nerdgirl

That’s a non-sequitor. Absurd or miraculous events implies that it’s outside the physical realm … where science doesn’t apply. Again, just because Galileo hadn't yet improved upon the telescope such that he could "discover" the rings of Saturn, it doesn't mean that they weren't there. Just because people didn't understand that germs (bacteria & viruses) cause infectious diseases, didn't mean that Vaccinia variola major (smallpox), Yersinia pestis (plague), paramyxoviruses (measles & mumps), or Treponema pallidum (syphilis) didn't exist before Koch experimentally demonstrated what Pasteur and others before had theorized. Germ theory was incredibly controversial when first proposed! You’re choosing to try to force a framework for faith onto science that isn’t there - creating specious parallels; humans have an amazing ability to find patterns, even when they’re not real. Witness: the Virgin Mary on grilled cheese sandwich and Jesus on water towers or underpasses. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

No problems/delays Wed or Sunday flying ATL to COS & back. Flying out tonight to DCA, already see delays at ATL ... speculate mostly weather as our ceiling is at ~500ft. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

If interested ... for a counter example, one can watch an interview of Naomi Wolf by Professor Viet Dinh (Georgetown School of Law), who was Assistant Attorney General from 2001 to 2003 and who is generally credited with being the "chief architect" behind the USA PATRIOT Act, i.e., someone who clearly has an authoritative voice on his own with a different point of view. Wolf gratefully acknowledges some of the 'hard' questions that Dinh asks. Her comments on what she calls "American exceptionalism," i.e., the general American public being more interested in American Idol than the state of the world and the changing role of US (perceived versus actual) in the world resonated with me. Pragmatically, I'm not sure how different that is from the majority of the US past history. It's a fantastic example of the civility, intelligence, and thoughtful exchange, with some artful rhetoric from both. It's not a 30-second sound bite, however ... well, other than Dinh talking about the role of "the man." C-SPAN Book TV. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

