imatfaal

Here in the UK we might just get to see it on the way to work - if we are mad wage slaves up and about before dawn. Full eclipse however is after sunrise - so no chance of seeing the full eclipse; shame, the druid sorts would be going mad trying to get into Stonehenge for a total eclipse on the winter solstice. I think the major stones line up for the equinoxes rather than the solstices but would still be worth seeing.

Jackson - although Geoffrey Robertson argued the fact that these alleged offences are not in fact rape under English law this was merely a tactic in the bail hearing. Although I am not really au fait with the European Arrest Warrant I believe that the need for a serious Criminal offence (which would be a serious criminal offence within extraditing country) and prima facie evidence of that offence are no longer strictly required.

From the EuComm website describing the European Arrest Warrant - EAW

"Simpler procedures: The dual criminality principle - which means that both the country requesting extradition and the country that should arrest and return the alleged criminal, recognize and accept that what he or she is alleged to have done, is a crime - is abolished for 32 serious categories of offences. "

The list of examples they give does not include rape - but I would think that both rape and sexual assault are included.

JC

Don't think that Heseltine is dead btw. Here is a clip of him a few weeks ago - he does have mild rhotacism (hope this is correct spelling).

Swansont - could you answer a follow up? Is the fact that the reduction of the gravitation potential dilation balances the increased relative velocity dilation a 'lucky' coincidence or is there some deeper connexion that causes this to be so?

I would have replied sooner to this topic but as I'm using wifi it's taking a couple of hours for the signal to travel the 24 feet to the reciever. What's really annoying is that I've got the radio on and all I get is yesterdays news. On a brighter note it's going to be sunny tomorrow so I'm going to go out now and get a tan, after all the UV, which travels that much faster, is already here and I can work on my new theory of gravity, spacetime isn't flat it's downhill

Very good - I laughed out loud (I wont use the abbreviation)

There seems some confusion here. Lisping refers to using a "th" or a wet, cheeky sound instead of an "s" or a "z". The "incompwehensiboo" kind of speech is referred to as rhotacism, meaning the inability to pronounce "r" (and I suppose "l").

 

Britain does seem to have more than its share of public figures with speech impediments than America has -- for example, politicians George VI, Winston Churchill, etc and actors Matthew Goode, Boris Karloff, etc. Perhaps British culture more readily accepts speech impediments than American culture does, and so, also does not see them as "wrong" and in need of correction. A society led by royalty does not vote its rulers in or out, and so, it may accept the shortcomings of its rulers (and thus, of society in general) compared to a democratic society. And historically, the British seem to make life more accessible/livable for the disabled.

Great post - just one thing, Britain (the UK) IS a democratic country; just not a republic but instead a constitutional monarchy. And to answer Marat's original point generalisation of speech patterns in a country with such a wide spread of accents and dialects is very dangerous.

http://www.dailyhitchens.com/2010/11/hitchens-dembski-debate-nov-2010-1-of.html

I presume that the other sections are also available at the same source if you wish to watch.

I do not know why?

ZSM - which bit do you not understand

Jeremy Clarkson!

Unfortunately he is as close as we can get - even if he is paid to talk about cars.

Lemur - the idea that you put forward is not so much Foucault's Governmentality as the general normalising influence of law within society. If you want to read more about Governmentality you need to read Security Territory Population or The Birth of Biopolitics; both of which are collections of Foucault's lectures at the College de France, and fairly accessible. If you google Nikolas Rose you should find some superb explanations of the ideas as well. Discipline and Punish is more historical book about the use of prison, exercise, routine, and surveillance/correction in modern society. Governmentality could be seen as a progression from the ideas of D&P from the individual being ceaselessly watched, measured, and constrained to the creation of a society within which control is on a wide-scale basis ie sovereignty (ancient) disciplinary (early modern/transitionary) governmental (modern)

For a different perspective, ie from the eastern side of the atlantic, John Stewart is well known (the daily show is broadcast nationwide free-to-view), Rush Limbaugh is pretty well known in a "have you heard of this american guy who says..." sort of way, and Glenn Beck was the subject of a few biogs in the serious news media during the run up to the mid-term elections. Personally, I find the influence of the regular TV/Radio political commentator within the United States quite fascinating; I am sure I will be corrected within a few minutes, but I cannot think of a good UK analogue in mainstream broadcast media. I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Marat - Fagan is quirky and interesting, but I am not convinced it helps much. It is complicated by the definitions of assault and battery and the usage of common assault. Fagan is not widely used in subsequant cases. There was a continuous act of battery which became an assault once a deliberate intention was formed: "There was an act constituting a battery which at its inception was not criminal because there was no element of intention but which became criminal from the moment the intention was formed to produce the apprehension which was flowing from the continuing act." [1969] 1 Q.B. 439 per James J p445. However having said that above - this line from same judgment "In our judgment a distinction is to be drawn between acts which are complete - though results may continue to flow - and those acts which are continuing" might well be useful.

