Pangloss

You're talking about poor people and their particular entitlement to education benefits on the public dole.

I was just watching a news report earlier today about the burgeoning "raw milk" industry -- milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. The reporter spent most of the segment touting the fact that it's "all natural" and that it's "extremely popular", and people drive for hours just to pick up a gallon of the stuff. Briefly at the end of the report she paused to slide in a little disclaimer about how it also happens to be illegal in 23 states and that there are some darn good reasons for it being so (which she didn't bother to elaborate on). So what happens when Mr. Joe Farmer and his 23 "natural" cows suddenly hit the big time and start having to meet a demand for millions of gallons of raw milk for a hungry market? Well of course he becomes "a corporation". What happens next? Some kid gets sick, and the next thing you know we're watching news reports about the "dangers of untreated milk". What, oh what, could we possibly do to this milk to make it safe? Oh, oh, oh could anybody possibly save us from this tragedy?!?! Followed, of course, by regulation forcing pasturization and homogenization. I don't know, sometimes I think we're just too stupid a society to be allowed to breed.

Well I'm certainly no going to let jackson33 fight this one alone, since you guys are touching on some of my favorite hot spots. (grin) First, can we please determine whether we HAVE any "poor people" in this country? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure we HAVE some, but as I've posted in the past the generally-accepted, John Edwards-touted statistics about "people living below the poverty line" are just not a group of people that can be identified as "poor". These people, according to the US Census, on average, live in their own home (admittedly mortgaged, just like everyone else), two cars (admittedly loaned/leased, just like everyone else), several television sets, VCRs and DVRs, DVD players, game boxes, at least one home computer connected to the Internet, a job, children, medical insurance (with an obvious exception for the lower part of the range -- a statistic we DO know and should do something about), access to education and all sorts of opportunities for advancement and betterment. Why do we need to give these people money? Can someone explain that to me, please? Investing in more education spending is about helping society, not taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

As I understand it, RDF systems like VOR and LORAN operate on a time-based principle rather than a triangulation approach. So my guess is that this system would grab those sources as fixed points for legs in a triangulation, but ignore their time-based pulse signals. Makes sense -- those stations are emitting known radio signals from fixed locations. Might as well use 'em. The beauty of this system, though, is that it (potentially) uses every known EM signal from any fixed (and documented) location that's available to the receiver at a given moment. One of the great things about this idea is that if you're in a source-rich area you don't need to limit yourself to three or four sources for triangulation. You can assume that some of them are incorrectly documented and grab, say, a dozen sources. Why not? It's free data. Grab away. Maybe that'll make your position more accurate by averaging out sources whose positions are less accurately determined than others. I think it's a fascinating example of the advantages of data proliferation in the information age.

I got a kick out of this image a friend sent to me so I thought I'd pass it along here. This of course ridicules all those foolish people who don't think "a little gasoline" was enough to bring down the steel of the Twin Towers. Thankfully nobody was actually killed in this particular incident.

I think I fixed all the quote tags in jackson33's post #11 above. Please let me know if I missed anything.

Hah, I didn't know that. He really stepped up to the bat, That man with the cat in the hat.

If the picture is already online, you can simply enclose it in IMG tags, like this: (IMG)http://www.mywebsite.com/images/myimage.jpg(/IMG) Except that you would use square brackets instead of parentheses. (Don't click the link above; it doesn't go anywhere.) If the image is not currently online, I think you're stuck because I don't believe we allow image uploading to the server here.

I was wondering if anybody here might have advice for the best place/method for purchasing carbon offsets. I would imagine that this is an area where there's a lot of cheating and swindling going on. Thanks.

That was interesting, Sayonara, thanks.

The problem with Rosie wasn't her expression of opinion but the venue in which it was being expressed. The horribly misnamed "The View" is a coffee and donuts show usually filled with cooking and gardening tips and celebrities on movie publicity tours. Airing her wacky conspiracy theories without balance lended them an inappropriate level of credibility. She's more than welcome to start her own show on Air America, which is exactly where that sort of nonsense belongs. Heck I'd probably even tune in for entertainment purposes.

Somewhere out there I read a quote from what I believe was an employee of the National Science Foundation saying that by 2010 there would not be sufficient people in science/engineering careers due to the dropping female statistic. Unfortunately I can't find that quote after quite a bit of Googling. Perhaps my memory is faulty. I did find this information for another thread over on the General forum: This article has some statistics from the National Science Foundation on math and science college students: http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2007/04/25/Features/By.The.Numbers.Women.In.Science.And.Engineering-2878908.shtml It states that only 26.3% of female college freshmen intended to major in science or engineering in 2004. That compares with 40.8% of male students. The number for women is down from 34% in 1991. Only 0.4% intended to go into computer science. (Compared with 4.1% of men -- both dangerously low numbers!) On a more positive note, amongst 2004 graduates the numbers for men and women were almost even at a quarter-mill each.

