From TFA:

I could never understand why people have no problem with a law that categorically bans ALL guns that are made from non-ferrous materials, and/or that do not look like a gun by X-Ray, but run around like crazy people talking about armed citizens overthrowing the government over limitations on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines--or f***ing background checks. The only way a citizens group would ever have a chance at affecting change in government with guns would be by assassinating a politician--you have no chance against the military or police, sorry. And the Undetectable Firearms Act was written pretty much with that problem in mind (and, obviously other public places like airports.) Why then aren't people pooping their pants over this clear restriction to the supposed core principle of the Second Amendment?

Seriously, where are the protests and demonstrations against the banning of plastic guns 25 years ago? Where were all the threats to vote politicians out of office for violating their constitutional rights? If the answer to the theater shooting in Aurora was that movie-goers should have been carrying guns, and the answer to school shootings is armed teachers, then why not airplanes? Wouldn't we all feel safer if everyone in an airplane was carrying an undetectable plastic gun? I mean, what can box cutters do against bullets? This cognitive dissonance (and the total capitulation of the trampling of the rest of the Bill of Rights) perplexes me.

(This is a re-post because I genuinely want to know the answer)

From TFA:

I could never understand why people have no problem with a law that categorically bans ALL guns that are made from non-ferrous materials, and/or that do not look like a gun by X-Ray, but run around like crazy people talking about armed citizens overthrowing the government over limitations on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines--or f***ing background checks. The only way a citizens group would ever have a chance at affecting change in government with guns would be by assassinating a politician--you have no chance against the military or police, sorry. And the Undetectable Firearms Act was written pretty much with that problem in mind (and, obviously other public places like airports.) Why then aren't people pooping their pants over this clear restriction to the supposed core principle of the Second Amendment?

Seriously, where are the protests and demonstrations against the banning of plastic guns 25 years ago? Where were all the threats to vote politicians out of office for violating their constitutional rights? If the answer to the theater shooting in Aurora was that movie-goers should have been carrying guns, and the answer to school shootings is armed teachers, then why not airplanes? Wouldn't we all feel safer if everyone in an airplane was carrying an undetectable plastic gun? I mean, what can box cutters do against bullets? This cognitive dissonance (and the total capitulation of the trampling of the rest of the Bill of Rights) perplexes me.

But doesn't this approach just create another vector for social-engineering attacks? If any of my emails accounts are compromised, my phone is stolen, some malware gets a hold of my address book, etc., what stops a hacker from sending an email to everyone on my contact list asking for my secret Facebook codes? The chances are pretty high that the three extra-special friends on Facebook are also in your email/<insert social app> address lists.

TFA says “Choose people you can reach without using Facebook, ideally over the phone or in person, since you’ll need to contact them when you can’t log in.” I think the odds are pretty high that someone you know in person or whom you talk to over the phone would not hesitate to send you the code after getting an email from "you" that says "Hey, I got locked out of FB, can you send me your code? Thanks."

I think that issue here is that law enforcement can use evidence obtained by hacking to prosecute someone. State-sponsored hacking, be it Chinese or American, is used to gather intelligence, but is clandestine by nature and cannot be used as evidence... well, at least in the criminal justice system. Who knows what "secret evidence" is introduced in the kangaroo courts used to try suspected terrorists... As someone else pointed out, the reason behind this bill is probably that it is cheaper to obtain evidence by hacking, but since it's currently inadmissible--because it's illegal--they have to use more expensive, conventional routes to obtain digital evidence.

How does nemo tenetur interact with obstruction of justice? e.g., If they ask someone who isn't a suspect and they are subsequently charged with obstruction, can they then invoke their right to remain silent even if the information isn't self-incriminating? Or can my own silence bring obstruction charges?

And does the narrowest interpretation include non-verbal communication? e.g., if the law compels me to supply a decryption key and I literally remain silent, can they compel me to write it down? And what if I just "can't recall the password" or claim to have destroyed the key prior to being arrested?

I always thought that the right to silence/against self-incrimination literally grants you the right to sit there silently, no matter what questions are asked or demands are made, but it seems more nuanced than that.

As an American living in a high-tax, socialist European country my observation is that taxes are higher here, but you end up spending the same amount of money on day-to-day life. What I mean is that, in the US, you keep more of your income, but you end up having to pay for all kinds of stuff that is free here. A friend of mine just went through cancer treatment; it cost her nothing. My wife got six months of paid leave for having a baby (I took six weeks, but could have taken more). The government pays for over half of our day care costs, most of the interest in our mortgage and subsidizes all sorts of stuff that we use in our daily lives.Whenever I'm back in the US, it's like a vacuum cleaner is attached to my wallet. I get nickel and dimed just walking down the street. Everything costs money there.

