Quote from: Leslie Ann on April 01, 2009, 03:37:23 PM
Define common sense.

One third of the judges want to make a name for themselves, another third doesn't want to make any real decisions and the last third does their job. Worse than that, I don't think half of them know what common sense is and the other half has their hands tied by the law.

Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment.

You are right about judges. We need an overhaul of the judical system.

http://commongood.org/

Quote from: lisagurl on April 01, 2009, 03:51:39 PM
We need an overhaul of the judical system.

Would that take precedence over an overhaul of the financial system, an overhaul of the imperial presidency, an overhaul of the WPATH Standards of Care, an overhaul of the DSM, and an overhaul of our thinking about energy and its production?

You forgot the tax system.

Then Roman Republic did not last either.

Quote from: Nichole on April 01, 2009, 04:50:06 PM
Would that take precedence over an overhaul of the financial system, an overhaul of the imperial presidency, an overhaul of the WPATH Standards of Care, an overhaul of the DSM, and an overhaul of our thinking about energy and its production?

Viva La Revolution!   

Quote from: Leslie Ann on April 01, 2009, 11:40:30 PM
Viva La Revolution!  

Venceremos! Leslie!!

Well, what the heck.

Lisa's point -- there'd be evidence -- is hard to dismiss. It's not like it's hard to measure radiation levels. Okay, maybe you can't go down to you local Walmart and pick up a geiger counter, but it's a little hard to believe that such a coverup is possible. Granted, it's not the same as underground nuclear tests which contaminate the soil and don't disperse, but it's hard to believe that a significant problem in the area wasn't seen and reported at the time if it was there. It's quite a bit easier to believe that a muckraking reporter dug up a bunch of anectodal evidence and a few crackpot dissenters to put toghether a story. (To be clear, I mean no disrespect toward muckrakers, anecdotes, or crackpots -- they're often what you need to break open a get to the truth when it's hidden by either laziness or a bona fide conspiracy.) Problems regarding handling of radioactive material have hardly been underreported in general in the U.S. There are plenty of stories about poor conditions of mines, the damage from nuclear testing, the utter disaster of the Rocky Flats plant, and, yes, TMI.

So I don't dismiss the possibility that there was a serious impact out of hand, but I'm quite doubtful.

But there is another side to the story: What are the alternatives? Nuclear power might have some health and safety impacts. Coal incontravertably does, and that's where we get most of our power today. Thankfully mines in America aren't as bad as they used to be and are today in China where about 5000 people die every year in coal mining accidents, but they're still dangerous. Mining still kills. And so does the pollution from mines. And so does the effect of the CO2 released when you burn it. Nuclear power is hardly a silver bullet (well, fission anyway -- workable fusion power would be a real breakthrough, but that's not going to be around for decades, if ever). So here's the question:

Given the risks and costs involved in every single type of power generation available today, which is the best choice? Regardless what happened at TMI, that's not an easy question to answer, and the correct answer varies strongly with personal values.

I often here people 'round these parts talk about how much we need to 'educate' (though I think they mean indoctrinate - not educate) people about trans issues as if, somehow, education will make everyone all happy.  Nuclear power is one place where educating people - generations of them now - about nuclear power has only increased the resistance to the notion.  Something to think on.

At any rate, sure coal is bad, and coal mines are bad, but isn't uranium mined too?  Are there health risks associated with mining uranium?  Yes, pretty much the same as coal, but with added lung problems - turns out there is something worse to breathe than coal dust, and its uranium dust.

Me, personally, always thought the chief problem with Nuke Power, is that its done on the same principals of economy of scale that everything else is, and perhaps that was not the best way to go.  Perhaps rather than two huge reactors running two sets of turbines each powering a huge city, nuclear power might work better with very small reactors running for 5,000 or so households at a time.  Accidents would be smaller, the effect of such accidents would be more containable, and the risk would be spread out and shared.  The Navy has a better record with small power plants than the power companies both here and in the old Soviet Union had with the big ones.

Just sayin'.

The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. Giant laser experiment powers up


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm

Quote from: lisagurl on April 02, 2009, 12:02:32 PM
The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. Giant laser experiment powers up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm

I think that the researches into laser and fusion are quite nice.

I suppose my sceptical nature makes me wonder ... so what kind of military usage is this gonna be put to?

I mean they always are aren't they, when they involve the generation of tremendous power? I'd be surprised if the local utility company in any locale was subsidizing the research for the purpose of generating cheap, cleaner and useful energy generation so people can light our homes and run appliances.

Of course, like I said, I'm sceptical.

Nichole

In the early 70's my roommate at college went to work for KMS fusion that makes the target spheres for laser fusion. At the time they had trouble with a ragged edge of the laser pulse that would not hit the sphere evenly and move it so it was difficult to implode. Now almost 40 years later that have not advanced much further. It will be at least another 100 years more before they have a workable generator.