Through a quick trawl - "In rejecting the appeal the Privy Council held that intercourse was a continuing act and consequently that a withdrawal of consent during the act required the accused to withdraw or be found guilty of rape. This position has subsequently been adopted in English law by the Court of Appeal in R v Cooper and Schaub. " (Edinburgh Law Review 1999 No consent: a historical critique of the actus reus of rape Victor Tadros). If you can get access the article it has some interesting arguments on both sides.

Santayana

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But too great a pre-occupation with history can stop innovation and cause society to stagnate; I live and work in central London and the fetishization of tradition and history is palpable and a little un-nerving. As with almost everything - it is a matter for moderation (and not the red banner "this is speculation and has been moved" sort); I would paraphrase Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, but those who dwell in the past are determined to repeat it.

Nice. This, however, gives me pause:

O RLY? I suspected a problem in the parser/interpreter re precedence rules. There is no doubt as to what 3x^2+3x should calculate. Do they give exponentiation an incredibly low precedence that they feel compelled to have this caveat? Nope. They must assume that the typical user doesn't know the precedence rules.

Wasn't it some newspaper baron who said that one can never over-estimate the stupidity of the general public. I reckon after the tenth email saying that their page turned out the wrong answer they realised that even people using a fixed point iterator could be incredibly dopey. On the parsing side - it couldn't work out what log2(x) meant whereas the "gold standard" wolfram alpha has no problems with it at all.

Yep. And if you ever want to take the grind out of the calculation http://www.spearmansrank.com/fixed_point.php - works really nicely

Take your pick http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html#moving-source_tests You doubt SR has been tested! - as one example, the time dilation effects of SR can be shown with a good clock, a few jet rides and two willing physicists (Hafele and Keating) - it has now been shown to be consistent for almost walking pace.

a question for you - can you provide one peer reviewed article in a science publication that provides good experimental data that light speed is not constant in a vacuum and varies with the movement of the source/observer. I know this is a reversal of the normal burden of proof, but you are challenging a concept that has withstood all that could be thrown at it for best part of a century. I am not sure of the self-contradictions you are talking about - perhaps you could elucidate?

Tree

x = 5.log₂(x)

x = log₂(x⁵)

2^x = 2^log₂(x⁵)

2^x = x⁵

http://xkcd.com/675/

Otis's work - some of which can be found on questia (I won't post link due to possible copyright problems) - directly contradicts maxwell, einstein etc. many seemingly consistent theories can be posited, however a constant speed of light which follows from maxwell's equations and is the basis of special relativity is the theory which matches experimental data. special and general relativity have been tested to an enormous extent, its predictions work, and real-world applications rely on the equations and physics it generates. From my very brief reading Otis claims that light does not have constant speed regardless of the motion of the observer/source - SR is based on the fact that it does. One is right, the other is wrong; I don't know if Otis's work can be mathematically self-consistent (he was/is a far greater mathematician than I) but even presuming that it is self-consistent it doesn't comply with known experimental results.

Just through some quick numerical/graphical thinking there must be at least (and I think at most but I am uncertain) two real solutions.

x x^5 2^x

======================

0 0 < 1

1 1 < 2

2 32 > 4

10 10^5 > 1024

100 10^10 < 2^100

The two lines y=x^5 and y=2^x cross twice between 0 and 100 therefore 2^x=x^5 twice between 0 and 100. One point is clearly between 1 and 2 (and is probably your solution) the other is between 10 and 100 - I would hazard a guess around 20. I cannot see any way to solve the equation easily and suggest you try Capn suggestion

I was really wondering whether it was a timing issue, a price issue, or a mechanical issue; and it seems it is a little of all three. As we discover more and more high temperature superconductors is it possible that the price of particle accelerators will decline massively (according to popular press the major complicating factor of LHC was the difficulty of handing large quantities of liquid helium) or will other constraining factors mean that LHC remains the most powerful for years to come?

Glass will absorb microwaves and eventually melt, iff it is preheated to red hot. If even a tiny portion of the glass in a microwave gets too hot, it will heat the adjacent piece till it will absorb the microwaves and heat up. If you fancy trashing a microwave //DANGEROUS BIT// heat up a bottle with a blow torch till a spot is red and then stick in a full power microwave - after a while you will have a blob of molten glass.

^.^ Well, I certainly do fall into the category of worry warts. ^.^

Not by a long way are you a worry wart. I was anxious about the possibility of you losing marks in the next exam you sat - when you can worry about a person you have never met, sitting a potential exam, in an unknown subject, and possibly losing one mark - then and only then are you a worry wart!!

One question - that I am sure there is a simple answer to - why when there are superconductors at higher and higher temperatures does the LHC use the sort that need to be cooled by liquid helium? Surely everything would have been much much easier if they used liquid nitrogen temperature superconductors

Jeremy - are you positing your experiment as a real-world experiment that would disprove SR or as a thought-experiment that causes you to believe SR is incorrect. Both cases, by the way, have to battle against the huge amount of evidence that SR is correct as already given above.

If it is the former you will note the practising research physicists who cannot see a way to bring the experimental measurement to a level where it would not be swamped by experimental/measurement error. If it is the latter (which I think is your intended meaning) then you should make this clear and you will receive different responses (ie my first quesion would be how do you synchronise the clocks without some form of communication between them and the experimenter - at what speed does this information travel?)