Depends on the tickets, perhaps. Shaving a $400 'big' ticket down to a $200 'small' one, or even down to a warning--that can add up. Remember that nominally-small tickets often have a large number of fundraising surcharges and taxes from different levels of government piled on top.

And the tickets themselves aren't always the greatest cost. Insurance companies will bump an owner's rates substantially after a couple of tickets (sometimes after one ticket), and those higher rates will linger for years.

Between two and four moving violations in a 12-month period will get your license suspended in California, with all the personal and financial costs associated with resolving and working around that.

Finally, this 'charitable' donation is tax deductible--so the effective price tag on this bribe is lower.

Which would be at least a vaguely-credible argument, if marriage and its associated legal rights and benefits were also stripped from every childless heterosexual couple where one or both members were infertile, where the woman had reached menopause, where the couple had failed to submit proof that they regularly engaged in unprotected intercourse, and where either partner ever used any form of birth control.

Oh, and where adoption by homosexual couples was illegal, and there was a legitimate and reality-based argument supporting such a policy. (Good luck with that.) And where homosexual couples were unable to employ less-traditional reproductive methods and technologies (sperm or egg donations, in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, etc.) to have children. (Note: not an option in Athens.)

So...yeah. If Prop 8 had made it illegal to supply birth control to married couples, then the child-free versus child-producing argument might hold a small amount of water. Oddly enough, it wasn't about that.

I can't help but interpret your comment to mean that you don't quite understand what moral rights are, nor how they might apply in this context. Among other things, 'moral rights' include the right of a creator to attribution (that is, to be credited as an author when their work is published), and the right of a creator not to have their published work distorted, mutilated, or otherwise substantially modified without their permission. Waiving all moral rights means that a journal is free to modify the text of a scientist's article as they see fit, and to publish a scientist's work without that scientist's name on it. It's rather the opposite of journalistic integrity.

What Nature asserts is that they require authors to cede all moral rights so that the journal can withdraw or retract papers (involving serious errors, omissions, or misconduct) even without the authors' consent. The problem is not that Nature has a mechanism for involuntary retraction of findings; that's a necessary and useful thing. The problem is that Nature demands the whole grab bag of all moral rights, when all they really need is a specific exception to deal with a relatively narrow set of unfortunate circumstances: [Author] grants [journal] the right to withdraw or retract from publication this article, at the discretion of [editorial board], following [some process].

This is an urban legend often associated with Building 470, a facility at Fort Detrick used to culture large (like, thousands-of-gallons large) quantities of biological weapons, including anthrax. Building 470 was decommissioned in 1971, and demolished in 2003; there were no dead bodies sealed in the walls, and demolition workers were more concerned about exposure to asbestos and lead paint used in the 1953 structure.

I believe that the waiver of open access and the waiver of moral rights are actually separate clauses within the NPG contract, separately obnoxious and objectionable in their own independent ways.

Ah, the hopeless naivete of someone unfamiliar with government contracting for military and aerospace programs.

The first four years of the program actually cost $192 million, though to be fair Boeing "contributed" a nominal $67 million of that, presumably with the expectation of future contracts if the program continued. (Not if it was successful, necessarily, just as long as it continued. And the $67 million probably included significant in-kind contributions of labour and materials, where Boeing would 'bill' itself market rates for parts and labour, rather than their actual internal cost.)

In 2002, Boeing picked up a subsequent $301 million government contract; their investment paid off quite handsomely. In 2004, the X-37 became a classified DARPA project, so we don't really know how much more it cost over the last decade, but I would be shocked if the total program cost didn't run into ten figures. The first X-37 mission didn't occur until 2010.

So no--not a 'bargain'. Two modest-sized, unmanned, robotic space vehicles (space drones) at a quarter billion each, plus whatever secret development costs accrued between 2004 and 2010. It's a neat technical achievement, and putting drones in space is certainly less costly than putting warm bodies up there, but don't delude yourself by thinking that it's cheap.

This is a 'fact' that I hear quoted a lot, but for which I hear the actual relevant research cited very seldom. Not saying it's not true, but I am more than a little concerned that too much may be read into it in the retelling. Among other things, I suspect that the latter claim - specifically, a reduced risk of (musculoskeletal?) injury - is more plausible and more likely supported than the former assertion: a general, overall 'benefit'.

