He called it "Much ado about nothing."

Insensitive clods, idiots, and outright jackasses get to express themselves just like everyone else.

That they do so is not a crisis to be solved.

But it is a great excuse and cover story for efforts to deny freedom of expression.

Not all are fooled.

You apparently overlooked the '...' around 'empty', and the note[1], where I said that 'empty' is a deceptive description of space to astrophysisists.

What I was alluding to was the average Joe picturing vast volumes of space as being empty of stuff that can be detected with the human eye in context to TFA talking about using the human eye and brain in searching out these particles collected in the aerogell.

As far as space being actually mostly empty, that is not true. it is chock full of stuff, mostly requiring dectors that far exceed human eyesight.

Quarks, gluons, nuetrinos, leptons, dark matter, black holes, most wavelenghts of EM radiation, gravity, the 'fabric' of space time, many more are crammed int the volume of what would look to a human using the good old 'Eyeball, Mark 1' as a mostly empty void.
Most layman/people only beleive in what they can see, but that is only the barest 'tip of the iceberg' to what's actually out there.

'Tenous gas', various EM radiation, sub atomic particles, 'dark matter, etc. and ad nausem and quantam foam, and more are all presented as theories.
Taken altogether, 'empty' space is actually more crowded than a Tokyo subway during rush hour, and busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

I do actually agree with you, but I was trying to play to a more 'layman/mainstream' crowd, and tried to give the more knowledgable here acknowledgement that it was far from 'empty'

Sorry I failed to make that clear. :-)
But then again, because I like to stir the mudpuddles....;-)

Look at how 'empty' aerogel is: 99.8% 'empty space', and how much 'empty space' there is in an atom.

Sorry to double-reply, but SoylentNews underwent an announced shutdown for maintainance last night, and apparently something went arwy, the site is currently down as of a few seconds ago....

FTA:

Well, not quite ready for 'Night at the Improv', worth a grin anyhow.

Only two particles out of only seven impacts, over 200 days shows just how 'empty'[1] space really is.

[1] 'empty' space can be surprisingly a deceptive statement in astrophysics, though...:-)

Gah, slashcode mangled the double parenthesis again!
When do we get proper unicode support?

You can do what I just did:
1.) go to pref's, and assign a '-5' modifier to your foes, then mark those spam-post authors as 'foe' and reload page.

Or:

2.) join in the discussions at SoylentNews.
I have been spending more time there than on /. lately. The discussions are more like /. was before Dice took over, and it started as a direct result of /.Beta.

The the SN community is still small(but growing), and the SN team has been extremely responsive to community feedback, unlike here.
As a side effect(of the above statement), the community has a large influence in the shaping and direction that SN takes...again, not like here.

Just some suggestions....:-)

You make a lot of great points....that have been made for decades now.

Hasn't discouraged hustlers like Jackson from their perpetual shake downs.

They're not interested in the truth. They're not even interested in pursuing the goals they claim to have. They're interested in playing the race card for profit.

The best way to deal with them is with ridicule.

Is it horrible how those black students at your high school and university discriminated against themselves by choosing not to pursue CS opportunities? /sarc

The very notion of a "minority" is a scam.

It is just a made up word that seems to mean someone who isn't "white."

People are encouraged to fret over whether some person or another is a "minority" or not, instead of just treating them like a human being.

What is more, in fields that tap a global talent pool, people who aren't "white" are the numerical majority.

Ever watch "Winter's Bone?"

You can thank LBJ's "great society" for this.

Depends on which "American" culture you're talking about:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-A...

There is a profound difference between the upper middle class educated professional communities that many of us grew up in, and those communities populated by what used to be called "trailer trash."

If intelligence and academic achievement were not "cool" where you went to school, then you need to make sure that your kids grow up in a place where they are.

You're making the mistake of assuming that Jackson is the least bit honest in what he is saying.

He is a hustler.

He goes around and shakes down companies for money, under the threat that failure to pay will result in his legion of useful idiots making trouble for them.

The guy is a walking cancer.

It doesn't help anyone.

You can't judge people by which group they belong to. That this group or that group is "underrepresented" does not mean that there is a problem to be solved, let alone a problem that can be solved by manipulating admissions and hiring standards.

People from whatever group you want to bring up who have the chops to pursue a challenging carreer, and are actually interested in pursuing it, will do so, and they will do as well as anyone else in that field. Their membership in such and such a group does not define who they are, their individual abilities and inclinations do that.

The only valid way of judging someone is as an individual.

Social engineering efforts based on group membership backfire. The people behind such efforts are fools, and all too often villains.

The lowering of the standards is not a side effect, but is in fact the goal.

Why? it isn't because those behind these schemes want to make it easier for members of arbitrarily defined groups to do well in comparison to members of other arbitrary groups, but to sabotage them.

The greatest trick that bigots ever pulled was convincing the targets of their bigotry to view themselves as victims.

A black or mexican or what have you student in the 92nd percentile put into a school where everyone else is in the 98th percentile is being screwed over, plain and simple.

"Affirmative action" is a system where people are treated as a member of a group rather than judged as an individual.

Companies that practise such shenanigans are at a competitive disadvantage.