This is about inconveniencing people so badly that they'll gladly say "Yes please" when the TSA demand the budget for newer equipment - equipment that would allow laptops back onto the planes. Some equipment manufacturers are about to make a lot of money off the government.

I'm not very familiar with sociology methodology, so excuse me if this is a stupid question - but is there any better evidence than self-reporting? People feeling a certain way may or may not equate to them being justified in feeling that way. For example, men are much more likely to suffer violent crime on the street than women are, but women self-report as being much more apprehensive of said crime. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029265). I'm not claiming a feeling of apprehension has anything to do with self-selection for STEM subjects, just that I am wary of studies that rely on self-reporting to make objective claims about what is going on.

I agree wholeheartedly. Which is why I have to ask...

How do you know this?

I realise that's the narrative that many people believe around the world, but it's also a complete misunderstanding of Irish history. The warring parties *were* divided across religious lines, but that was an historical accident. English colonists happened to be protestant, native Irish happened to be Catholic. They were fighting over many things - land, self-determination, equal rights, republicanism, loyalism, etc. - but religion was *not* one of them. To the best of my knowledge (I lived in Ireland during the troubles, as I do now) no-one was killed during the troubles over a theological difference of opinion. Their religious identities became convenient labels, but nobody was under any illusion that the conflict was actually about religion.

If our Oort cloud extends so far that it is nearer to the next-nearest star than to our own sun, does that mean that Oort clouds from multiple stars intersect?

Isn't that just the 'hidden variables' interpretation of quantum physics, which from my limited knowledge I think was eperimentally proven false?

From my understanding, there really is nothing in the envelope until you look inside it - that's what makes the in-sync states of the atoms, even when seperated by distances greater than c*t, 'spooky'. Communication may not be possible, but it is still very weird from our classical perspective.

Robert Strange McNamara is that you? Aren't you supposed to be dead?

That would be the most hilarious example of unintentional irony ever - if only it wasn't so tragic.

Insightful. Brilliant. Stroke of genius. With one sentence you have dismantled the work of thousands of scientists the world over.

Have you told them yet? Please don't keep this knowledge to yourself - they have much better things to be doing with their time besides investigating blind alleys that are so easily refuted.

For example I would like them to figure out why otherwise intelligent people will only accept a scientific consensus if it already fits with their world-view. You know the type who happily use the fruits of the scientific establishment when it suits them, but when confronted with a deduction they'd rather not face they do the mental equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and assume that the same scientists have missed some simple yet vital piece of evidence.

Well then it's a pity that the majority of the economists that appear on mass-media to enlighten us with their opinions are of the bullshit armchair types.

Advanced enconomics may win Nobel Prizes, but it seems that those running the actual show prefer the bullshitters when making their decisions.

There are people who claim that these individual steps are necessary to protect the people, and that no one step is anything that's enough to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

However I think that society is something that moves in a partcular direction, and has momentum (for want of better metaphors). Each individually harmless step gives it a push in a particular direction, and from the news we've been seeing over the last number of years I'd say American society is now travelling at a pretty fast clip in the wrong direction (last stop 1984?). I know people are hoping that the new guy in the White House will know how to find the brakes, but momentum in the wrong direction has built up by now as well, and it'll take a lot to turn this thing around, assuming it's even possible at this stage.

My knowledge of the Star Wars universe extends only as far as the movies, so this is a genuine question, not a veiled correction:

Shouldn't that be "between the Republic and the Sith"? Or was there an Empire before the Republic before the Empire we came to know and love? Thanks.