On the other hand, you could think of it like an earthquake. To let off pressure, the plates may slip very tiny amounts, generating small tremors. But if enough pressure builds up, you get a massive quake. Suppose the universe as a certain amount of "back pressure" of the universe to prevent a hadron collider from forming -- say, repressing the development of intelligent life in the first place at the micro or nano scopic levels. But improbably, something sticks and builds up. There are continuing problems in the development of a hadron collider, but one species keeps getting lucky (and they're stupidly ignoring the hints that something is wildly improbable about their existence in the first place that perhaps they've strayed into territory they shouldn't be in). And then someone decides to build a *large* hadron collider, and now the universal pressure hits a breaking point, resulting in direct macroscopic changes, like a screw popping loose and releasing gas into the chamber.

Just a theory...

> That's why you do these kinds of experiments away from your home world.

Doesn't help... the proposal is that producing the Higgs wipes the entire universe, not just your local corner. You might as well do it on your home soil. It would suck to travel all the way to another planet just to be annihilated.

Peer review is when you're actually putting forth hard numbers. These guys are actively speculating and trying to get enough peer feedback to flesh out their theory. But beyond that, the article does note at least one falsifiable experiment that they're proposing to run. They haven't run it yet.

There is a difference in this case. It is more than just apologizing for the wrongs against him in the past. It is also fully acknowledging him, now, today, as someone worthy of respect for his contributions to our lives today. In that sense, it is affecting the lives of those still living, to have someone gay held up as someone society respects. That's the part that makes this apology worthy of Parliment's time today, and why it isn't just hereditary guilt.

Who is Jay Leno? :-)

Maybe the babies are using the bandwidth and just faking the minds of these researchers into thinking its the fault of the baby monitors. Are we sure this isn't just the next generation of mutant children hogging the bandwidth with psychic chat about their post-natal experiences?

Think of the children... because they're thinking of you!

Right, which means the logarithmic distribution of digits is still true. 1 is 100% because there is only one digit. The law says that in base 3, you'd have 1 be high and 2 be lower percent. And if you went to base 4, you'd have 1 high, 2 middle and 3 low. And so on.

Being 100% in binary doesn't invalidate the law. That's just the base case.

> So what if we destroy ourselves? Climate change
> might kill us but it won't kill the planet,
> that's why we need to stop it.

That's why I liked Star Trek's take on this more: the aliens want us to stop destroying the environment because they're friends with the whales. They don't give a hoot about us, but the whales matter. A *much* stronger character motivation, IMHO.

I tend to agree with w0mprat. If you feel it is unethical, push for a change, and keep pushing until you have a new job lined up already or they fire you. If they fire you, at least you get unemployment benefits (because the best they can do is fire you for not doing your job, not for doing anything illegal... its the illegal bit that would keep you from unemployment coverage).

I don't think Bandman intended to imply shaping is unethical. He merely said if it is unethical (for example, if shaping contradicts the current TOS or something like that) then he advised a course of action.

Your suggestion would be more appropriate for meta moderating. After all, the disturbing part isn't his post... the disturbing part is that he got "+5 interesting" for it!

Somebody mod this up!

It just means that ALL media, not just Wikipedia, need to be using "citation needed".

Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell. Published in 1937, it is biographies of most major mathematicians "from Zeno to Poincare'". Instead of focusing on their mathematical discoveries, this book focused on what their lives were like and why they were even interested in math and how math influenced the rest of their lives.

Number 9, The Search for the Sigma Code by Cecil Balmond. This book is half fiction, half not, and looks into the weird ways that the number 9 keeps cropping up in number theory. Fun read, with lots of accessible arithmetic for high school.

Flatland by Edwin Abbot. You've probably heard of this one. But then...

Spaceland by Rudy Rucker... in which a man from our world explores a higher dimensional world in which our 3D space is but one slice of theirs, and the strange interactions he has with the beings there.

A shoe is the *furthest* insult you can throw. But we're looking for *highest* for this particular trivia question.