The linguistics of the term "assassination" here is interesting.
In the old days, we'd just bomb whatever place we thought the bad guys were hiding, and anti-war types complained about the civilian casualties.
So we got better and better at avoiding civilian casualties, and now we can pick off the specific targets we know we want. But then anti-war types call it "assassination" and it actually winds up sounding even worse.
Of course when we do actually capture them instead of killing them, anti-war types will complain about the prisons we hold them in. Put 'em in a military prison and it's inhumane, put 'em in a civilian prison and that's inhumane too. As soon as we get around to trying them, they'll mount a legal challenge that the terms of the trial are unlawful, causing the trial to be abandoned while we think up a new legal framework under which to try them... and then they'll complain we're holding them for so long without a trial.
What I'm trying to say is that instead of complaining about the targeted killing of specific bad guys in foreign countries that we're not at war with, perhaps you should be grateful that we're not declaring war on the country just so we can bomb the crap out of it.
I've noticed that many non-scientists who have read Drexler seem to acquire a level of belief that has more in common with religion than science. Religious characteristics of this include:
1. Getting so angry about those who disagree with you that you can't even bring yourself to link to the thing you're supposedly rebutting
2. Using "Smalley" like it's a swear word.
3. A reversal of the usual burden of proof (Drexler likes to go on about how nothing he wrote has ever been proven wrong yet, but usually the onus lies on those who say something is technologically possible rather than those who say it isn't.
4. And of course, attributing a lack of success in proving their hypothesis to something somewhere between incompetence and conspiracy on the part of the scientific establishment.
What I find most aggravating about the molecular nanotechnology folks, though, is that they're always complaining that research on MNT is underfunded and understaffed, but so rarely propose specific research projects that we could actually do.
You think it's possible to build a universal assembler? Heck, I'm willing to entertain the idea. But how do we get there from here? What specific experiments and calculations can we start doing right now that can get us closer to that goal? I suspect that any answers to that question are likely to wind up looking like the "ordinary chemistry" which this MBA guy is so quick to deride.
Is there any way I can get rid of the caption that tells me where I am? I think it would be more fun as a guessing game. Look at the local vegetation, architecture, and kinds of cars you see around, and see if you can figure out where in the world you are. (The street name is also a pretty big hint.)
I tried playing it a couple of times just by covering up the appropriate part of the screen. It's often surprisingly easy to narrow it down, but sometimes ridiculously hard.
Actually it was originally considered mysterious why almost all craters don't look like this, at least on airless bodies, since glancing-angle impacts should be, from geometric arguments, a lot more common than nearly-orthogonal ones. And yet, if you look at the moon you'll see that every crater is damn-near circular.
It turns out that the reason is that a crater-forming impact looks less like a cricket ball hitting a sandpit, and more like a nuclear bomb going off. The crater is formed by a blast wave going straight outwards, and the sideways momentum of the incoming particle is damn near irrelevant. Hence, 99% of craters are circular.
So if this is an oblique impact it's probably with something much larger and slower-moving than your average impact crater.
I think it's more to do with people being uncomfortable about being in a room with somebody significantly better-dressed, especially if the better-dressed person is in the inferior position. So they'll feel the need to make a joke about the suit-wearer's suit in order to put things back in the right order.
(This is, of course, flipped if the power difference is big enough; if the CEO is wearing shorts and the junior engineer is wearing a suit then the CEO won't feel uncomfortable -- it only works when there's a similarity of ranks.)
The rule of thumb is to wear to an interview a standard of dress just one notch higher than you expect to wear on the job. For a shorts-and-tshirt job you wear long pants and a shirt. For a long-pants and a shirt job you wear a sports coat, for a sports coat job you wear a suit, and for a suit job you wear a really nice suit.
If you think someone's being timid and really does need a break, it's more common to ask if they want to "take a break" rather than asking flat out if they need to go potty.
I don't think I'd want to hire somebody who was too timid to say "Actually if you don't mind I think I'll go to the bathroom before the next session". It's not that complicated, and if you can't figure out a way to solve the minor social problem associated with your own bodily functions, damned if I'm gonna pay you to solve my problems for me.
