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Comment Wrong way to look at it (Score 1) 99

It is the wrong way to look at this issue. It is not about to "allow" something to a weapon, it is about the question if a human in charge, like a soldier or the like, being entitled to use weapons, is allowed to delegate a) the decision when to pull the trigger, and b) if the person is to be allowed to delegate the responsibility. As with any machine or weapon anyway, be it making "decisions" in an "intelligent" way, or in a "stupid" one like a big bomb just falling somewhere, where beyond hope there is little final influence of a human being what exactly it hits after being thrown of an airplane or the like.
Earth

Cooling the Planet With a Bubble Bath 219

Posted by Soulskill from the rubber-ducky-optional dept.
cremeglace writes "A Harvard University physicist has come up with a new way to cool parts of the planet: pump vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. 'Since water covers most of the earth, don't dim the sun,' says the scientist, Russell Seitz, speaking from an international meeting on geoengineering research. 'Brighten the water.' From ScienceNOW: 'Computer simulations show that tiny bubbles could have a profound cooling effect. Using a model that simulates how light, water, and air interact, Seitz found that microbubbles could double the reflectivity of water at a concentration of only one part per million by volume. When Seitz plugged that data into a climate model, he found that the microbubble strategy could cool the planet by up to 3C. He has submitted a paper on the concept he calls “Bright Water" to the journal Climatic Change.'"

Submission + - The perfect way to slice a pizza (newscientist.com)

Submitted by iamapizza
iamapizza writes: New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article;

"The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-centre, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-centre cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighbouring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?"

This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of "sharing" a pizza.

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