@Vene

Did you read the white paper from CERN/OPERA? I understand it's a 6 sigma result, but they were doing some very complicated measurements in some convoluted ways. There was room for error.

I agree, though. Even if neutrinos are FTL, all of science won't come crashing down. Just like Classical Mechanics is still valid even after QM.

"Plus, as a white male, I'm a minority in the department, which is pretty amazing : ) "

I'm amazed that you are amazed. The white male is a discrimnated against minority everywhere anymore. To be a white male is to be forced to be better and work harder than your female or non-white coutnerparts. You have to be the best of the best to get ahead in education and at the bottom of the corporate ladder. Schools and busniesses are more worried about the racial diversity profiles, quotas, and not being lumped in as part of the Old Boys Club so they discriminate against the white male at every opportunity they can.

@Draug

I really can't telly if you're serious. I've never had an issue; my skills have always spoke for themselves.

My skills do as well. But I'm not the entry level business or IT person to which I am referring. I look at the number of H1B Visas in this country and the number of out of work programmers. Then I look to companies who I *know* (having worked there) put extra emphasis on hiring minorities and one I know who intentionally ran a white male my age off the Board so they could install a black woman in his place as they had recently had one of their founders (a black man) sell out his share and needed a black or a woman to maintian their minority business status. Now, tell me how that is fair?

I'm not saying it's fair. I'm not a supporter of affirmative action at all. I'm just saying I've never experienced it.

Oh the plight of the mediocre white man.

Nothing like anecdotal unaccountable stories to justify an inflated sense of racial grievance.

Look at this 'discrimination' against white males.

http://www.diversityemployers.com/index.php/career-news/137-board-diversity
http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/57_black_enrolls_lawschools.html
http://www.blackboysreport.org/files/schott50statereport-execsummary.pdf
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/inequality/index.html

(Look at the excel tables for blacks and whites in terms of income). Lower limit of Top 5% of blacks with regard to income is 127,900. Whites is 186,912.
Upper limit of lowest 5th of Whites is 21,557, blacks is 11,784.

I love how I, as a scientist, can open up this thread expecting a nice talk, but by response 97 I'm not even going to bother going back to see where this one got derailed.

@Yellow

Actually, it stayed on track until Draug's post just a few up on this page.

@ abge. I agree, it is a shame, we were having an interesting discussion.

Well, I don't see why it has to stop. I responded to both Vene and red and have yet to hear back from them.

OK, here's a question that's at least somewhat related to science. I've looked into it a bit but I don't really understand it.

Does anyone know how CERN is structured (both financially and in terms of authority)? From my understanding, many countries contribute financially (however much they want?). But beyond that, I'm sort of stumped.

International mega-projects are one of the few things in politics which really give me an ounce of faith in humanity. Politicians refuse to cooperate with each other over the most inane points because of they can't budge an inch with their opponents but get a bunch of n3rds in a room and all they want to do is pool their resources to see particles fly. Obviously, I'm being overly naive on the topic but you get my sentiment.

@Putin - If it weren't confidential material, I'd send a copy of the requirements sheet for collecting potential candidates information used in recruting at a former company. It isn't anecdotal to say these forms start with race and sex and the requirements stated the application should give an automatic boost to minorities in both regards. Affirmative action *is* discrimination. It says two things. First, that the minorities aren't good enought o do it on their own or we wouldn't have to help them (an insult to the minorities) and second, that the white male is to be held down to account for things that happened 150 years ago. If a generation comes around every 25 years, that is 6 generations ago.

Are you going to say it isn't discrimination to give points to a minority because you can't discriminate against the majority? Well, then we have nothing to argue because our definition of discrimination is different. Mine is the dictionary definition that says anyone who is not given the same chance someone else has because they have some physical difference from the other person is discriminated against.

@abge
Yeah, I was busy today, so I didn't have much chance to reply. Anyways I think the most important thing is that the system of education in the west doesn't lose confidence in itself, because sometimes it looks like that a bit.
@Yonni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Financing_.28Budget_2009.29
The 5% we supply makes me happy about my own country too. I guess I can concur with both parts of your last sentence ;-)
Talking about mega scientific instutions: what about NASA and ESA? I think we should put a man on Mars just as much as we should find the Higgs Boson. If there would ever be a space race between the US and the EU on that one I wouldn't care who won, but I would be willing to devote tax money to it.
@All
By the way I don't think it's very fair to blame Draug for the derailing of the thread, I also derailed my own thread a bit there :-)

@Draugnar okay that's enough though :)

So Jim Crow was abolished 150 years ago, eh? And post-desegregation discrimination somehow disappeared overnight.

@Putin do you mind?

So now you go back two generations or so. I wqas a baby when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I have a nephew old anough to have a kid in Middle school and worked along side (as coworkers) kids fresh out of college young enough to be my own children. Are you saying it's fair to lay it on them? You believe the sins of the father should passed on unto the children's children? How many generations before we stop punishing people for crimes their ancestors committed?

@abge Yes, it is likely that there may be errors, considering the conditions (and I bet some scientist hope so :D), but they are still about 150 physicist. We'll see how it ends.

@red, abge and ven

Those people really do hate science don't they? Perhaps they are afraid of numbers? :-)

********************
NASA and ESA should compete in trying to be the first in getting a man on Mars, just like the SU and the US competed to be the first to get to the moon.
*** Discuss ****

I think NASA and ESA should work together to get a man on Mars and/or to colonize the moon with a permanent base. We can do more pooling our funds than running parallel programs competing for the attention of the same companies in the private sector to do the work.

********************
Mankind should spend billions and billions to put a man on Mars.
*** Discuss ***
I'm in favor by the way.

I don't see why a man on Mars should be the next mission. It's a really sexy answer, but should be further down the queue in my opinion. There seems to be far more practical missions that should come first. Moonbase, landing on asteroids, more unmanned missions to mars, more deep space exploration, more work on the ISS (although I'm not too positive what actually goes on there).

At any rate, yeah, NASA and ESA should work together. That's what I was getting at with my last post. I continuously marvel at these huge international projects.

Off topic, but I just went to an interesting talk by Wolfgang Ketterle, the MIT professor who broke the record for cold atom temperature.

You have to wonder if putting a man on mars represents the best bang for the scientific buck. I think robots on mars makes more sense.

@Yonni sure but these all seem to lead up to a common goal that we both support?
@abge okay, I'll bite: what did Wolfie say?
@spyman i disagree with that, although maybe, strictly rationally speaking, you are right. A human landing on Mars could give a "spiritual" dimension to science though: knowing how to calculate the orbits of planets around the suns and of the moon around the earth, and all other scientific progress required to perform such a feat, could lead to a fundamentally change the way we "see" or "feel" the universe (without as you correctly point out scientifically the value of such a mission is debatable, particularly on the short term).

"A human landing on Mars could give a "spiritual" dimension to science though"

Fuck that shit

How is that different from "marvelling" as you put it? Or is fuck that shit hip hop to say you agree with that? ;)

I'm not suggesting to do it for the sake of marveling