Basically the way high taxes work is that the government takes a larger share of our income, but spends it on you. It removes some choices--people with cars still subsidize public transportation for example--but is extremely efficient. It really only works in small countries where people are much more politically involved and have a larger stake in the country as a whole. In the US, you still pay for all the things that the government would otherwise subsidize, but you have a bit more choice. It's less efficient, but it prevents people in Manhattan from directly subsidizing a high speed train between Omaha and Kansas City.

The amazing thing to me is that I make about half of what I would in the US and pay about double the income tax, but my quality of living is considerably higher. It's also nice to know that the janitor at work has all of his basic needs met regardless of his crappy, low-paying job. I think the overall happiness of people here contributes to our quality of life. (But there are plenty of things to dislike here and plenty of things I miss in the US.)

Nowhere is perfect, but exactly what "liberal" countries throw you in jail for saying what about which cultures in public? Since you mention subways, you're probably talking about England or Japan?

The issue of immigration in Europe is substantially different than in the US because, at least in Western Europe, most of the immigrants come from former colonies, i.e., Indonesians in the Netherlands, or various African countries in France. These historical ties have nothing to do with civil rights or progressive policies and are not easily broken; in Algeria, the Congo, etc., people are to this day raised and educated in French. Many immigrants wind up in ghettos because the majority population have thousand-year-old cultural traditions and, as a result, overt racism (bigotry, segregation, etc.) is more common and to a large extent tolerated. Multiple generations are discriminated against, stuck in the ghettos despite being natural-born citizens, and it is by-and-large these people that become activists and politicians. I'm not sure what civil rights they are supposedly stripping, but there are laws all over Europe to that ban any public display of (non-Christian) religion, deny refugee status to children, and that openly discriminate against "non-Western immigrants."

There was a big fight, for example, in the Netherlands to stop counting the children and grand children of immigrants as "aliens" in the census and another to strip the dual citizenship of (among others) politicians who where born in the Netherlands, but whom held foreign passports by birthright. This is a very different situation than in the US, where virtually the entire population immigrated and/or took part in the genocide of the indigenous population and thus just being born there makes you "as American" as anyone else.

One thing that you will not find are politicians invoking religion... or faith healers. Look at the recent political chaos surrounding gay marriage and adoptions in France; the right-wing nuts were foaming at the mouth, threatening violent protest, but staying far, far away from invoking the Bible, lest they seem crazy. Ditto for all the laws against non-Western immigrants, the arguments for which lie in "historical" and "cultural tradition" rather than using the word Muslim.

Maybe something like this? It's not like battery technology is just standing still while portable devices proliferate.

Great, so I can fold my tablet up and stuff it in my pocket and insert my phone into my ear canal, but I still have to typing using a f***ing soft keyboard. If you read TFA (the second link), I think what Thorsten Heins is saying is that the current tablet market is a bubble and that tablets will not be durable, particularly in business. When the wow-a-shiny-new-toy factor wears off, they will settle into their niche applications, while something else will prevail for mobile productivity.

As someone that travels and gives talks, my laptop is irreplaceable. I have to have a mouse/keyboard interface to work on my slides and there is no tablet that I would trust enough to give an important talk on (bear in mind that ancient, analog RGB connectors are still ubiquitous in this arena). I also do a lot of writing for work, often while traveling, and there is just no replacement for a full-size keyboard. What I end up doing is taking the MacBook Air for work trips and the tablet for family trips. The latter is a bit smaller, has excellent battery life, and is perfectly capable of entertaining the family, while the former is an indispensable tool for work/productivity that will not be supplanted by capacitive touch screens any time in the near future. What remains to be seen is how often I feel the need to update the tablet.

Last week at the airport, I was quite impressed at how efficiently an agent could deal with ticketing issues by just wandering around with an iPad. Those sorts of applications are clearly hear to stay. But in my line of work, they have been trying to force tablets on us and the end result is a lot of tablets collecting dust.

The thing about the Big Bang Theory is that there are little science-nerd jokes tucked into it that give me a chuckle, while the boiler plate sit com format still makes my wife laugh, who is European and doesn't get the subtle cultural jokes and wordplay of shows like Arrested Development. For example, why is Sheldon's face on the cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry? That journal (or any other journal that I know of) would never put someone's face on the cover--let alone a theoretical physicist postdoc. I chose to take that as an inside joke because even the equations in the backgrounds of the sets were clearly vetted by people who know better. Meanwhile my wife thoroughly enjoys watching the various ham-handed relationships evolve. So neither of us is in love with show, but we both get some entertainment out if it... and voilà, mass appeal.

