Keep in mind, though, that the polls asked different questions. One asked whether human activity was partly responsible for climate change. The other asked whether human activity was primarily responsible for it.

Never mind. I see you meant the story on the public vs. scientists.

What other poll? Citation please.

On the subject of the NSA funding mathematical research, I'd describe myself as somewhat wary but generally indifferent. What would concern me is what strings might be attached to the money. Can the researchers publish results in the open literature from studies funded by the NSA? If so, then fine. Otherwise it hurts on many levels. Not only would the NSA stifle the sharing of research results, but also the researchers themselves would have their careers impeded by non-publication, or co-opted into more classified NSA work because they couldn't find funding elsewhere without a publication record.

No.

Let p be the probability of one engine failing during a typical flight. We can assume p is a very small number, because the engines are designed and maintained well.

The probability of both engines failing on a 2-engine aircraft is p^2, an even smaller number. The probability of all 4 engines failing on a 4-engine aircraft is p^4, a number that is even smaller still than p^2. So, having 4 engines instead of 2 reduces the probability of all engines failing, and makes the plane more reliable.

Your math fails. How can a 4-engine aircraft have 2^2 = 4 times as many (engine) parts as a comparable 2-engine aircraft? It would only have 2 times as many.

TFA says the experiment uses a reaction wheel (like a gyroscope) to stabilize the payload and point the telescopes azimuthally. It also says the experiment uses the Sun and magnetometers to know where the telescopes are pointing. (It can also use GPS, but that unit failed just after launch.) It is not clear from TFA whether they use adaptive methods to stabilize the images, or just rely on inertia (the payload is heavy) to deal with motion from winds.

It's going too far to say that Bohr was wrong about the Copenhagen interpretation. There are several competing interpretations of quantum mechanics. None of them have been definitively ruled out, with the exception of local versions of the hidden-variable theory, as a consequence of Alain Aspect's experiments that tested the Bell inequality.

False equivalence much? The limitations (or lack thereof) imposed on technology by the physical universe have nothing to do with what scripting languages a browser can support. The former is hard science. The latter is fanboyism.

Half-right perhaps. But circular. S/he defined a second in terms of a metre and the speed of light, and then turned around and did the opposite, defining a metre in terms of a second and the speed of light.

Actually, no. It is defined in terms of the period of radiation from the transition between two hyperfine states of Cesium 133.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Un...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

This. Replacing a 102-key device with a 2-key device is not progress. Point-and-click is really just point-and-grunt. Two grunts to double-click.

Obligatory Onion article.

This. Stallman himself took the former, more pragmatic approach when he began Gnu. He started with an existing proprietary Unix system (Sun OS?) and used it to develop parts of Gnu, with the goal of replacing the entire OS eventually with Gnu.

Fewer mistakes do not lead to fewer fraud cases. Fraudsters know they are cheating. They're not making 'mistakes.'

I'm not indisposed to simplifying the tax code, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this would somehow 'simplify' the ever-inventive schemes of tax fraudsters.

Presumably, it just gets dumped out of the rocket somewhere.