imatfaal

ZSM - which bit do you not understand

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.

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) 2x = 2^log2(x5) 2x = 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.

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?)

Very few of us on these boards will be unfamiliar with the writer, commentator, and all-round iconoclast Christopher Hitchens - whether you love or loathe him you might find the linked interview interesting. In the interview he talks to Jeremy Paxman about life, death, cancer, and other things in his usual forthright and uncompromising style: Paxman Meets Hitchens This is an iplayer link to content which I am not sure is available outside the UK. I will also ferret around for a different source. Youtube link part 1 Youtube part 2 I hope this is the correct place to put such a link - I wondered about ethics, religion, politics, and the lounge but decided on genphis as a compromise.

I think it is GR that predicts the increase in mass. I seem to remember that the radiation given off by an accelerated charged particle is a limiting factor as well (ie the increasing energy goes into producing synchrotron radiation not into increasing velocity).

Current favourite album on ipod -> Becoming a Jackal - Villagers. Longterm favourites (per itunes playcount) i am kloot/dylan/rem/billy bragg

Surely the Greek letter Sigma (Σςσ) predates the Latin Ss; to describe a capital Sigma as an S with "originally a fancy finishing stroke" reverses the development of alphabets (semitic->phoenician->greek->latin).

Godel Escher Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Not sure if Ole Romer isn't a little out of his league with that distinguished company - and surely a opening role for Galileo. Good luck on your work Craig..

there isnt a simple one word translation - yiafto means "that's the reason why" . example "he sent me a rude text, yiafto I am not talking to him any more" - it is similar to therefore - but has a different causative feeling