You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Alonzo Church and (to a lesser extent) Kurt Goedel immediately comes to mind. Church was Turing's thesis advisor at Princeton and Goedel was there at the same time.

Turing's biography by Andrew Hodges is a very good read and lists many more collaborators and friends. Turing most certainly didn't exist in a vacuum.

No, it was the other way around. When the British started doing "Funk spielen" mainly with German nightfighter controllers (breaking into the circuit and giving false or conflicting orders etc.) the Germans answered by using female intercept operators exclusively as there was no female British personell flying in combat. This promted the British to bring their own female operators along for the ride, aso.

Many other advantages are reported from having female ground control officers, for example easily being able to hear if the communication is from your fellow (male) pilots on that frequency or from ground control. (Yes, call signs are meant to do that, but voice differences that carry over radio give a more secure and faster way of determining the sender).

When it comes to automated voice messages in the cockpit I seem to remember USAF research in the F-16 time frame, that showed that female voices ("pull up") were preferable to male voices, due to better legibility and easier distinction against all the male pilot voices on the radio. The best effect was reportedly had by having a very young female (child) voice, think 8-9 year old, but that was never implemented due to the creapiness factor. But I can't find any reference to this research when Googling, and wikipedia says that new research points to this result being less stable today than what it was.

They _are_ the original series. Same sets, same costumes, same props, just a different cast.

It's not a "reboot" or "reimagining", it's actually an attempt to continue the original Star Trek as though it had never ended. While there naturally are some differences in writing style, the similarities to the original series are amazing.

If you liked Star Trek (1966), watch it. If you preferred Star Trek (2009), then it may not be your thing.

It's not about just gullibility.

Anyone who's read or studied or even gone lightly over the research of Elizabeth Loftus will not be surprised by this and will know it's about more than just gullibility.

No, it's time for the pendlum to start swinging back, that's for certain. But to be clear, I was reserving the righteous anger for the plea bargaining based justice system in particular, not the whole mess. Many parts of which just merits a "meh", for sure.

And I actually am conservative, in the litteral sense of the word, but being from Sweden that means "social democrat". ;-)

Nah, I'm sorry. You have to work up a lot more righteous anger against the current system to go on my "friends list". :-)

As it stands, it's only enough to get taken off the "foo" list. :-)

$ man rm

Where's "rm --preserve-root" when you need it?

Sure. While I wouldn't necessarily call Swartz an "idiot", as I do agree with his sentiment. He probably broke the law and should expect punishment (that's what civil disobedience is all about). And the firing of the prosecutor is as you say neither here nor there, as long as we both agree that all other aspects of this case is overshadowed by a "justice" system that encourages and makes possible a factor of a hundred difference in an accepted and sought punishment. No effort should be spared in dismantling such a system.

P.S. Have you figured out what put the "conservatives" on my "foo" list? ;-)

You may want to read Richard Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" (Or watch the movie "Infinity", with Matthew Broderick as the famous bongo player if that's more your thing) for another example of this. Being able to apply research skills isn't something unique to any one field, and having only one patient to worry about can make things a lot clearer.

It's not about being unable to communicate The use of square brackets is about ethics in journalism.

Or, more to the point, proper use of quotations as described by most style guides in the English speaking world.

How about, without proportional representation and rampant gerrymandering, the vote won't "count" anyway?

And another thing that's always surprised me, you vote on a work day, right? For example, in Sweden we always vote on a Sunday, when most people are off from work and actually have (more) time to go to the polls. (And the voter traffic is more spread out as well, reducing waiting time).

Yes. Scale matters. No argument there.

That said, I am a big proponent of proportional representation as opposed to the first-past-the-post system of both the US and Britain. I think that would both solve the problem of gerrymandering and increase voter turnout, at least at the local level. How to scale that to the national level, where you have so (relatively speaking) few representatives per area, I don't know. The system kind of breaks down there as if you only have one or two representatives for an entire state, then a lot of opinions aren't going to be heard/represented...

Well, we haven't had any major cases of regulatory capture yet for example. (With a possible exception in the nuclear industry, that was pounced upon quite quickly though). Rather, we haven't had any yet I should say... :-) Watch this space. One major reason (dare I say difference?) is that working for the government is still a sought after position, that attracts if not the very best, at least still very good people. How/if this will change I don't know.

However, we're not nearly as homogeneous as we once were (only thirty years ago), and how that will play out will be interesting to see. Since the Norwegians and Finns are still very homogeneous there will be opportunities for comparison in the long run.

P.S. And just for the record, Swedes are known for a distinct lack of a sense of our history. At least we think we are, whether that holds up to an international comparison I don't know. :-)

Sure. I'll bite. The problem is with a justice system based on plea bargaining run amok (I had a nice reference, but I can't find it...) This leads to a justice system where almost no cases go to trial as the risk for the defendant is much too high since the prosecutor will often skew the risk by offering a sentence reduction of a factor of twenty or more (in the case of Aaron Swartz an even one hundred!)

Any prosecutor that feels that society is safe and justice is served if a defendant agrees to six months in prison, but will call for fifty years as a punishment for going to trial, should be (at a minimum) fired, and a system that thinks this a reasonable approach to meter out justice should be taken out back behind the shed and be put out of its misery.

This leads of course to many innocent people pleading "guilty" (note that the quotation marks are real as you even have that abomination called the "Alford plea" where you can plead "guilty but not really". WTF?)

Now, if for practicalitys sake you wanted to sugar the deal to entice the guilty to confess, then sure, you could argue for a deduction. Say 10% or 15% or something. Not 99%...

In Sweden at the moment we have no plea bargaining, no immunity from prosecution for in turn for providing evidence/being a witness, no juries (laypeople take their place, that sit for a set term and hence can gain some experience), no electing judges and prosecutors (last place on earth you want a politician), and the state provides for your defence (i.e. they pay the lawyer of your choice according to set standards, we don't have any public defenders or something like it).

Now, there is pressure to change that, as we're always looking to what the US does, esp. when it comes to pleas and immunity. You can guess the political persuasion of those shouting the loudest for this change. They're not usually the people most famous for thinking everybody should have the same opportunities regardless of what cards they were dealt when they first sat at the table.