans? Do they multiply base pay by ten? Because that's how much more a private "security worker" makes than an enlisted soldier. I'll happily grant that often less money is spent if you'll grant that often a whole lot more is. False (as iNow showed above), and also completely irrelevant. If recent events have taught us anything, I'd say it's that military command and justice is sorely missed in "rear line security." This is the main issue. ...so in other words, we simply don't have the troops. Presumably from inability to recruit enough. Ok, I accept that. Maybe they're a necessary evil. My main issue is not that we're hiring contractors for certain jobs, but the way in which we're hiring them, and some of the jobs they're doing.

True enough. But the way you were saying it before, that males are either very smart or very stupid and females are average, is quite a different thing to say. Because in human history women have only quite recently achieved equal social status with men, a status which is necessary for our modern society and yet still not completely secure. Thus talk of these kinds of differences often makes people uncomfortable. It wouldn't be surprising, in my opinion. Of course, I'm also far from convinced that that is the reason for the disparity. After all, what would be the mechanism for "gambling" of intelligence? I would look first for other explanations in how, for example, testosterone affects psychology as it relates to things like IQ tests. Perhaps males simply "gamble" more in their choices (which goes along with the underlying idea of what you're saying), and when they gamble well they appear smarter, when in reality they were simply thinking more aggressively.

Mass can be determined either by weight or by inertia. Weight is how much force gravity exerts on it. Inertia is how much force is needed to accelerate it a given amount. Neither of these are affected by vacuum. In fact, it is easier to determine weight in a vacuum, because you don't have to worry about taking buoyancy in air (how much it "floats") into account. If you meant a zero gravity or freefall situation instead of a vacuum, then the inertia is still exactly the same and you can determine mass that way.

Only sell stamps in multiples of five?

It's not that it's controversial (although saying so would be in most contexts), it's that it's not correct. Males have a slightly larger standard deviation, and so they are slightly more likely to be farther from the mean than females. That's it. If you got a different impression then that's just a result of bad science reporting.

I think the problem with this thread is equivocation with the terms "liberal" and "conservative" that leads to misunderstandings. I think originally it was just referring to which party one tends to vote for, but we're going all over the map. For example, what does "conservative" actually mean? It can mean closeminded, yes. Or it can mean cautious (which is not the same thing). Or it can mean neither, but adhering to a particular sort of new values. Nationalism, militarism, theocracy, and expanding executive power are all "conservative" trends, but I could also be considered "conservative" for expressing concern about those new trends, wanting everybody to slow down and not get carried away. Or in jurisprudence, a "conservative" opinion can mean either of two things, which are actually quite at odds with one another. The first just means a strict interpretation of the letter of the law. The other interprets the law in the spirit of a "conservative" agenda. Similarly, liberal can mean other things as well. It can mean literally in favor of liberty, or progressive, or openminded. None of those things are the same. (They're not mutually exclusive, either.) To continue the jurisprudence example, a "liberal" opinion can either mean interpreting the law so as to give more weight to the spirit of the law (as opined by the judge) than the letter, or it can mean in line with a progressive agenda.

Alright, I should have said an alleged long history of needless aggression. You have to admit it doesn't look good, though, right? And they at least have a reputation for excessive bravado, and their incident statistics are a lot higher than other contractors doing the same job. Of course I withhold final judgment until we learn more, but how much we learn is probably going to be limited precisely because of the dangerous lack of accountability we're dealing with. I'm not relating this to whether we belong in Iraq, I'm just highlighting what I see as a serious problem. So you're saying it's the second two reasons I suggested (recruitment problems and political pressures) more than the first (military-industrial shenanigans) that prevent the military from doing these jobs themselves? Are Americans oblivious enough that spending more money on less accountable and poorly controlled personnel is politically preferable?

I'm surprised nobody made a thread about this yet, considering all the hubbub about Blackwater recently, American-hired mercenaries who peaked a long history of needless aggression with a shootout that was supposedly totally unnecessary and left many civilians dead. The Iraqi government is demanding they be kicked out of the country. I guess I'll give it a go: Private contractors hired by the U.S. government outnumber military personnel in Iraq. They fill roles ranging from selling burgers on military bases to guarding convoys. In most cases, they cost more money than the military would use to perform the same job. In many cases, no laws apply to them whatsoever. So, what's the deal? Is it standard military-industrial complex fare, where these companies have enough influence in Washington to perpetuate their own existence regardless of what's best for the country? Can we just not recruit enough troops to do everything we need to do? Is there a political motive in giving as few jobs to actual military personnel as possible, in order to artificially keep down the stated number of occupying troops?