Sisyphus

Some fairly obvious facts, as I see them. On deportation or imprisonment: There are, by most estimates, about 15 million illegal immigrants from Mexico living in the United States. It would be completely impossible to round up 15 million people (for comparison, remember that the U.S. already has by far the most bloated and expensive prison system in the world with three million inmates). Hence, all discussions of deportation or imprisonment are a waste of time, and anyone advocating such or similar measures either a) has not given it much thought, or b) is not interested in actual solutions. Yes, they are "criminals," and on principle, criminals should be punished. But that is impossible here. How hard is that to understand? I might appeal to Prohibition as precedent - enforcement proved impossible and efforts were not worth the cost. As in that case, we can make a lot of problems disappear by making the illegal legal, or in this case, make legal immigration easier, so there is no incentive to run the border and immigrants can be processed and tracked. On "preserving our culture:" The United States is and always has been a melting pot where each new wave of immigrants adds to the new culture but is not absorbed by it. History shows us that the new need not destroy the old - in fact, in strengthens it. And this almost never happens right away - the great majority of us are descended from immigrants who did not speak English when they arrived, who still had deep connections to their respective motherlands, and who were hated by the self-proclaimed "real" Americans. I myself am descended from such immigrants from half a dozen different countries. The real tradition is for change and growth, not the xenophobia of so-called "traditionalists." As far as I'm concerned, people who talk in those terms either a) have no sense of history, or b) are just engaging in a still-politically-correct form of racism. On "they took yer jooobs!" Well, yes, some of them did. But as some others have said, if you actually enforce minimum wage, the problems mostly disappear. If there are still illegals working then, then that means either nobody else wanted the job, or they're doing a much better job than other workers. In the former there's no harm done, and in both it's actually just stimulating the economy with more work getting done. Sending wages back to Mexico is a problem, I agree (except in the cases where that money is going to be used to immigrate to the U.S.), but that should be a relatively easy problem to deal with. At worst you would lose profits for unscrupulous banks and inconvenience a bunch of vacationing Americans. On border security. Yes, it is important. But how important? Mexico is an ally, remember? And the Mexican border is certainly not the easiest way to illegally enter the United States - the Canadian border is much less well defended. If the argument is really just about some abstract sanctity of borders, then what about those undefended 7000 miles? I call hypocrite.

No, it's neither 0 nor 1. It's not "taking out of" (that's subtraction). And you cannot divide something into nothing. The one can't just magically disappear. You can, however, see what the answer approaches as the denominator approaches zero. Divide one by smaller and smaller numbers. One divided into a half is equal to two (Dividing one into a "half of a piece" means the whole must be two). One divided by a tenth is equal to ten. In other words, the smaller the denominator, the bigger the answer gets. As it approaches zero, the answer approaches infinity. So isn't 1/0 just equal to infinity? No. First off, "infinity" is not a number. But more immediately, approaching is not the same as being equal to. For an example, approach zero from the other direction, i.e. smaller and smaller negative numbers. It approaches negative infinity.

I wonder what the most rigid material is. As in, the compressive wave in that scenario would move fastest going through what? Would anything have a significant fraction of C? No readily available materials, obviously, but what about, like, a neutron star? Do we know enough about neutron stars to even begin to calculate an answer?

The surface of a sphere is the traditional example. It's a finite area, but has no edges and no center. Travelling in any direction will just bring you back to where you started. Project that into three dimensions and you get a universe which also has no center and no edges, but is still finite. Also, I looked up "universe axis," and it seems like if it's true (which is still extremely tentative), that still doesn't mean there's a center, it just means directionality is not arbitrary.

Strange /= mystical. It's still just physical laws, just not the ones we expected to find before we knew about them. It's unfortunately quite common for people to take the "weirdness" of QM and the fact that we don't completely understand it yet as license to project whatever mystical mumbojumbo they want onto it. Like all the people who think that QM holds the secret to free will. "We don't completely understand QM. We don't completely understand how consciousness works. Both use words like 'observer.' Both involve unpredictability...... JACKPOT!"

No, I'm not suggesting he's correct. "Observation" just means having some effect on something other than itself. It has nothing to do with consciousness. The terminology, "observation" and "travelling information" and such, can be confusing in that regard, but there are good reasons for using those terms. What's new in quantum physics is not some mystical interaction between matter and consciousness. Here is basically the deal. In classical physics, take the example of a planet orbiting a star. It's assumed that you can know the exact position, velocity, and various forces acting on the planet, and thereby extrapolate these values for a future point in time. However, all of this depends on the assumption that you know those initial values, and how that information arrives at you (presumably, via photons from the star bouncing off the planet and some of them entering the lens of a telescope, etc.) doesn't affect that information in any significant way, and so the process is ignored. However, when looking at something like an electron, the form of the "information" that tells you about it becomes extremely important, because, just like with the planet, it involves bouncing stuff off of it and seeing where the bouncing stuff ends up. But the "bounce," unlike with the planet, has a large effect on the object of study in an unpredictable way, due to the manner in which such things travel (a particular sort of "particle-like" wave function whose "position" and "velocity" are ranges of values with inversely proportional precision) which causes just as much inexactitude in both object and "bouncer."

