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[dead] 16 years ago

it made me think very highly of him. i'm sure the people along whatever career path this man follows will feel the same.

i agree that demanding perfect testing is ridiculous in most scenarios, especially when talking about human trials. however, that's not what i'm suggesting should happen. i also don't deny that the UCSF letter has a sensationalist or alarmist tone. i'm not touting their concerns, just suggesting it as a place that explains the difference between cosmic xrays and the xrays in these scanners. i guess my point is that it's very easy to mislead people that have no appreciation for these very real differences. glossing over details and nuance that have not yet been proven insignificant, and doing so with the goal of making concerned people stop asking questions about their own safety- that's not cool. when it's our own government it's even less cool.

there are so many issues swirling around this subject- privacy, security, safety, fear, "terror"... i guess i'm just wanting the science of the safety to be completely objective, open, reviewed, failsafes and failure modes known... all that jazz. as a member of the public it seems like these things were just thrown out there. the tsa is covering their butt by doing whatever is possible, a few scanner manufacturers are having a good year, and we're just supposed to leave it like that, keep calm, carry on... i can't say that makes me feel great.

the UCSF letter explains why this is not a valid comparison. the ambient radiation absorbed in flight and the radiation of the mwbs are not in the same part of the spectrum so they are not comparable using simple agregate statistics. the stopping power of your (or any) body is function of the energy of the incident radiation (or particle) and this not considered in the mrem comparison.

exactly. to a cynic, of which there are many in the younger population that tends not to vote in the US, "mostly works" can mean "doesn't work" (...so why bother?)

if you KNEW the system was perfect, that alone might be reason to participate.

The problem may be tricky, but surely it's worth solving and doing so publicly. Shouldn't this be doable?

Of all the things i would like to see well-intentioned billionaires do, funding a permanent mission to perfect voting is very high on the list. what greater gift to democracy than provable integrity of its atom?

You're making a joke, but this whole story does suggest that it might be good strategy to send a few "red flag" passengers along with the actual terrorist that is careful to appear as a "conforming" passenger. false positives hide real positives.

it does make you wonder to what extent such decoys have been accounted for in the overall security strategy.

I'm also a big fan of the black-box idea. i live in the same area as guy in article. been hit 3 times. twice sideswiped by an aggressively right-turning vehicle that thought they should speed past me, slam on the brakes and turn into me. Both of those guys SAW me and tried to beat me to their turn. i had no chance. both falls were no big deal because i could choose how to go down. ...one of the guys even sped away. third time a guy signaled a right turn into a parking spot, pulled in, then with right turn signal still on, banged a U-turn. i t-boned him. again, not bad because i slammed on the brakes and kind of jumped into his car with my back, absorbing impact. that one could have been far worse had he turned a few seconds later.

two of these accidents were in the heart of cambridge, ma (very bike friendly) on streets with wide bike lanes. one in Arlington (mass ave.)

had i a 360 record of each incident i could prove that each of the drivers was operating as recklessly as a drunkard. i probably would have no-harm-no-fouled the two that profusely apologized and wanted to make sure i was okay. i'm sure they are very careful around bicycles now. the hit-and-run, well, i would have played my role as a litigous american and sued his pants off.

i guess it's time to spec-out a cyclist's black box.

too bad i have to go to work now...

ON MY BIKE!

e Approximations 16 years ago

neat.

if you thow that pandigital expression into wolframalpha, it does not return e. "cannot be determined using current methods"

not neat.

i'm not a Geek by HN standards and I care. Then again, i never opened an account in the first place because i didn't want someone else having all that info about me. The reactions among my friends and coworkers are varied, but generally i'm surprised by how much most people don't care. It's funny because many of them, as far as i know them, do actually "care" about this type of stuff. If (gasp) The Government was doing this, they'd be sharpening pitchforks.

A lot of people haven't thought about it enough to be bothered, or it doesn't seem like the kind of transgression people have learned to abhor. the consequences might be too new to be appreciated.

[dead] 16 years ago

i don't think surface tension is doing anything for something the size of a human, or a stone for that matter. if it was surface tension, why does it care that something is moving?

it probably has more todo with the water you are displacing having enough inertia that it can't get out of your way fast enough. it stays there long enough to deflect your path upward, keeping you up.

you sink when you pierce the surface because of the massive drag you introduce. it slows you down very quickly so you sink.