And if I were being interviewed and somebody asked if I wanted to "take a break" I'd fail to interpret that as a euphemism for pissing and/or shitting.
You do realize that even people who have incredibly good prediction records, do get things wrong. You can't really point to a specific thing and say, "you suck because you didn't predict this". Look at the totality of their record.
On the other hand, only one thing he's done well has been mentioned versus several things he's done badly. One success doesn't cancel out four failures.
The thing about economics is that there's two diametrically opposed schools of thought on just about any issue you'd like to name. Krugman is a smart dude, and a fierce advocate for one side of any given issue, but I wouldn't swallow his arguments whole without hearing from the other side as well.
If there's one they find "particularly intriguing" I'm guessing it's a rocky planet within the habitable (ie liquid water) zone.
It would have to be a relatively cool star, since it would have to be orbiting more than once per Earth year if they'd had time to observe it.
One more guess: they've observed something with moons. The Kepler instrument should, I think, be capable of resolving an Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant, once you've watched it go round enough times.
These guys are mostly product development and marketing guys, and are the experts in the "what people want" side. The startup founders will bring technical backgrounds to the table; they don't need advisors who can tell them how to build things, they need advisors with insight into what to build and how it can be turned into a company. The combination of technical founders with product-guy advisors could be quite formidable.
At its peak, the company employed a third of the British workforce and was responsible for a huge tranche of global trade.
I knew it was big, but a third of the British workforce? That's insane.
Anyway, I welcome the East India Company back. I realise it has almost nothing in common with the original entity, but I personally might buy their tea if it becomes available here, just for the illicit non-PC pro-colonialism thrill.
"Same position in space" isn't well-defined anyway. There's no fixed set of coordinates permeating the entire universe. But it's clear enough what is meant in this case.
I wonder, though, it should be in the same position in the sky, right (after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync with regard to its rotation)?
I'm not sure what you mean "after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync"; since it isn't in sync it won't be in the same position. But if you were viewing it from the centre of the Sun, then yes, it would be in the same position in the sky.
It's not really nitpicking, "easiest" isn't well-defined. Quickest, lowest effort, or highest probability of working? I know a way to make a million dollars in the next 24 hours, but its probability of working is very low. I also know a way of making a million dollars with 99.9% probability, but it involves decades of hard work and thrift. I also have several intermediate plans, which still involve a lot of hard work and a probability of success which I am frankly completely unqualified to estimate. And finally I have several high-probability low-effort quick ways to do it, like the grandparent, which are nonetheless contingent on you having other things lined up in your life (eg a millionaire who wants to marry you, or rich parents, or a chest of pirate gold buried in your backyard.)
Trite BS. I don't know what the going conversion rate between pain and dollars is, but I'm sure if you go down to your local homeless shelter you can find someone who has suffered many millions of dollars' worth of pain and doesn't have two dimes to rub together.
3. Put the remaining $30,000 a year into the highest-yielding savings account you can find.
4. After about thirty years, you will have a million dollars. Enjoy it!
That is the easiest, damn-near-risk-free, way to make a million dollars. If you can get a job that pays more than fifty grand, you can save more money each year and get there even faster.
But I really hope you're not expecting some kind of get-rich-quick scheme here.
In the old days, we'd just bomb whatever place we thought the bad guys were hiding, and anti-war types complained about the civilian casualties.
So we got better and better at avoiding civilian casualties, and now we can pick off the specific targets we know we want. But then anti-war types call it "assassination" and it actually winds up sounding even worse.
Of course when we do actually capture them instead of killing them, anti-war types will complain about the prisons we hold them in. Put 'em in a military prison and it's inhumane, put 'em in a civilian prison and that's inhumane too. As soon as we get around to trying them, they'll mount a legal challenge that the terms of the trial are unlawful, causing the trial to be abandoned while we think up a new legal framework under which to try them... and then they'll complain we're holding them for so long without a trial.
What I'm trying to say is that instead of complaining about the targeted killing of specific bad guys in foreign countries that we're not at war with, perhaps you should be grateful that we're not declaring war on the country just so we can bomb the crap out of it.