You describe the model for funding science two hundred years ago. Vannevar Bush made a case for federal funding some 62 years ago. How do you foresee what you propose being implemented and executed today? Actually, per the 2008 Appropriations Bills (for reconciliation by House and Senate based on the PBR), DARPA’s budget is only 57% of NSF’s. The proverbial “lion’s share” of S&T funding is via the NIH. S&T Budgets: NSF $4.9B DoD overall S&T (i.e., 6.1-6.3) $13B (7% decrease from 2007 … my speculation is that’s due to a decrease in earmarks, as the 2008 PBR was only $10.9B) … but DoD 6.1 (“Basic Research”) $1.6B (3% increase) … and DARPA $2.8B (8.7% decrease) … the Air Force has the largest share of the DoD S&T (6.1-6.4) budget: $25.9B (5.8% increase) … (the AF traditionally gets the largest number of Congressional Additions, tho’) NIH $30.2B NASA $12.6B DOE $9.2B DHS $1.0B Graphical presentations – going back to 1976 – of overall federal S&T spending and DoD S&T funding from AAAS. DARPA's budget has never been greater than NSF's. NB: Most agencies – not DoD or IC – are still on CR. Now you are correct that there are some fields – such as electrical engineering – in which the DoD (not DARPA) funds the majority of the US research. VR/Marg p.s. You have no idea how much it made me smile when you told me DARPA is defense money. Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Concur heartily with the first clause. Science requires continual re-examination. That’s a critical difference between faith and science – faith entails/obliges/compels one to believe/accept and to suspend one’s skepticism to a higher power(s)/supernatural force in which one believes without physical, repeatable, measurable, public evidence. The second clause in the sentence describes religion & faith not science. What evidence of ‘tidiness’ do you see in the Universe? The Universe is moving to a state of less order. It’s a mess. (2nd Law of Thermodynamics – entropy increases unless you put energy into a system – witness: your house does not clean itself, broken egg shells do not spontaneously reform unbroken eggs). What you’re calling god is not equivalent to science. Sorry, it’s just not. We’re talking about very different things ---> meta-physics, how science is used by humans (for good, for not, or for ambiguous intentions) versus science (a method for determining the physical nature of the world around us). The philosophical and ethical implications for human society that are tied up in your words are fascinating intellectually and have pragmatic impacts on humans. For example, an early version of the 2007 Appropriations bill called for funding to investigate the “potential impact of nanotechnology on human dignity.” While there is a scientific component to such investigations, the scope extends far beyond the realm of the scientific. And that’s okay. It’s not a value judgement. Okay, maybe we’re getting somewhere – you’re still not talking about science. But you’re describing the possibility that scientific results, technology, power, money, sex, or religion can be misused by humans. That’s very different from science. Perhaps you are writing about a positivist view versus a normative view as well. Faith & religion entail a perception about how things “should” be (the normative component). Science isn’t normative … which is not to imply that science is not or cannot be applied to normative issues by humans nor that normative factors cannot impact science. For example, since 2002 the US government has substantially increased investment in biodefense research. From 2002 to 2003, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) [part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)] increased grant funding by 521% for biodefense projects compared to the 9.8% increase for non-biodefense research. The choice to direct money to that type of science was largely a normative decision, i.e., the US should be better prepared in the event of a future bioterrorist or biological weapon attack. Perhaps you’re also writing about the kind of post-modern deconstructionalism (literary theory), which was popular in the 1980s and 1990s, that challenged the objectivity of everything. Eventually these folks invoked superficial notions on quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and string theory. And they started pontificating (intentional choice of word with religious connotation) about the ‘subjectivity’ of science. Again, one can find examples (too many im-ever-ho) of the intentional mis-use of science for profit, greed, or harm … but that’s the humans not the science. The ‘subjectivity of science’ argument exploded (metaphorically) in their faces when an intentionally farcical article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," by another well-regarded, award-winning physicist, Prof Alan D. Sokol (NYU), was published in the leading cultural studies journal with such absurdities such as "pi is an integer.” I agree heartily that one cannot approach human interactions as one approaches a scientific inquiry. And I wouldn’t want to either. Whereas there’s a tremendous amount of science behind aircraft engineering, atmospheric fluid dynamics, and canopy design, there’s very little scientific behind what compels one to skydive. Why do you want to force one into a proverbial box in which the other resides? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Huh? DNA? Microbes? Gravity? Electromagnetism? Heredity? Combustion? Structure of ice & why ice cubes float? Non-earth centered solar system? I can go on & on. Questionable to whom? No. Just no. You can call gravity "silly" as much as you want to -- it doesn't change it. You can call the laws of thermodynamics as "silly" as you want to - that doesn't change them. You're still not going to get a perpetual motion machine. Whether you think electromagnetism is "silly" or not, a basic understanding of that was required to create the computer at which you type. That's not "drift" - that's semantics (to be generous) or confusing science with science policy, public policy based on science, and science communication. (to be more precise & accurate). You've confused (at least) three different things. To use your example - science isn't researching the "benefits" of coffee drinking. That's not science. Researching the impact/effects of caffeine or other compounds found in coffee on human physiology in manner that follows the scientific method is science. Textbooks is science education. "Good for you" in what sense? Taste, environmental impact, social impact, economics (if buying at Starbucks) are all possible factors in a person *choice* to drink coffee. Who's "they"? You would probably make a much better case on mis-use of scientific research to go to pharmacology and the few well publicized cases there or the tobacco industry. That's not science; that's mis-use, scientific fraud, & occasionally outright lying. Huh? No. Science has to have a causal force in the physical realm ... otherwise it's not science. At one point Ben Franklin was accused of usurping the will of God because he approached lightening in a scientific manner and invented lightening rods ... which when placed on church steeples substantially decreased the 'supernatural' effects of lightening during sermons. Correlation is not causality. VR/Marg p.s. w/r/t murder, science has provided one causal factor particularly relevant to the US crime rates: lead. Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

If one accepts your assertion (which I don't with respect to scientists and question highly w/r/t science), what would you propose to do about it? Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has commented publicly that he think the budget of the NSF should be tripled or quadrupled. Would you concur with that policy recommendation? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

I don't understand your latter statement ... you assert a correlation that because scientific understanding of the properties of electrons (presuming you mean electron microscopy) enables development of that technology that it somehow supports 'science as faith'? Wouldn't that suggest that the scientific method reveals that which our limited physiological abilities (by the rods & cones in our eyes and neurochemistry of our brains) cannot? Because humans before Galileo couldn't see the Jovian moons that doesn't mean they didn't exist. Because we didn't understand the role of the lethal factor, edema factor, and protective antigen in anthrax's attack on the body, that didn't mean people couldn't be killed by inhaling Bacillus anthracis spores. It seems that you're trying to force the Heisenberg uncertainty principle into a something that it isn't. You can know velocity with limits (very small) on location ... and vice versa. If we couldn't, electron microscopy would not be very useful ... or possible. There have been a number (too many) documented cases -- mostly related to pyschology, physiology, and medicine where what you write has been observed. See Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man and Carol Tavris' The Mismeasure of Woman for some vivid examples, among others. Conversely, the absorption band of iron porphyrin (the active molecule in hemoglobin in red blood cells) is a specific nanometer (nm) wavelength of light in the UV-Vis spectrum - that doesn't change regardless of one's agenda. Understanding why when the iron atom of hemoglobin is coordinatively bonded to oxygen, your blood is red; when it's devoid of oxygen, it's bluish in color; why lobster's blood appears green (copper); and why when cyanide bonds to the iron porphyrin it's really hard to remove (stronger bond), isn't subject to an agenda ... but the understanding is due to science. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Does anyone know or heard anything to suggest whether the burglars were shot in the front or in the back? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