Is this a pirates vs. ninjas question in disguise?

The same way you know any scientific law is always true whether you're consciously looking at it or not. The same way you know that tree falling in the forest still makes a sound even when there's nobody around. In other words, you don't know, but all of science and rational existence depends on making the assumption, and there's nothing special about this case to make us stop.

But that's hardly unique to quantum physics. Yes, the fact that somebody is looking at the results is assumed, just as it is assumed in any other branch of science. And just as in any other branch of science, that person is assumed not to have an effect, no? As in, the "observation" is the interaction, and the person watching it on a computer screen is not. ...right?

Part of having an open mind is being open to the idea that you don't have an open mind.

The thing about basic [blank] college courses is that their primary effect is usually to convince the student he knows far more than he does about [blank], and to make ridiculous sweeping statements that will make him cringe in embarrassment a few years down the line when he actually knows a little bit more about [blank]. It's a cliche, but "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" is painfully true... No, there's not much in Freud that, by our current scientific understanding, you could point to and unqualifiedly call "correct." In fact much of it is pretty laughable. However, there is also almost nothing in the current scientific understanding that cannot in one way or another be traced back to Freud. Furthermore, many of the parts where he's considered most "wrong" are also the parts that we understand the least, which by rigorous standards is still a bunch of "crackpot" nonsense.

It all depends on context, as ecoli said. Also, the thing with the word "nigger" in particular is that it has such a charged history that it can have completely different meanings based only on whether the person saying it is black or not. For example, traditionally it means "black person" in a highly pejorative sense, which obviously doesn't make sense if the speaker is black. So if you're white and saying it, it's assumed you mean the common meaning and are a racist douche unless it's clear from the context otherwise. Or, if you're not racist, then you at least don't care enough not to make clear that you're not and so are being intentionally offensive in a different way. Hopefully that word will lose it's power, as it already has begun to, and we won't have to worry about it anymore. But that hasn't happened yet, and for now trying to be provocative by calling people niggers in a "it's just a word" way will get you justly punched in the face. Also, there's something to be said about minor taboos on "swear words" in general. Namely, it gives them their power. Sometimes you just have to curse, and if there aren't any "dirty" words to use, you're stuck. What are you going to say when you drop something heavy on your foot? I mean, it's a joke and it's not. I remember reading in an article somewhere a hypothesis that obscenities have an important function of civilization itself: blowing off steam. The brain works in a similar way when you're cursing as when you're being angrily violent, except nobody gets hurt. So making words like **** "just a word" could be very dangerous indeed...

Um, stars. "Plasma" just means ionized gas.

Does the left insist they stay illegal? I thought amnesty was a really popular idea. Anyway, I don't see why we have to talk about fault in order to talk about solutions. No, it's not our fault they're in a bad position, but that doesn't mean we can't give them a hand. It's not a crime what we do, but it does totally suck, and maybe it doesn't have to. And yes, they're here illegally, and our existing laws (and perhaps fairness) say they should all just be deported, but reallistically rounding up 15 million people is just not going to happen, so give it a rest already.

Bombus, bombus, bombus.... The argument is it doesn't work, then? Ok, that's not really in dispute. Eventually it will work. Also, you mean Iran, right? MAD was really our only defense during the Cold War, and it worked then, that's true. But then we were talking about one nation whose leaders were rational human beings. (And even then we came close a few times, like the Cuban Missle Crisis) Now we're talking about several nations whose leaders do not act rationally and frequently talk about martyrdom. I have no idea what you're basing that on, so I can't really respond to it beyond saying it seems like obviously something you couldn't reasonably say... Anyway, you don't need an ICBM to reach Israel. Putin is a thug. 85% of his top advisors are military (Gorbachev had 15%). He funds gangs of youth nationalists to violently break up protests. He tries to bully and dominate an empire that no longer exists. Why don't you look up his popularity in the former Soviet Bloc but outside Russia? Um, no. Term limits exist to preserve democracy, by preventing one person from becoming too powerful. Without them you get stuff like a 100 year old segregationist in the U.S. Senate in the year 2003, just because he's been solidifying his power for 60 years and nobody can possibly unseat him. You have no beef with oppressive theocracies that talk casually and often about holy war and genocide? Um, really?