QuoteI'd be surprised if the local utility company in any locale was subsidizing the research

EPRI is the research arm of utilities. Most do give research money but they also buy a vote into the areas that are funded. I am sure that government grants also support this project.

It's not just skepticism, Nichole, but the bias of where it's first aimed. You're scared of physicists, but nuclear weapons were the last energy frontier that was stable enough to keep around in a bomb. This kind of stuff? Fuggedaboutit. If you're worried about weapons research, get your House Rep. to complain about all the money being wasted on F-22's, SDI, and other space-age stuff that engineers (not physicists) are working on, that will never make a difference on a battlefield; or look at what the chemists or solid-state physicists are working on. If there's a military application, you'll probably find it somewhat benign, like more effective armor for Humvees or body armor. But as for physics, they got drafted in WWII to figure out how to blow up the world and end human civilization. You're really worried about something worse?

No, it's not weapons research that's making the energy companies fund some alternative energy research. Partly it's because they want to be positioned for when oil become too expensive (i.e. on the off chance we start taxing it like we should). But mainly it's marketing. "Beyond Petroleum" -- yeah, right -- that's what you should be skeptical about.

Quote from: Alyssa M. on April 02, 2009, 11:13:02 PM
It's not just skepticism, Nichole, but the bias of where it's first aimed. You're scared of physicists, ...
...

No, it's not weapons research that's making the energy companies fund some alternative energy research. Partly it's because they want to be positioned for when oil become too expensive (i.e. on the off chance we start taxing it like we should). But mainly it's marketing. "Beyond Petroleum" -- yeah, right -- that's what you should be skeptical about.

Well, perhaps you should stick to the things you know about. And it's rather obvious that I am not among those things.

No, I'm not "scared" of physicists, not at all. The ones I know at the Institute of Advanced Studies are not the most easily approachable people I know, but they are pretty nice and hardly monsters of any sort. They also appear to have the moral capacity to understand that some of their work might well go toward things they would rather not have it go toward. So physicists seem just fine to me.

Now, military people and civilian governmental officials? Those are a different set of people entirely.

And what makes the companies chip in something is that it makes it so much easier if they do that to have the government sign over the research to them, afterall, they paid for it. Private industry is given, basically, a lot of government, mainly, funded discoveries to sell as they wish. That IS what I am sceptical about as well.

Nichole

Oh, for heaven's sake, I was just trying to make a point, not attacking you. The "bias" thing came off wrong. All I meant was that there are different ways to be skeptical, different things one tends to be skeptical about. I was unclear, and I'm sorry about that.

Look: I hear people all the time asking me about the military applications of things like neutrino physics. Neutrinos. Yes, that's something I know more about than the average bear. And none of the working physicists I know worry about the military aspects of basic research at high energies or high plasma densities and so on, because there is no military application that we don't already have.

As to you, well, no I don't know a damned thing about you, and I've never claimed to. You might take your own advice about that, though: it's rather obvious that I'm "not among the things you know about," either.

I really don't get what your big beef with me is. But please drop it, all right?

QuoteNow, military people and civilian governmental officials? Those are a different set of people entirely.

Profiling? There are many whistle blowers and moral ethical people in government employ. In fact just like teachers they want to make the world a better place. However there are also opportunists that use unethical practices to rise to power.

If you are familiar of the way most research is funded you will understand that it is a collaborated effort. But there is also very large companies that control their own show like drugs and food. Even partnerships to achieve benefit for non competing companies.

A lot of government money is going into efforts of economic development. Many times the government gives its research money away in the hopes of long term economic growth.

Part of my job working for the government was to represent the government as they buy into rights of collaborated research. It is a big step from the lab to the production floor.  Research does not do any good if it is not used.


Encouraging companies to use new ideas is a selling job. It is putting risk and reward into light.

Quote from: lisagurl on April 03, 2009, 09:33:10 AM
...  Research does not do any good if it is not used.

And I suppose that is where my sceptism arises. Research if it's viable generally becomes part and parcel of what the engineers put together. And very often, I can't think of a time that this hasn't occurred yet from the Egyptians and Hittites right down to Great Britain, USSR/Russia and USA, powerful technologies are used as instruments of projecting national power.

Like I know a lot of Americans seemed to think that back in those long-lamented Cold War days that people were just plain stoopid to think America's government would use the nuclear technology transferred to weaponry first.

Yet, it seems a bit stoopid to me to NOT see that America's government had already done that! Twice, on population-centers causing a huge number of civilian deaths and very little damage to what was left of the Japanese "war effort."