I'll leave aside the incidence of crashes when drunk; we'll take it as read that drunk drivers are so much more likely to be involved in a collision in the first place that it complete swamps any benefit from reduced injury severity. (There's probably also an increased risk of collision when a sober driver is distracted by drunk passengers, but we'll skip that, too.)

A study that looked just at injury severity versus 'degree of inebriation' probably tried to do an apples-to-apples comparison that controlled for things like vehicle size and speed, type of collision, and whether or not a seatbelt was worn. If there was a significant difference in seatbelt compliance between the 'drunk' and 'control' groups - that is, if the drunks were less likely to wear a seatbelt - the benefit of seatbelt-wearing would have been lost from the final analysis. (In other words, the study would have compared belted sober to belted drunk, and unbelted sober to unbelted drunk--but not looked at belted sober versus unbelted drunk.)

And then there is the post-crash treatment of injuries. Immediately after a collision, the drunk is less likely to be able to provide or effectively receive aid from his companions. Once medical personnel arrive on scene, and after transport to a hospital, the drunk is less likely to be conscious, less likely to be able to communicate problems to doctors, and less likely to be able to follow instructions or answer questions. Potential symptoms of serious injury - like altered mental state, vomiting, loss of bladder control, etc. - may be misattributed to intoxication. (These are all pretty moot in the event of relatively minor injuries, but for a severely injured patient can have a drastic effect on outcome.) Medical interventions (everything from drugs to surgery) may be less effective or more dangerous in an intoxicated patient.

All that may lead to statistically better outcomes for the drunk who suffers mild-to-moderate injuries, but worse outcomes for one with severe injuries--which is why I would put a big question mark over the claim of overall 'benefit'.

1. I would like to present the results of [experiment].
2. I would like to lead a group discussion about the implications of [novel hypothesis].
3. I would like to teach you how to perform [new calculation].
4. I would like to tell everyone how to comply with [complex new regulations].

...Are at least four very different communication tasks. Some are better accomplished with PowerPoint (or other similar presentation tools) than others. The way that a presenter uses those tools is likely to have a significantly greater impact on the effectiveness of the presentation than the presence or absence of those tools. Uses of the different presentation aids need not be mutually exclusive--PowerPoint decks, whiteboards, handouts, etc. can be used singly or in combination for best effect.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. I've been at very productive scientific meetings where someone puts up one or two slides of data and we spend the rest of the time in an open discussion around the whiteboard trying to figure out what it means (and which experiments should come next).

Suuuuuuure....because a judge is definitely going to want to incentivize violation of contracts and out-of-court settlements. That sort of encouragement couldn't possibly have negative effects.

And I'll leave aside the plaintiff's likely difficulties that would arise from saying "Well, I broke part of the contract already; let's go violate some more terms!"

Indeed. I expect that the deal happened in spite of, and not because of, this 'threat'. Sure, Facebook's team would have had an "Oh shit!" moment--but it would have been "Oh shit, we're dealing with an unprofessional nitwit" and not "Oh shit, he might walk away". Given that Koum has apparently decided it's a good idea to broadcast his unprofessional nitwittery, I imagine that Facebook's first move will be to keep him as far away as possible from anything dealing with 'business' as they possibly can.

Who wants to come to my engraver party?

Slashdot poster is bad at statistics. Quelle surprise.

San Francisco (SFO) had about 400,000 aircraft movements last year, but only one passenger jet crash resulting in any loss of life (Asiana Airlines). If we suppose that laser dazzle makes landing ten times more dangerous, and we assume that 1 in 400,000 is the baseline rate of air crashes (it's actually a vast over-estimate; there weren't any other deaths involving passenger jets anywhere else in the U.S. last year) and we assume that all 4000 or so incidents involving laser pointers happened on approach to SFO...

...then we still would expect just one extra crash at SFO per decade. Air travel starts out as really, really safe. When you've only got a few thousand incidents, and you're trying to detect changes in a one-in-a-million rate, you're not getting enough data.

Air safety is a federal responsibility in the United States. That's why the FBI is involved; this is their jurisdiction.

It's not that difficult. Aircraft are actually relatively easily identified even by the amateur astronomer; just look for the stars that are moving rapidly across the sky while strobing brightly. Even right next to an airport, the aircraft tend to be miles apart and following specific corridors through the sky. Turn off the pointer and wait a minute if there's a plane in the piece of sky you're interested in. Anyone not capable of that trivial bit of due diligence shouldn't be outside pointing a laser at the sky--and probably shouldn't be trusted with scissors, either.