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Comment Re:Like Communists (Score 2, Insightful) 674

In the last year there was 12 Trillion dollar spent on bailing out banks. By non-communist parties. Again, who actually HAS an understanding of basic economics? Neither the banks nor existing parties in power, apparently. The worst thing is, nobody still knows how this immense amount of bailout money is going to be paid back, everybody is just trying to act as if nothing happened.

Comment Re:Make no mistakes (Score 1) 345

Unfortunately, in several cases the Europeans did not learn the lesson from the private rail systems in the US and more recently the UK. For example the Germans are actually still trying to privatize their relatively efficient railway system (typing from a packed german commuter train now). I'm not completely up-to-date, probably the economic crisis suspended the privatization for a while.

Comment Re:Only a 2D construct in anti-de-Sitter space! (Score 1) 348

I partly agree, but since everybody is a layman in most of the fields of science, any good article should contain both the simplified representation for laypersons and then the exact formulation for those who need that. In an old-school encyclopedia there wouldn't be the space for it, but wikipedia could have this easily.

Comment Re:Universities are for education... (Score 1) 252

No, universities need funding. To increase your chance on funding, you need to have a measurable output. Like number of papers for the research part, or percentage of first-semester students that will pass the final exam. At least in the Netherlands and Germany, and depending on the study, classes with required attendance exist. With the change to Bachelor/Master, comparison to other universities got easier, and many curricula have been adapted to ensure students will pass (testing if homework has been done, etc). At the same time, the high schools in the Netherlands were restructured to give the pupils more responsibility. That only worked by scrapping part of the natural sciences, which are now taught in (obligatory?) preparation classes before your semester starts.

Basically, it's a mess. Personally, I'd think that universities are for developing an academic way of thought. But since that can't be quantified, funding won't depend on it, and it won't come in the equation.

Comment post-soviet russia (Score 1) 676

I went to russia from the EU last year. It works like this: you pay a company to arrange the visum for you. This costs about 60 euro and takes 2 weeks. In the plane before landing you get a small form in which you fill in your name and in some cases the address where you will be staying, twice. You give this form at the border, they keep half of it, you have to give the other half when you go out. That's all there is to it, and it's not like Russia has different problems with terrorism than the US.

Comment german system (Score 1) 890

In Germany, you have to tell your city council which religion you are, and then the state subtracts a 50 euro/month tax from your salary, depending on your religion. If you want to stop paying, you have to get a written confirmation from a church pastor that you are out of the church. Separation of church and state? Not here.

Comment Re:really (Score 1) 134

Actually all those reasons are the reason that I buy at amazon and others. I once had a logitech headset that broke because of flimsy build quality. Within the year I went back to the store, but they wouldn't accept it. The only time I will buy something at a brick & mortar store will be if I need it on exactly that day and precise specifications don't count so much, for example empty cds.

Comment Re:bar set pretty high - BS (Score 2, Informative) 369

Hmm, did you ever see an actual train? It generally is not as wide as the train tracks it rides on. Not many people would fit in otherwise. For example, trains carry standard size shipping containers, which are 8 feet wide. Exterior width of a typical boxcar is 10 feet 8 inches. Since there has to be some space at both sides, 12 feet is not an unreasonable width for a single-lane train tunnel.

Comment Re:Could happen here. (Score 1) 82

Indeed, as of April 22 2009, the german government has accepted a law censoring child porn on the internet. Nobody can object that child porn is bad, but in practice this law will end up blocking random urls (that can be instantly renamed anyway), and creating the means to block any information, be it on purpose or 'accidentally'.

Comment mod ac parent up. (Score 1) 236

The wording of these safety reports is essential. Same happened to the subway of Cologne. They sent engineers to one of the buildings along the track that had cracks in it. These engineers wrote a report in which they described that it didn't look so bad, but recommended further investigation. This lead to the city not looking in to it anymore, and a collapse of the city library a few months later, killing several people and destroying irreplaceable historical documents. As far as protective lab clothing is involved, during my chemistry master's project I didn't wear protective clothing in the lab most of the time. I guess it was a bit of a prestige issue, having the feeling that you know enough of the risks to assess when to wear a labcoat or not. In retrospect, I was bullshitting myself, even if I myself would be able to assess the risk of my work, there is no way on how to assess the risk of what the others in your lab are doing. Or just bad luck, a tube could just let loose all of a sudden. And indeed, why was this lab accessable by this girl at all, at this day. Shut the bloody lab down during obligatory holidays.

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