And the "saved lives" that were used to justify those actions were only saved because of some notion that the Imperial goverment would go down to the last man similar to what had occurred in Europe with Germany. Seems like a huge stretch to think that. I mean, let's be real here: Tojo was not Hitler and hadn't his motivations of being some sort of Siegfried who was going to Ragnarok on a pyre.

The controlling myths that moved those fellows and the ministers and other power people around them were completely of a different order and accent. Did the imperial wars and expansions look very similar, especially in terms of China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Burma and Czecho-slovakia, Poland, Russia? Yes, they did.

But the impetus was way different. The justification was tied into them being the same. They weren't.

So, yes, I'll remain sceptical about the uses that derive from very unmilitaristic research.

Nichole

A lot of 'dual use' technology simply wound up being military weapons given to civilian police forces, thus making lots and lots of paramilitary SWAT units in places that never needed them.

QuoteAnd the "saved lives" that were used to justify those actions were only saved because of some notion that the Imperial government would go down to the last man similar to what had occurred in Europe with Germany. Seems like a huge stretch to think that. I mean, let's be real here:

My father was one of those who fought Island to Island. Yes they did fight to the last man as they did invent suicide bombings. War is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.

The technology used in the laser fusion is not new. We already have lasers that can shoot down rockets and satellites. What is new is the precision in which the leading edge of the laser pulse is square and flat. I can not think of this helping shoot down anything any better than we have now.

Quote from: lisagurl on April 03, 2009, 02:54:05 PM
My father was one of those who fought Island to Island. Yes they did fight to the last man as they did invent suicide bombings. War is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.

The technology used in the laser fusion is not new. We already have lasers that can shoot down rockets and satellites. What is new is the precision in which the leading edge of the laser pulse is square and flat. I can not think of this helping shoot down anything any better than we have now.

Yeah, so did mine. According to my partner's dad the Chinese fought that way in Korea and we are all rather familiar with Vietnam, no? And does one suppose that Grant must have been perplexed at the willingness to fight on for months in an untenable situation at Peterburg.

Would they have fought down to the last individual in the home islands had the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima not taken place? I suppose we'll never know.

What we do know is that the entire Siegfried mythos that inspired Hitler and the Nazis and the willing destruction of Germany "because it is not good enough to go on after me" was NOT the guiding mythos of the Japanese High Command. In fact we do know that there was increasing powerful dissent about not surrendering taking place in Japanese councils. So the surrender might well have occurred before there was an invasion past Okinawa.

Had the invasion of the home islands taken place would more U.S. soldiers have died? Well, of course they would have. That's what happens when a war continues rather than stops, more people/soldiers die. Does that justify the destruction of over 1/2 million civilians in two medium-sized cities?

What is certainly not justified is the aftermath in which the truth of the matter was deftly converted for Americans into "why would anyone ever believe that we'd use nuclear weaponry unilaterally and to further our own ends and to use it first?"

There's a rather simple and obvious answer to that question. "Because you have already done that twice."

I cannot argue over what "might have happened if." Why would either of us? Obviously there's no answer forthcoming to that question because there's no event to analyze.

Nichole 

QuoteWhat is certainly not justified is the aftermath in which the truth of the matter was deftly converted for Americans into "why would anyone ever believe that we'd use nuclear weaponry unilaterally and to further our own ends and to use it first?"

But many have that power now.

QuoteWar is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.

It would not take a fancy delivery system to to wipe out the U.S. Smuggled in Nuclear weapons could be planted in all the big cities. There are plenty of corrupt people that would sell the technology. But it would not be long before they would lose all their relatives also. Kind of a stalemate no one wants to happen.

Since you asked me to talk about things I know ... well, the Manhattan project is something I know about. It's history is part of the culture of modern physics. You learn about it in a lot of different ways from a lot of different primary sources.

We got into the business because we were afraid the Germans would get it -- it had nothing to do with the Japanese. People worked their buts off to get it working, because that was their contribution to the war effort. They continued once it was clear that the Germans were done for, and even after VE Day basically from inertia, and were too caught up in the moment to question the rationale. And the same applies to the military and political leaders who authorised the use. There was no real understanding until after the fact. Only a few dozen people had seen the Trinity test. The sense of horror at what the bomb meant didn't hit home until after the surrender. Sure it killed a lot of people. But the firebombings of Tokyo killed more. More died in the rape of Nanjing. I mean civilians, not soldiers. It wasn't seen as anything more than another means to the same awful, bloody end.

After the war was over, people realized that it was different.

Okay, granted, that was the point of view of many who worked on the Manhattan Project; politicians and military leaders probably didn't have the same perspective -- but the point is that even the people who knew best what was going on and the implications of the bomb weren't able to see clearly what it really meant. It's very hard to draw any conclusions from decisions made in the ignorance of the time.




And would the Japanese fight to the last? Well, I don't know ... according to Churchill, the British sure would have, so I can't see why not the Japanese.