No, we don't. That's why it's science not superstition. Science requires observable & measurable -- whether in vitro, in vivo or in silico -- experimental data that is shared and repeatable by outside parties. Science also requires causality within the physical or biological realm. I'm not sure who Davies' polled physicists mentioned in his Op-Ed piece were, but a more scientific (rather than anecdotal) sampling would likely produce a substantively different result. Is there faith in the progress of science? Perhaps. Does the experience of doing cutting-edge science -- like being the first person to ever create, characterize, & observe the reactivity of some new molecular compound or family of compounds -- have a profound pseudo/meta-philosophical or deeply meaningful on a purely human level for some? Yes. Interesting piece by the way. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Single data point: I flew ATL to COS (Colorado Springs) on Wednesday. Frankly kudos to TSA & ATL staff. I was through screening and security (main concourse) faster than I think I ever have been (

Is the new technique for generating stem cells showing the telomerase length/activity issue (the early aging cause) that was observed with Dolly and other early clones? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Noticed no one responded on this part of the comment. I did look ... don't want to live many of the places w/low reported burglary rates per UN Crime Statistics (e.g., Saudi Arabia). The pure statistics do need some analysis to draw meaningful conclusions, because the superficial one seems to be lowest crime rate correlates to lack of civil liberties, lack of due process of law, & oppressive theocratic dictatorships. India and South Korea have very low reported burglary rates as well, so that correlation quickly fails. Here's one per capita ordering based on 1998-2000 Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems for 54 countries. A few notables are absent: Russia, China. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

"Libyans"??? Why Libyans? Any speculations? According to the article, Yemenis are 3rd most common foreign militants and Syrians 4th. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Arrogant? Not in all cases Laughable? Sometimes, sometimes laudable. Depends on how and why it's done, doesn't it? Concur heartily. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

There are universal standards – physical constants. Those are truly universal. With respect to human behavior and consciousness, from a positivist perspective, if one accepts that humans have free will or some Heideggarian Dasein (“Being-In-The-World,”) then facticity (something which is factual/real but which resists explanation and interpretation) can exist. It follows that a human-species-wide -- again, I think "universal" is human hubris -- code of standards for acceptable versus non-acceptable behaviors can exist. Implementation & execution remain the challenges. It sounds like you're trying to make a post-modernist deconstructionalist argument (whether you know it or not

Now put those 5 people in a room *together,* could they via concensus generate standards? (The answer is yes -- as was pragmatically demonstrated in 1948). We can go back to Plato & his theory of forms for intellectualizing on the "Universal," which I am completely willing to admit is fun. Stepping beyond philosophy, it is a pragmatic possibility to establish a *minimum* set of standards. Proof: see my two earlier posts. Now I will concur with you that the implementation and execution of such a minimum global list of standards is much more complicated. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Well, it does answer affirmatively your question if a codified standard has been written done. There are only 8 states that are not signatories to the 2 main conventions. They have been ratified by 161 of the nations (governments) on the planet. Exceptions are small island states (e.g., Vanutu, Comoros, Niue, Kiribati, Tuvalu), a minority of the predominantly Islamic countries (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Malaysia, Indonesia), along with Cuba, Myanmar (nee Burma), & Singapore. Is it debated? Yes. Are there pragmatic limitations? Yes. How do you assess the "100 year" from now assertion, as the enumerated rights are carrying forth from documents 800 years old (Magna Carta), 219 years old (US Constitution), and 218 years old (French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen)? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Back in December 1948, in an effort led by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted (without dissent) by the UN General Assembly “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” There are two subsequent core Conventions: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The two International Covenants, together with the Universal Declaration and the Optional Protocols, comprise the International Bill of Human Rights, which entered into force in 1976. (NB: The US Senate has ratified (see p. 11) all of the conventions & 2 of the optional protocols, thereby making it US law.) Included in the Declaration’s 30 Articles are rights, such as -- No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. -- No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. -- Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. -- No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. -- No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. -- Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality. -- Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. -- Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. President FD Roosevelt’s 1941 "Four Freedoms" speech is widely credited as laying the groundwork for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For those who have been to the FDR Memorial in DC, those are the ‘freedoms’ engraved in granite: Freedom of speech and expression, Freedom of (every person to) worship (in his own way), Freedom from want, Freedom from fear. Which is to try to illustrate the role that America had in fostering the first global (“Universal” sounds solipsistic to me) assertion of human rights. FDR laid the groundwork for President Reagan’s invocation John Winthrop’s vision of a creating an example to be that "shining city on a hill." In March 1989, President Reagan called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "For people of good will around the world, that document is more than just words: It's a global testament of humanity, a standard by which any humble person on Earth can stand in judgment of any government on Earth." ---- ---- ---- ---- Throughout this discussion – which has been very good – it’s been somewhat surprising to me that no one had yet mentioned this document and the subsequent efforts. Suggests to me that I may need to recalibrate my thinking. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Great post! ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Btw, it cuts both ways. This is likely to be the last year for the FDNY Foundation's Calendar of Heroes due to the appearance of the cover firefighter in a porn video. The calendar typically raises ~$150,000 for fire safety training for NYC residents & training equipment for New York’s bravest. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

