Bush Sr. and Clinton passed legislation that required the administrators of the CRA to rank banks on their lending activities and to deny banks the right to open branches or to buy other banks if they are rated low. Pres. Banks were required to show the numbers of loans they made in their neighborhoods. And Congress made “blackmail” by neighborhood activists’ legal by providing for public hearings on the ratings. If there were no pay-offs, you can be sure the neighborhood activists would find grounds to challenge the banks.

Look it up.

It might be able to retrieve tiny satellites, but it's too small for, say, one of the Key Hole spy satellites.

I've wondered this for a while: IBM, Toshiba, and Sony developed the cell. Pray tell, they sell a cell, how do they divide the income?

So I have heard from many who have visited China. However there is a small percentage in any population that thinks outside the box. Many of the innovative Chinese went abroad because of herd mentality in their homeland, but the flow is starting to reverse. Some of the innovative and out-of-the-box thinking Chinese scientists are returning from American and European universities because there is at least now oodles of capital back home to work with. It's just my personal reading of early trends, but I wouldn't be shocked to see more innovation coming from China in the future. If you read the names on publications from American universities you see an astonishing number of Chang's, Wong's, Li's. That's in addition to Chandra's, Krishna's, Gupta's ... etc. Many, of course, do stay here. Time will tell.

They are not redefining what size means. They are measuring the distribution of charge more accurately by looking at transitions between energy levels of electrons (or muons in the newer experiment.) If they can measure an energy difference to within a certain accuracy and the difference is bigger with a muon transition than with an electron transition, the percentage error is smaller, hence the error in the derived charge distribution is smaller.

The ballad of Freddie Blassie

Rather myopic and opinionated.

Science has its own unproven beliefs. For example, that the only reality is what we can see, touch, taste, hear, and smell. Cautious scientists do not go so far and say that they restrict their investigation to matter, but consciousness cannot be separated from matter. It is always the subject looking at the object. In medical science, doctors are having to take a second look at mind/body dualism, as the body cannot be totally treated as a meat machine.

Much as most scientists have a closet kind of metaphysics, even most confirmed materialist atheists operate as if love is not a group of chemical reactions in the body that we label as love.

Did he say that? Even if it's a joke, there is some wisdom in it.

IANAQ (I am not a quant), but from what I gather from my amateur read on things, these quants find tricks to squeeze out a tiny percentage more average yield, but the average hides considerable risks in addition to the considerable gains. Furthermore, sound basic business principles, which after all produce the quantities the quants fiddle with, have been ignored under the spell of mathematical wizardry.

I admit I may have half digested what I have heard from some in the finance world, and would be interested in what any quants who also have some business knowledge have to say.

I suspect the law is as you say. At least it makes sense that a private corporation can sell what it wants to sell, especially if a customer has other outlets. And there are plenty of outlets for Fiore. Mr. Fiore doesn't have to force himself on the unwilling. And I don't care about his childish tantrums either. If I sell combination radio-hoola hoops, I don't want some spoiled brat walking into my store and demanding I carry solar powered toasters.

Interesting post. But you said there is no internet connectivity, and they can still be hacked into. Through what medium?

A voice of reason. Thanks. Alas, no mod points to give.

Well, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The study mentioned by the NYT corrected for age and perhaps other factors they had models and data for. But I don't know if they could quantify all environmental factors like exposure to synthetic materials, stress, intake of preservatives and saturated fats, obesity, etc.

Second, there are specific cancers that they have been able to treat with more success like leukemia. The NYT series did show graphs of age adjusted deaths by individual cancer, but alas these graphs only go as far as 1994, so individual success stories tend to be obscured.

Does that mean slashdot stories have a half-life of 3 weeks?

I don't recall anyone on Slashdot saying they were the only legitimate users of the internet. If they did, I would condemn it as much as I condemn smug academics arrogant attitudes.

Either one makes a weapon or one makes an energy collector. The two design needs are orthogonal. An energy collector, to be usable in Japan, has to be diffuse enough to be safe for a receiving area in Japan (think of possible pointing errors, plane or ship pilot errors ... etc), hence not usable as a weapon if directed elsewhere. If they are making a weapon, it would have to have a high intensity beam, which would make it unusable and unsafe as an energy transmitter to a collector.

This is a purely engineering matter independent of what one believes Japan's intentions or future intentions might be.

Now as to my opinion of Japan's intentions, I think there would be more cost effective ways to make weapon delivery systems if that is their aim, like making missiles. They are concerned about attacks from North Korea (and maybe collateral strikes if China and Taiwan go at each other), but South Korea and Los Angeles? "Oh, come on."