A quick check shows that the official reports claim it remained standing for an entire 23 minutes after 4:58pm.

You have the evidence at your disposal. You can do the research to understand the entirety of the situation, and reach a valid conclusion. Instead, you've choose to ignore reality and ask for "evidence" that you refuse to understand.

At least your world will always remain exciting.

Um, yes.

My point was to illustrate how atmospheric nuclear fallout behaves in a ground burst vs. an air burst, which is quite well understood, thanks to the many tests conducted during the Cold War. Chernobyl was simply a convenient example of ground-based fallout. The Japan bombings are good examples of air-burst fallout, but that's irrelevant to the Port Chicago explosion.

That brings us back to the original point: if the Port Chicago explosion had been a nuclear accident in any way, it would have had detectable fallout decades later, primarily because it would have been a ground burst. Since there's no fallout, there's no evidence of nuclear material in the blast, either as the source or even nearby ordnance.

Similar explosions can be created with very large amounts of conventional explosives, which is exactly what the official story says happened, and the transport records provide evidence as to exactly how much materiel was present at the time of the incident.

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were detonated in the air, so they produced very little radioactive fallout, which spread out over a very large area. In contrast, an explosion at ground-level like you're proposing happened at Port Chicago would pull debris from the ground into the fireball, so the resulting fallout dust would have been bigger and heavier, and created a more concentrated contamination in the local area. It would be similar to what was seen during the Chernobyl disaster, where an explosion threw debris into the air.

Chernobyl is still radioactive today, and it's easily detectable even beyond the original blast range due to the spread of the fallout. If a nuclear bomb had detonated at Port Chicago, it would have been at ground level (unless you're suggesting an airstrike) and would have produced a large amount of dust. To have undetectable levels of radioactivity by the time civilians were looking at it (Vogel started his research in 1980), either there was a massive cleanup and decontamination effort that happened with nobody noticing, or the explosion simply wasn't nuclear.

You really ought not to jump to conclusions. A church is primarily a social place, and there is a wide spectrum of places that use the term.

Mine in particular is a Unitarian Universalist church, whose philosophy boils down to "don't be an ass", and whose sermons are essentially open-ended discussions of environmental and social justice concerns, with an eye toward improving ideological freedom (for all ideologies), and a social hour between services.

As for the interviewer asking that particular question, I don't know what kind of church he went to. It never came up in the workplace again, and we have since gone our separate ways.

When I paraphrased his question for the Slashdot audience, I included the part about my own resume, intending to illustrate that the church aspect was not entirely unrelated to the rest of the interview, though it was unrelated to the job. The question had a personal and informal nature to it, and did not at all seem as though a particular belief was expected of me.

In fact, I actually took it in quite the opposite manner: This was a workplace where discussion is open for all subjects. That eventually proved to be very true, as I've seen open (and not always politically-correct) disagreement with managers and leaders, eventually changing the course of business in a better direction. It's a cultural thing, and treating the interview like a first glimpse of the workplace culture is a good way to start the employment relationship.

Probably because it was a catastrophe on a military base in the middle of an espionage-heavy war.

The explosion would certainly have been powerful enough to breach containers holding classified information, which would then be scattered with the rest of the debris. To allow civilians in to investigate would also have opened unnecessary risk that enemy spies could find useful information and smuggle it back to their employers.

The radioactive fallout from an actual nuclear disaster is particulate. Even if an attempt were made to bury the debris, there would be enough dust in the air that the whole area would still have detectable radiation levels decades later.

The "unanswered questions" line is an old staple of conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the reality is usually that the questions don't need to be asked, because their answers don't actually disprove the commonly-accepted theory.

You're not the first to claim such madness. Maybe you'll finally be the first to find hard evidence, or perhaps disprove the small mountain of evidence (like having precisely zero radioactive debris) against your theory.

For what it's worth, the best interview I've ever had was mostly nonspecific questions. In the interest of making the world a better place, here's a few of the questions:

• On that blank whiteboard, go draw a system you worked on and explain it.
• What do you do in your spare time, and why do you like it?
• I noticed your resume says you worked on a church sound system. My church's sound system is old, and is pretty much just a microphone and a speaker up front. What kind of improvements are out there that would give us the best bang for our buck to improve the quality of the service?

In retrospect, all of those questions, though sometimes posed as casual banter, were either nonspecific or relating to my own knowledge domain, rather than directly relating to the job itself. The first question gave the interviewers insight into how well I organized my thoughts and could explain a complex system on the fly. The second question is an inquiry into my work/life balance and whether I would actually enjoy my job, and the last is a chance to demonstrate problem-solving and meeting requirements.

The job in question was mostly server administration. There were a few questions about Active Directory, Linux permissions, and network design. I botched a few of those (mostly all of networking), but I still got the job because my answers showed that I was the sort of person who could recognize my own shortcomings, and learn what I need to know when it was needed.

