No surprise, looks like a meth lab.

Easily. You just need to have a big enough lab and a large enough customer base. They do have to be paying customers, though, so the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will never figure it out.

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So if someone is gonna make a simulation of the universe..

It would likely be some Fermi Lab scientist who wanted to study the Big Bang.

They would reverse engineer the expansion of the universe as much as possible..

[ a thing that's already been done and being tweaked to get even better Planck length "resolution", as it were ]

And once they got the best estimations..

Would dump all those rules and variables into a quantum computer and run sim after sim, checking to see WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END!

Much like The Game of Life sim developed by mathematician John Conway.

I contend that common experiences rules most people's feelings, not racism.

A carpenter will eat his lunch with another carpenter. Someone who works in a lab will eat their lunch with a co-worker from the same lab, not the lab two doors down.

Two firefighters will be drawn to one another due to common experience.

I think because it's meant to go along with their article, not to be watched on it's own.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27413&utm_campaign=youtubesuperstrongrobot

The details are pretty amazing though.

"The most impressive feat of strength comes from a ground bot nicknamed μTug. Although it weighs just 12 grams, it can drag a weight that's 2000 times heavier – "the same as you pulling around a blue whale", explains David Christensen – who is in the same lab."

*related=http://videosift.com/video/White-Lab-Puppy-Moki-Loves-The-Air-Condition-A-C

White Lab Puppy Moki Loves The Air Condition (A/C) has been added as a related post - related requested by blackfox42.

So, lets see.. It's been a while since I posted this, but lets try and peg all of cartoons from my childhood.

Avatar
Transformers
pokemon
X-men / Sailor moon
Powerpuff Girls
South park
CatDog
G.I. joe?
Family Guy
Pinky and the Brain
Pink Panther
Dexters Lab / The Rescuers
Spiderman
Inspector Gadget
Adventure Time
Babar
Madeline
Smurfs
Doug / Rugrats
Carebears
Dore the Explorer
Spongebob
Futurama / Magic Schoolbus
Muppet Babies
The Simpsons
Peanuts
He-Man
Dragon Ball Z
Thundercats
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Johnny Bravo
Animaniacs
Tiny Toons
Duck Tales!
Bobbies World
The Jetsons
The Flintstones
Looney Toons

...I know I'm missing a few in there, not sure what they are. Lets see if we can get some people to actually figure them out. *Promote

I don't generally mind the delivery guys giving my dog a snack, usually small milk bones, but I do get newtboy's point. My Lab broke part of his upper rear pre-molar (the big looking ones with double-points near the back) and I didn't want it pulled so about $3000 and a root canal later, he has a cool metal cap. Unfortunately, if he gets something really hard and/or the wrong shape, there is a chance it can pop off; it's happened two times already and that means extra trips to the vets to be put under and have the cap re-glued. That's $$$ and lots of stress for my dog.

So far everyone has asked before feeding him so it's all good but yeah I get it. My problem isn't so much food as having to tell everyone not to play tug with him (plastic Frisbees, nylon ropes, etc.)

I think the guy in this video has probably gotten permission to feed the dogs; though with some of the more aggressive ones he probably just does it to try and establish a rapport with the them.

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

This stuff is pretty damn scary too, IMHO :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury

a few drops will absorb through latex gloves within seconds, but kill you in a very agonizing way (mercury poisoning) several months later. After death of Karen Wetterhahn, it's lab usage is not recommended.

You forgot one....
'The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.'-Ferdinand Magellan

I would say that many of these people in your linked list were not actually 'creation scientists', most were from before the invention of the scientific method, and many others were heretics that may not have stood in public opposition to 'creation science', but didn't believe it. At the time, stating something against the church's doctrine might get you tortured to death.
That's not why we call scientific 'laws' laws. It has NOTHING to do with church or god.
Not a single hypothesis in 'young earth' "theory" (a complete misuse of the word 'theory') is testable, because they're just plain wrong and based on a single person's terribly bad math based on the bible and the length of each generation listed within it. It was NEVER scientific in any way. Sorry.
Not a single hypothesis in creation "theory" (there's that misuse of the word again, it's not a 'theory') is testable either. Not one. If it were, you would have scientific proof of god, and you simply don't. Please don't lie about science.
Macroevolution has been seen in the lab, in fruit flies and bacteria amongst others. It has been observed and repeated with empirical testing. IT is a THEORY, not an inference based on an unprovable hypothesis (like creation science and young earth both are).

Hi Poolcleaner,

I think you're arguing from a false premise, that a belief in Creation science does not contribute to what you call true science. Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived were creationists. Here is a list of a few of them:

http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_toc.htm

Their belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws (which is the reason we call them laws) highly influenced and inspired their exploration of the cosmos. Here are a couple of quotes:

When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chemical furnaces, I study the book of nature I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!

-Robert Boyle, Chemistry

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.

-Louis Pasteur, Medicine

Creation science is a collection of data which supports the idea that the Earth is young. Some of the theories within creation science are testable and predictive, but as a whole you cannot put it in a lab and perform a measurement any more than you could do so for macroevolution, because they both concern what happened in the past. You cannot observe macroevolution happening anywhere nor can you subject it to empirical testing. You can make observations and inferences based on a theory, but that is subject to interpretation.

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