Several bills are currently working their way through the US Congress designed to increase funding on academic scholarships aimed at mathematics and science. We have a thread about it over on the Politics board: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26212 This article has some statistics from the National Science Foundation on math and science college students: http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2007/04/25/Features/By.The.Numbers.Women.In.Science.And.Engineering-2878908.shtml It states that only 26.3% of female college freshmen intended to major in science or engineering in 2004. That compares with 40.8% of male students. The number for women is down from 34% in 1991. Only 0.4% intended to go into computer science. (Compared with 4.1% of men -- both dangerously low numbers!) On a more positive note, amongst 2004 graduates the numbers for men and women were almost even at a quarter-mill each. In answer to your question, according to the article there are about three times as many men as women in science and engineering fields.

I agree. I just have a problem with some of the generalizations that you've extrapolated from those statistics. That's the problem with statistics. People use them to draw sweeping conclusions about what's best for every case, when in fact majority statistics mean only what's best for most cases. And that's also a reasonable argument. But it also has reasonable counterpoint. That's why (drum roll please) we have laws affecting gun ownership in this country.

I'm not "operating" under any "assumptions", CPL.Luke, but I'll happily take your word that that's a valid refutation to their position. (I'm afraid I can't load Acrobat on this twitchy Vista machine atm.) Let's set aside the issue of legality of female scholarships for the moment and address this question: Is it possible that Congress passed legislation increasing funding for math and science based on false information about the future availability of employees in those fields? WMD 2.0?

You're not actually going to use a single example to try and prove that having a gun could never possibly do anyone any good are you? I mean, you're not actually going to do that, on a science board, no less, while posting under the name "SkepticLance".... are you? Really?

You're talking about the status quo in the US, not a change.

I don't know why Trump would have any special knowledge as to the reasons for her departure, and he has a really good reason for saying that she was fired. (I can't believe I actually spent time discussing this, lol)

It's not a question of equality, it's a question of total numbers of available personnel. What they were saying was that if the current numbers and ratio of men to women continue to enter into math and science careers then there would automatically be a deficit of sufficient numbers of people in those fields. So focusing on women specifically (e.g. advertisements, role-model encouragements and economic incentives) would benefit the whole field. I'm not sure if this reasoning is entirely valid, but I thought it was an interesting point. In other words, I wouldn't toss out the constitution just to be competitive in the world economy. But there are precedents here and I think it bears a closer look. (Edit: Not sure if anyone noticed it, but I accidentally put "would" instead of "wouldn't" in the previous paragraph. Fixed.)

Well like I said I support leaving burglers to their efforts when you can, but exit locations and window arrangements certainly don't support escape "99% of the time". You get out IF you can, but look at the consequences if you don't. Having a gun in that situation absolutely HAS to increase your chance of survival, even if it does introduce other risk factors. Suggesting that it can ONLY cause an increase in detrimental odds is illogical.

Ireland's worst air disaster occurred today when a small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery early this afternoon in central Ireland. Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 826 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night.

I realize this reply is tardy, but I'm a bit shocked by this post. Not only do I completely disagree with this reasoning, but I'm surprised this "logic" was let stand by most of this community. I don't think having a gun in that situation is necessarily an answer either, and I absolutely think you should "run" before "defending your turf" -- no question about it. If you can. But I think it's absurd to suggest that one can run or "make noise" in 99% of all criminal cases. Utterly absurd. Simple logic renders that comment ridiculous -- we wouldn't have any crime on our streets at all if you could simply run away from criminals with guns. People get held up and shot at gunpoint EVERY DAY. Surely it's easier to escape from an armed gunman in public than it is in your home. Yet how many times have we seen video of a suspect holding up a convenience store? Why didn't those victims just... run away? In fact they often get SHOT. And certainly the vast majority of them aren't armed, and so you would think they would run away if they could. I'm really, seriously disappointed that that statement was allowed to stand by everyone on this thread except ParanoiA. Wow.

There are definitely some liberal-versus-conservative overtones in the way this debate has played out in the public discourse and media. Some on the extreme left have lept to the defense of the "Stop Snitchin'" crowd without thinking (Rosie O'Donnell did), and some on the extreme right have tried to pawn this off as a mainstream liberal point of view (which is completely unwarranted).

Sure -- they can't legally be paid less either. The whole argument about women being paid less than men is a logical fallacy. When it does happen that women are paid less than men it's illegal and gets settled in court. When it comes to averages (the argument that women are paid less than men on average), it's due to market factors and career trends, which are matters of choice, and therefore irrelevent to the argument of discrimination. All of that's true and the media doesn't get it, I agree. But I think you're missing the more important point, which is that we want to do more to encourage more women to go into math and science pursuits. This is about investment, not lowering barriers. (Sorry for the late reply; it's been a busy week.)