I spent a good many years as a software engineer, though I've recently moved on to systems administration, with a focus on deployment automation. I used to work in medical data, defense, and finance, all using secure networks to handle sensitive information.

Three comments above, I just learned (or at least understood) something new about how public-key encryption improves secure communications.

Now, I've had a fairly successful career, but I simply never needed to know exactly the encryption worked. For most of my career, the answer was either "use the library-provided encryption routines" or "don't care because that's all handled at the network layer", depending on exactly what data was being discussed and where it was going.

Engineering as a general field is about finding optimal solutions to meet a set of requirements. To use the standard car analogy, a mechanical engineer doesn't need to be an expert in metallurgy to design a car with a steel frame. He just needs to know the costs and benefits of the alloys available, and make his decision based on that information. The precise chemical composition of the steel is a matter for another team with their specialized knowledge to figure out.

Similarly, a software engineer should know what various security terms mean, and should recognize that sensitive data must be stored and transmitted securely, but he doesn't need to know exactly how those mechanisms are implemented.

...and individuals do it too, but then it's often lumped in with "reasonable doubt". Everybody gets a chance to defend themselves and make things right.

Apparently, though, it's "flamebait" to point out that world isn't as broken as the Slashdot hivemind thinks. Oi.

You're being naive in thinking that you understand the underlying basis of the relevant "one law".

"The law" does not guarantee you the ability to drive, remain in the country, or escape from tax penalties. However, you are guaranteed due process, where the inconvenience to you is compared to the severity of the accusation, and an established procedure is followed to ultimately determine if (and if so, to what extent) you are liable for the incident in question.

If you can't find your license or title, you may be given a citation or even prevented from driving temporarily, but that's usually not enough to cause a judge to suspend your driving outright. Similarly, having no proof of residency won't get you deported immediately, but it will get you into the court system while paperwork is sorted out to determine what should happen. Having no paperwork for last year's taxes is practically irrelevant, since as far as I know, prior years' tax forms are not necessary to fulfill any legal mandate, but getting rid of them may make other (voluntary) processes more difficult, like contesting the IRS during an audit or establishing a financial history.

Absolutely none of your examples are the start of an imminent path to criminal liability. There's always a point where a court will consider the impact of the case, and decide whether punishing you will likely be beneficial enough to society to justify your inconvenience. Likewise, the FBI losing paperwork isn't a reason in itself to stop drone surveillance. Rather, the issue should now begin its own due process, with various oversight committees meeting and discussing whether the risk of privacy invasion outweighs the benefits of having a drone program.

Of course, outside of the Internet echo chamber, privacy isn't really a big deal as long as it isn't being violated intentionally to harass someone, so I fully expect the program to continue, probably with a requirement to find the reports or redo the evaluation.

The most common underlying basis of humor is subverted expectations. We expect people to behave according to the norms of society, we expect people to act to the best of their intelligence, we expect misfortune to be avoided, and we expect that words will be used according to their common meanings.

Subvert any of those expectations, and you have various kinds of humor. How funny a particular joke is perceived to be is related to how strongly the viewer is attached to their expectations. Since a computer is only an expert in the things they've been explicitly exposed to, it's very difficult to subvert their expectations. Watson would be familiar with all of the meanings of each word in a script, for example, so it would have a difficult time identifying the usual meaning that a human would expect from a situation, and would therefore likely fail to notice that when a different meaning was used, it was an attempt at humor.

As another example, consider a military comedy, like Good Morning, Vietnam. Much of the humor is derived from Robin Williams' fast-paced ad-lib radio show contrasting the rigid military structure, and the inversion where a superior at the radio station is practically inferior in every way. A computer, properly educated in the norms of military behavior, might recognize that the characters' behaviors are contrary to expectations, but then to really understand the jokes, the computer must also have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture from the period to understand why Williams' antics were more than just absurd drivel.

Finally, a computer must also understand that humor is also based largely on the history of humor. Age-old jokes can become funny again simply because they aren't funny in their original context any more, so their use in a new context is a subverted expectation in itself. Common joke patterns have also become fixed in human culture, such that merely following a pattern (like the Russian Reversal) is a joke in itself.

Algorithms simply haven't combined all of the relevant factors yet to recognize humor. Here on Slashdot, for instance, a computer would need to recognize the intellectual context, the pacing of a comment, the pattern of speech, and even how much class a commenter maintains, in order to realize when someone is trying to be funny.

Poop.

Calculon is an actor, not a businessrobot.

It's cheaper to include extra screws than to pay customer service to deal with the the complaints of missing parts, or to cover the extra cost of a more thorough inspection process. The easiest way to tell if a unit was packed properly is to weigh it precisely, and only ship the units that weigh the correct amount. A missing screw may fall within the error margin of the scale, so by throwing in an extra screw or three, the risk of actually being short a part is greatly reduced.