I would be completely in favor of it if it could realistically be expected to be fully functional and effective within five years, and if it was a joint effort (or at least shared tech) with at least Russia and preferably China as well. If it doesn't work it just makes us less safe, causing hostility and making a "now or never" window for attack before it does work. If it's not a joint effort when it easily could be, it's a nuclear arms race whether we intended it to be or not. Incidentally, I would not share with Israel, though protecting Israel under the shield would be the top priority.

Actually, I'm not really trying to make a particular argument and I'm certainly not advocating policy. (The distance of history allows us to only get emotionally involved in Caesar's exploits if we want to.) I'm just making observations. Just like I don't think you are actually arguing for some kind of scorched Earth plan in Iraq, just observing that things would be easier and ultimately not necessarily "bad" if we removed moral restraints from ourselves, correct? Anyway, my comment about killing everybody in the world was partly facetious, yes, but still served as an illustration of "ends justifying the means" type thinking. Extreme "ends," even world peace, might be achievable but still not be worth the "means" by moral and practical standards. I don't know if Gaul was such a such a situation and I don't know if Iraq would be. I would say that enough variables are wildly different that the analogy between them isn't terribly useful except in the most abstract of senses. It suggests another option, but provides zero assistance in deciding if it is worth the cost. Personally, I don't think it would be in Iraq. Incidentally, I was using "profit" in the sense of benefit rather than material wealth, though the latter was obviously a prominent component of the former. As for Caesar's personal motives, I think it's safe to say personal ambition and glory were at the forefront of his mind. Luckily for the Romans, he saw himself as the embodiment of the state which he loved dearly, and so personal glory and the glory of Rome (brought both with victory and prosperity) were inseparable, and the wellbeing of stubborn barbarians wouldn't even be a blip on the radar, and least not at first. Is there an analogy to be made there with current events? I kind of doubt it, but I'm openminded.

Not peace and prosperity for the 2.5 million aforementioned gauls, though, right? I mean, you could have "world peace" just by killing the rest of the world. Was the Roman invasion profitable for Rome? Hugely. Was it profitable for the eventual descendants of the survivors in Gaul? Yes, that too. Was it easier than if they had insisted on always being just and humanitarian? Absolutely. It is the obviousness of that last question that is the point I was trying to make. As for the second point, I was hinting at what it actually took for it to be "good" for the Gauls as well, the equivalent in modern times being something like making Iraq the 51st state or something.

Well sure, if there weren't incentives to brutally conquer and enslave, nobody would ever do it. Also remember that the Gauls were eventually all granted Roman citizenship....

AFAIK, spatial reasoning is considered one of maybe half a dozen to a dozen components to the stupidly amorphous "quantity" we call intelligence. And yes, that is an incredibly easy one.

The whole thing is so bizarre. I can't think of any institution less likely to have institutionalized racism than MIT. And surely at this "august institution," as you put it, one doesn't need to display particular incompetence to legitimately be denied tenure. Although, frankly, the things we do about him, that his reaction to being denied tenure is to accuse his entire committee of racism and going on a hunger strike, does not particularly inspire confidence. I mean, imagine the stuff he'd pull if he actually had tenure...

That's pretty much my view on the subject as well. A billion years is just too long a time frame to say anything meaningful about. In the extremely unlikely event that anything "human" is still around then, it will be part of a billion-year-old civilization and presumably have long since moved beyond such planetary trivialities.

Great post, Bignose. I suspect the difference between sphere and ant-shape would be very large indeed. I would be surprised if an ant broke 4 m/s.

Probably dishwasher, though maid would also be tempting. I use a lot of dishes, and cooking and eating would be more enjoyable if I could just ignore them. Gardener is out because I don't have an outdoors (and if I did I would prefer it wild, anyway), cook is out because I love to cook, and launderer is out just because I never found that a particularly bothersome task.

It seems that the Democratic Party, which has been somewhat lost and divided for a while now, is finally starting to resettle itself as the party of moderation. The Republican Party, however, which after 9/11 solidified itself very firmly unusually far right, is now pretty much in shambles and struggling to redefine itself, wherein even individual candidates don't seem sure whether they're moderate or radical. (Granted, a lot of that is probably just the same old pre-primary maneuvering and noncommital, but still.) Everything is still very much in the air for the GOP, and it remains to be seen how much influence various factions will end up with. If the radicals win out, we might see significant realignment and defection. On the other hand, if the Democrats don't throw the far left a bone, will there be a Green Party resurgence? Or did Democrats learn such a harsh lesson in 2000 with Florida and Nader that they'll be more immune to desertion?