In fairness, is there a similar accounting of donations, included both absolute #'s and amounts, by editors (who I would purely 'guestimate' may also lean left in their personal donation choices), publishers, and CEOs of news corporations? Is anyone giving to other (non-Dem/non-Repub) candidates? And how did MSNBC select the journalists identified? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

International oversight: I can’t speak authoritatively w/r/t IAEA. They do have a technical cooperation (nee technical assistance) program, which includes safeguards and nuclear security along with nuclear energy and nuclear science/applications topics. I don’t know how effective toward developing and implementing safeguards that program has been. We all can imagine and hurdles … which isn’t to say it shouldn’t be attempted/fostered as you propose, especially for developing safeguards on nuclear energy and research reactors. Pakistan is an NPT non-signatory; the IAEA has limited ability to work with them. Through the US Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Programs, the US has been doing this with Russia … & not on a tremendous amount of funding. For example, the DoD DTRA & DOE NNSA TOBOS (it’s a Russian acronym) develops, tests, evaluates, and implements technologies to increase the safety, security and accountability of nuclear weapons or components of nuclear weapons under Russian Federation MOD custody. DTRA funded technology development of the Automated Monitoring and Inventory System (AMIS) for storage and transportation of Russia nuclear material & warheads. DTRA pays for and oversees the concept development, facility upgrades, equipment purchases, and actual AMIS system testing. Old write-up on TOBOS, p. 5; more recent, shorter write-up, p.2-3 under “Advanced Stockpile Monitoring.” These are less than $10M/year programs. Comment from fielding: General Starodubtsev, Chief Engineer, 12th Main Directorate: “These projects are taken very seriously by MOD, and they have a great future. They are trailblazers for further development of advanced technologies for monitoring nuclear warheads. We are on the right track.” The most effective programs are ones that are developed together (whether bilaterally, trilaterally, or multilaterally). Given Russia’s current economic status (i.e., relative wealth from oil & natural gas compared to early 1990s), one option is an expansion of CTR, in which Russia is a more active partner (read: contributes $), to Pakistan and India. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

What pictures other than Vanunu's 1985 ones showing *inside* the Dimona complex have you seen? I'm really curious!

Regardless of the potential popularity (if one asserts/accepts Pakistan as 'enemies' is a different thread), there are international and domestic law issues, i.e., the NPT and the domestic legislation ratifying the NPT. It's a question of parsing whether PALs are an integral part of weapon design and whether supplying them to another state (that isn't a signatory) can be considered nuclear assistance under Article I of the NPT. ---- ---- ---- ---- NB: the NY Times article mentions PALs; it doesn't mention what kind of PALs or PAL-like security measures. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

QuoteYes, PAL's should be a high priority. Is there time though? I assume they have assembled devices, and it's not likely that PAL's could be simply installed in the existing weapons.Quote Yes, they can. Additionally PALs vary in sophistication. Gregory Giles' "Safeguarding Undeclared Nuclear Arsenals” The Washington Quaterly (Spring 1993) provides a high-level overview of different options. Another more recent brief (2005). Btw - some British nucs didn't have PALs until quite recently, the US offered the Chinese PAL technology in the 1990s, it's thought the Russian strategic weapons (unclear w/r/t tactical weapons) and French arsenal do have electronic safeguards. Israel? VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying