The thing is, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instrumental in that, as the deal was: Japan doesn't attack the US (in some kind of court) about the use of the atomic bomb (and the fire bombings), and beside a very limited number of trials, the US will stay silent about the various atrocities the Japanese Empire did around South-East Asia.

That's true.

However, when making that kind of judgement, or excuses, it is then necessary to wonder whether the position considered modern was expressed in any way at the time the person considered lived in.

Case in point, there were quite a few very vocal voices against slavery in the late 18th century. Enough to show that on that point at the very least, the US constitution is much less a semi-divine document and much more the result of haggling over specific interests. The point being that you shouldn't be so quick to excuse people because of the "different age" excuse.

I'm not going to discuss the merit of deciding to bomb Japan with atomic bombs, that would be for another post. That said, thinking that Japanese people have "accepted" the bombing as necessary and mostly positive is trying hard to convince yourself that the US are unanimously seen as the good guys, no matter what.

That's true. Most people in Western countries think of the Japanese emperor as someone along the lines of Julius Ceasar or Napoleon. In truth they were much more like the Catholic Pope. With one exception: their harem. It was completely official (if not called by that name), and it's the other reason they claim such a long dynasty: each generation they had a huge pool of sons to draw from to select the next emperor (that's actually the only thing that makes the whole over-2000-year-long dynasty believable, beside heavy tapering with records).

You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.

Which means these so-called "Federal court" are anything but.

If they were federal and not some federal-in-name-only, they would all operate under the exact same rules.

This is something I fail to understand with the US system.

To the best of my understanding, patents should squarely fall within the scope of inter-state commerce. As such, and even with the strictest, most conservative interpretation of the US Constitution, it feels like any case related to them ought to be treated according to Federal laws.

How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?

There is one basic mistake in your assertion, one that stems directly from the article: equating subjects like economics with science.

Science is topics such as maths, physics biology and the like. Don't be fooled by the use of statistics: economics is anything but a real science (despite the continued propaganda about that). If it were a real science, you couldn't analyse events with theories based on exactly opposite axioms, and it could predict future events accurately (as opposed to only accurately predicting past events, as does now).

Since the very words "intellectual property" have been coined by copyrights lawyer in order to make the argument that copyright infringement was theft, no, we can't all agree on that preposterous assertion.

People who are at the origin of intellectual creation have to come to term with one very simple fact: they lose any kind of proprietary rights the moment they release their creation to the public (whatever it is you've made, however it inspires me, what's inside my head isn't yours). That is the very nature of such things. What society has decided is to grant them a monopoly in the reproduction rights of said work. Of course, when compared with what this right was originally, it has been abused on a scale beyond imagination (but commensurate with the wish most people have to get a rent of whatever kind forever).

The problem here is that design principle is going down (has gone down?) the drain: radar suites have evolved as well and modern ones are able to pick up and recognize the radar signature of the so-called "stealth fighters". That is very far from being a secret, by the way. Here is one article reporting it, but there are quite a lot of others:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on slashdot, really. "Stealth" technology has nothing in common with Star Trek like cloaking, it simply is a matter of reducing the signature. With greater computer power available, it was only a question of time until it became obsolete.

Of course, all of that is without even talking about how unreliable and fragile the stealth tech really is (the coating must be redone after each sortie and is vulnerable to rain, among other problems)...

Ooh, a well developed point.

A slight problem, though: it completely ignores decades of studies that show and prove that, indeed, although they are not children anymore, adolescent are not yet adults. Are they able to reproduce or, more generally to take some decisions related to themselves? Sure they are. That doesn't mean they're adults. Among a bunch of other things, not being an adult means still having a very high plasticity allowing for quick personal development (in whichever direction). This, adolescent have.

In essence, a child has high plasticity and limited personal assertion. An adolescent retains a great part of the plasticity but asserts their own wishes (but still need guidance in doing so. An adult loses such high degree of plasticity (it doesn't mean there is none), and keeps asserting their own personality and wishes (society allowing.

Now, to answer the specific point you made about forbidden activities. The problem is that, in essence, those activities are seen as evil/dirty etc. Of course, it is impossible to forbid adults to practice them in modern Western societies but, to various degrees, the same society can't but want to protect from them those identified as vulnerable (the non-adults). It is a perfectly valid position, as long as you accept that those activities have negative consequences, which is true to an extent :

- Alcohool, smoking and the like do have negative health consequences

- With the possibility of pregnancy (especially when abortion is seen in an only negative light), sex can bring its own problems. However, this could easily be corrected with proper sexual education. But in most countries, having a scene in a movie with a couple having sex under blankets is considered much worse than some scene of violence such as a gory murder.

So yes, there is a problem with what teens are prevented from doing, but that's not because they're adults but because society is, overall, insane on these things.

You apparently don't realize that there are differences between the actions of an adult and those of a minor. In a sane environment, you would try to teach the latter so they grow out of whatever problem.

Looking at the news over recent years, it seems there is an explosion in the number of pedophiles - I'm not too sure about that, various historical traces show that it isn't anything new, but it has recently been fount as a very efficient tool to get quite unsavoury laws passed. However, if indeed there is a growth in those numbers, I can't help but think that your kind of attitude fuels it. After all, if you think that, whatever their age, children should be subject to criminal laws intended for adults, why couldn't they be perfectly valid sexual partners?

That's exactly what I'm saying: you're relying a lot on mathematical projections with the kind of reasoning you describe. However, you need hard data to make valid assumption, and enough of it. I haven't read the actual scientific article, but the one reporting on it makes it quite clear that the conclusions they've arrived at were based on the observation of actual planetary systems: i.e. an extremely small sample to draw conclusions from.

Maths are a tool to be used in astronomy. When you get to the point they become the main observation device (and it amounts to that in this case), you've gone astray.

The maths might simple, but that doesn't mean they're valid if the data sample is too small.

I would say there is a problem with the size of the sample (it does need to be above a threshold to draw valid conclusions).

Right now, the number of systems we've detected is somewhat above a thousand. There are around 100 billions stars in our galaxy alone. So, in other words, the people who wrote that article have decided that a 0.000001% sample is enough to draw conclusions.

On top of that, what a surprise, said conclusion is that the Solar System is a (very?) rare occurrence. I haven't taken the time to look it up, but I'd bet that the same scientists, a decade or two ago, would have said that there probably were no other planets in the universe, or at least that they were incredibly rare.

I wonder whether such an attitude stems from fear of being seen as a lunatic in the scientific community, or if many among those harbouring those views are influenced from a religious point of view of the "uniqueness" of humanity and its planet.