This is one of those things where it would be much, much easier to explain with images, but bear with me.
Draw a circle. Within that circle, with the same center as the first circle, draw a smaller circle. Choose a point on that circle, and draw a tangent line from that point. Now, consider the fact that the portion of the exterior circle between the two intersections the tangent line has to it is not half of the circle.
The same principle applies when expanding to three dimensions: a plain can only divide a sphere in half if it passes through the center of the sphere. When that plain must be tangent to a smaller sphere with the same center, it is only possible to divide the larger sphere in half when the radius of the smaller sphere is zero.
As such, the portion of sky visible from any point on a sphere is less than 50%.
The problem with functionalism is the difficulty of unambiguously determining whether a given system implements a given calculation. This is inconsistent with the need to say that a given system definitely either is or is not conscious.
It's hardly fair to compare Bitcoin to credit cards in terms of "instant gratification", unless you turn back the clock to when you said, Oh, there are such things as credit cards? Cool, how do I get one? I'm confident that the difficulty of acquiring your first bitcoin will compare favorably to the difficulty of acquiring your first credit card.
I'm not sure where the headline came from, but the income figures in the report are adjusted for family size (and inflation). Since families are getting smaller, this causes an increase in their income measure. The actual median increase was 65% (page 8, line 2).
I took the headline from table 1, and only gave 1 significant figure.
I went with this headline because I found the comparison of people to their parents far more interesting than the results on marriage, and figured others would as well.
Part of the problem is that the journals are part of a complicated infrastructure for judging academic quality. The best authors compete to get published in the best journals. The best journals are based on years or decades of reputation and history. You can't create de novo a system to replace this instantly. There is a chicken and egg problem to be solved before we have free publishing venues with a widely accepted reputation for only publishing the best papers.
This is a sequel to the Inner Life of a Cell animation that came out a few years ago. It shows what happens inside the mitochondria, which supply power to the cell.
A brief explanation:
We see a snake-like molecule go through a couple of holes. This is an unfolded protein molecule and demonstrates that mitochondria mostly don't make their own proteins, they have to be imported. Mitochondria have an inner and an outer membrane so it has to go through two layers.
We follow it through the inner membrane and see the glory of the mitochondrial interior. We zoom past (and through) a bunch of proteins that are involved in oxidizing fuel molecules. There's a double helix DNA in the corner to remind us that mitochondria do synthesize some of their own proteins.
We next zoom in on a piece of the inner membrane. studded with protein complexes and surrounded by glowing molecules. Note that some of the proteins have their bottom part spinning - these are ATP synthase, one of the most amazing of proteins.
I suspect you may have received the old "mild" patdown and not the new "enhanced" one. I think the new one uses the front of the hand.
The guy in San Diego who refused the patdown a couple days ago now has the TSA claiming he was only going to get the old one:
"Aguilar says that Tyner was facing nothing more than the traditional pat-down that TSA has used for some time, and not a more aggressive body search in effect since late October."
This is the crux of the argument. The TSA would be flat out retarded (for lack of a better word) to try and see this through. Between the stupid comments made by various officials to the clearly conflicting actions, they look even more incompetent which is no small accomplishment.
50%, duh.