Viewing profile — dannyb

While I agree with the general thrust of your comment, the machines used by the TSA are not "focused" in the same way. It would take much greater effort to create hazardous conditi…

I think that article was essentially a propaganda piece, albeit unintentionally. My guess is that Newsweek puts out blurbs like that in order to reach out to a targeted demographic…

Sometimes life is unfair, but I hold as an article of faith that almost anything can be made better by getting off your butt and working hard. For me personally, there's almost not…

I agree and I remember the days of being a grad student and scouring the pages of High Tc Update looking for the next super-material. It seemed like every other quarter there was a…

It sounds like you're asking asking whether some regions of a sample could be superconducting while others are normal phase. This can occur in heterogeneous materials as in a Josep…

I think you're completely misunderstanding the thrust of the article. This ability goes far beyond memorizing knowledge in one specialized area. These people go through hours (up t…

A model of an atom can be likened to a solar system Um, no. Electrons do not have well-defined trajectories. Quantum particles should not in any way be compared to classical macros…

I agree with the sentiment of your point, but this does represent "normal mental faculties" in any way. They are clearly extraordinary in this one sense and that alone doesn't allo…

Hey Mr. Policeman, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Seriously, what would you expect from Obama at this point? All talk and platitudes and no backbone.

My only beef with his interesting post is that he uses graphics of completely understandable stuff like diagonalizing a matrix or the map of the phase space map of the logistic equ…

Good. Hopefully this is the beginning of restoration of some common sense in these matters. It would be even nicer if we could get rid of the Patriot Act and the crotch-grabby TSA …

so they're not evil?

I guess it didn't affect everyone since I was able to use it on the day in question to make a Ticketmaster purchase on 12/8.

Excellent post. Take responsibility for your own intellectual development and you will do much better than if someone were to show you the exact solution to a problem you're workin…

It made for an interesting read, but I think there are too many generalizations in that type of writing. The truth is, we have just experienced and extraordinary explosion in the a…

As others have commented here, I find it very telling that maximum publicity was sought when the article was first published, but the lead author seems to dislike the scrutiny brou…

There's a big difference between "saying spectacularly naive things" and publishing in a supposedly respectable journal. Plus, the guy deserves an academic weggie for naming a meth…

Yes, we could make reactors much more efficient than they were in the past, but there still will be waste to deal with.

Here's the problem that I see that few people discuss. Why should China and India care? The vast majority of their combined population, about 30% of the world's total, live under m…

I agree, I don't think the guy is really in it for altruistic reasons. That being said, the US doesn't look so great in complaining about the consequences of released sensitive inf…

this is exactly what I thought, too I think we all labor under certain types of illusions on a daily basis - i.e. we ignore the dangers of driving because we have the illusion of c…

In the US, there is a lot of emphasis placed on "closing achievement gaps" It's easier to slow the smart kids down than make the slow/non-responsive kids perform better. I don't th…

As someone who has struggled with some of the same things, I can sympathize. However, I really think you need to toughen up a bit. Not everything that you do will be laden with mea…

Let's see: false dichotomy - check. Overly argumentative - check. Strawman argument - check. Yup, I'm on the internet...