Of course, they won't promise those extra screws in the instructions, so it's entirely possible to be human/robot error, unless you counted the parts prior to assembly... you did count your parts, right?

I recently returned from a vacation, and drove home from the airport to return to my house filled with small robots, vision-enabled game consoles, and mechanized automatons of all kinds. I guess I need some pills.

No, I don't think I will live on Mars, but I think that some human will, someday. The ultimate distinguishing feature of a human is the extent to which it modifies itself and its environment, so I find it perfectly reasonable to expect that the hostilities of another planet can be overcome with the right technology. There will need to be advances in several fields (rocketry, communications, biotech, medicine, and logistics, to name a few offhand), but we're close.

To make an analogy, if we were walking from New York to Los Angeles, we've probably hit the California state line by now. The road ahead is still going to take a lot of effort, and it's still going to take a long time. We're not done yet, and everybody knows it. There is some uncertainty as to exactly how long it will take to make those last few steps, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about what we'll do when we finally arrive at our destination.

Interesting. Are you actually an expert in what it takes to have a "leisure society with basic income and healthcare for all", and do you understand the sheer amount of resources required to make that happen? And you want that to happen for all people... Let's do some math*.

If we all split everything equally, then every human gets 71,538 square meters. That's it. That's your whole life. From that area's resources, you must derive your "basic income and healthcare" using today's technology.

Of course, much of that is ocean, which really means you only get around 24,000 square meters of land If you want to use the ocean's resources, you'll have to build suitable boats from the resources on the land. About a third of of that area, though, is practically devoid of easily-accessible resources since it's desert. That leaves only about 16,000 square meters of usable land with resources.

Do realize that's a square patch of land about 415 feet on each side. It's roughly double the area of a FIFA-sanctioned international match soccer field, and that is your whole fair share of non-desert land.

Looking toward your "healthcare" need, you only have about 2000 square meters of arable land, most of which overlaps your 5000 square meters of grassland.

For illustration, that's a square patch 146 feet on each side. 1.6 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and that's going to feed you (fairly) for your whole life. If you need to grow raw materials for your medicinal needs, that will come out of your food supply. If your "leisure society" includes grilling a steak in the summer, you're going to have to devote quite a lot of your farmland to raising your bovine recreation.

Fortunately, we have an economy to make life easier. Your yearly fair share in that economy is $10,610 worth of production, to meet the current average world lifestyle. If we consider all labor to be equally valuable, you need to produce enough from your 71,538 square meters to sell for $10,610. That sale can take many forms, like selling off your ocean wholesale to a fisherman in exchange for a share of his income. You can turn around and use that income to buy tools from the guy who built a metalwork shop, and now you can farm more efficiently. Producing $10,000 isn't that much effort.

However, you're probably a member of the rich Western society, making over $30,000 per year, so it's not unreasonable to consider that the lifestyle you're used to is about three times as rich as the world average. If we merely distribute everything evenly to "all", then everyone's living in the same wretched state, at $10,610 gross income per year.

Let's consider, then, what it would take to bring everyone's standard of living up to a rich American level... perhaps at the equivalent of a $60,000 salary. That means that every person's average production must increase by 500%, without using any additional resources. That means farmland efficiency must rise dramatically, resource recycling must become the norm, and absolutely everything must be done as quickly as possible to meet the demands of such a lavish lifestyle.

We don't have the technology for that. We still need to make major advances in agriculture, genetic engineering, materials, and automation to hit that improvement goal. Some aspects are within reach, but at the same time we're depleting resources faster than we can replenish or recover them, and the world population is always increasing. In many ways, having the resources to give everyone a leisure society is as much of a dream as giving everyone a magical castle.

Both plans seem to me to be equally absurd, as they both require advances in several fields that we simply can't approach yet. Ultimately, the hope is that Mars will provide more resources on its own, and the effort to go to Mars will inspire new technologies to help achieve the efficiency goals we want here on Earth. You and I share the same Utopian dream, but with different routes to get there.

* Some disclaimers apply to my math: I'm not particularly concerned with precision, since every figure used is an estimate. My methodology is to find the most reliable sources for figures that I can, and apply them in interesting ways. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, and so on and so forth, et cetera.

So you have a woman's name and phone number. Good for you. I have a large book full of them. It still gets dropped on my porch now and then.

So some guy has your address. Good for him. He could have just as easily followed you home, and there's a very good chance that you never would have noticed.

Now, both of you have a choice to make. What will you do with that information? Will you get on with your life peacefully, as a law-abiding member of society, or will you jump the line over to being a criminal stalker or arsonist? That's the question that really matters, not whether some third party recognized you and announced that recognition to the world.

To that, I'll say again:

As you said, "the parent teaching didn't force the issue", and I see that as the parent's key failure. When the three brothers started having trouble, the parents should have recognized their shortcomings and moved the kids to a more capable environment.

It's not easy to admit that you can't meet a need, but for the sake of the student, it must be done.