...I also think that the new Futurama isn't as good as the original, but it's hard to tell given that I was still in college when it first aired and I probably changed more than the show in time it was off the air. I hope Arrested Development has evolved with its audience, but I keep reminding myself that it can't possible meet my unrealistic expectations. At least they are releasing a whole batch at once so I can power through a few at a time to get re-immersed, rather than having to wait a week or more between episodes.

Shows like Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Arrested Development, Futurama, etc. do attract hard-core niche fan bases that are willing to deal with multiple cancellations, "restaffing," and arbitrary schedule changes and hiatuses, but that lack the "mass appeal" to drive ratings, which is how ad-buys are priced. That is why "teevee" is in the process of bifurcating between streaming, on-demand (and often subscription-based) services like Netflix and traditional push-media. And I for one think it is a good thing.

I would much rather pay Netflix a monthly fee (that is, if it were offered where I live) for à la carte, niche shows that can make me laugh up an internal organ (I happen to find Arrested Development extraordinarily funny) than suffer through commercials for funny-but-forgettable shows like The Big Bang Theory. On the other hand, there is a huge audience of people that prefer to nestle their ass into the couch for whatever is being delivered through their hundreds of channels at that moment... very, very old people, for example.

I hope that there will be successful competitors to Netflix in the near future, i.e., companies that produce teevee for on-demand streaming, which creates space for talented and creative people to find their niches and minimizes the role of focus groups, network executives, and other ad-sales-driven tools for mass appeal. There are shockingly good "webisodes" (e.g., Childrens Hospital and Robot Chicken) that are currently a pain for those of us with limited time (to spend trolling Youtube, etc.) to discover until they are picked up by an aggregator like Netflix or a specialty cable network.

From TFA:

So, yah, XKCD nailed it... clearly trying to maximize the overall diversity of accessible future paths of their worlds.

I'm fairly confident that E.J. Corey would not describe his Nobel prize-winning research as something that "a skilled technician" could do. And by your logic, my cell phone is a better mathematician than any human that has every lived. Your friend's algorithm is undoubtably cute, but would fail in practice the vast majority of the time.

In reality, it is impossible to perform a total synthesis in silico or really to do any chemistry ab initio because the subtleties are too complex to understand, let alone model. People have been claiming for years now that organic chemistry is dead--that it has been relegated to following recipes because every molecule of interest can be prepared using "known" reactions. In reality, no one has managed to come close to supplanting the work of the talented scientists who make molecules for a living. The most useful application of math in total synthesis, in my opinion, is using explicit, exact, known transformations to build chemical networks to shorten and optimize existing synthetic routes (e.g., in industry).

People with too much mathematical training fail to realize that the vast majority of science cannot be abstracted. They fall into the trap of hindsight, thinking that the elegant equations that "govern" (I disagree strongly with that common phrasing) natural processes is evidence that everything can be understood in the abstract language of mathematics. What they fail to understand--because they are largely unaware of it--is that actual scientific discovery requires intuition and creativity; more the Sherlock Holmes type than the Feynman type.

Feynman is, in fact, an excellent example of how math benefits science that lends credence to Wilson's argument. Once the difficult exploratory work has been done, and a robust experimental framework is in place to generate data, it is exceedingly useful for mathematically-inclined people to make sense of it all by formulating theories. However, no matter how gifted a mathematician, no amount of abstract thinking can compete with practical knowledge.

How much math, exactly, does one need to create and execute a total synthesis for strychnine? Or, for that matter, any random, possibly life-extending compound isolated in sub-milligram quantities from a sea sponge? Conversely, could a brilliant mathematician with no knowledge of organic chemistry accomplish the same? There has been a lot of social-science bashing around here today, but Chemistry is a physical science in which many sub-disciplines (not just total synthesis) require little if any math.

Which is why none of us should generalize our experiences. As I'm sure you are aware, ethical standards with respect to authorship are notoriously opaque, lab-specific, and self-regulated. Where I come from, submitting an article without a co-author's approval is borderline fraud (imagine if I randomly included E.O. Wilson as a co-author), which I suppose is why reputable journals now send explicit emails to all co-authors upon submission.

...since we're swapping war stories, I have seen the exact opposite case, where someone took the first author's name off of a manuscript and tried to submit it as their own. I've also seen someone get their own paper for review--i.e., they published it and someone copy/pasted the text into a manuscript and tried to submit it to a different journal. I get that competition drives people to questionable practices, particularly in the publish-or-perish world of academia, so perhaps I've been lucky to have worked with (mostly) responsible authors.