Finland was historically a part of Sweden for about 600 years, and the northernmost part was called Lapland. Nowadays that part is split into Swedish Lapland and Finnish Lapland. Norrland (literally "northern land") is the name for the part of Sweden that is north of approximately 61 degrees northern latitude, so it includes Swedish Lapland but also a lot more.
In a way it's analogous to how Einstein's E = mc^2 is a special case of how the norm of the four-momentum is defined in special relativity, which is mc = √((E/c)^2-p^2). For the special case of a stationary object we have p = 0, so E = mc^2 follows automatically. But the special case is somehow more memorable and more famous, and I believe something similar has happened with Euler's identity.
The article would have been a lot better if it had mentioned the classical definition of entropy (by Clausius), which is essentially energy dividided by temperature. From this definition it is easy to see that incoming energy from the Sun at 5700 K which is then dissipated at 250 K, will result in a local entropy decrease.
Scott Aaronson is IMHO worth reading even when he writes about non-technical topics. And he tags his posts with categories such as "Quantum", "Complexity", "Rage Againts Doofosity", etc, so it's easy to skip topics that you aren't interested in.
Alfred Nobel's will states that the prize should go to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." The part about the preceding year didn't work out very well, but when it comes to conferring the greatest benefit to mankind, John Bardeen certainly made the grade. Twice.
It doesn't really matter whether he should be primarily categorized as an engineer or a physicist or anything else.
> They have a lifespan based on radioactive decay of the detector.
Americium-241 has a half-life of 432.2 years, while the recommendation is to replace a detector after only 10 years. But only 1.6% of the Am-241 has decayed after 10 years, so there must be other reasons for the short life span.
Agreed. Instead of taxing the profit of a corporation, just tax the payment of dividends from that profit. The total tax burden can still remain the same if that's what people desire, but the end result will be more transparency as you say. I think Estonia has exactly this policy, or at least they did last time I checked.
It also removes the incentive to mess around with stock buybacks, which is good because the extra liquidity can be put to better use within the company.
For very small companies (such as my own) it would also remove the bureaucracy involved in saving profits from one fiscal year to the next.
> just tax the payment of dividends from that profit
My dividends are already being taxed as income. I agree with you, but good luck trying to convince Big Gov that they need to eliminate a revenue stream without picking up a new one.
> Instead of taxing the profit of a corporation, just tax the payment of dividends from that profit.
This would be regressive, though. Why not tax the individual via a progressive cap gains tax?
> It also removes the incentive to mess around with stock buybacks, which is good because the extra liquidity can be put to better use within the company.
If a company can't think of a good use for their profits, do we really want to force them to keep the money within the organization? This seems like a recipe for bloated budgets and bigger Christmas parties, but I'm not sure that we could expect much benefit otherwise.
> This would be regressive, though. Why not tax the individual via a progressive cap gains tax?
How would it be regressive? According to Wikipedia[0], most corporate tax rates are proportional (i.e. "flat"). Just replace that with an equivalent rate on payout of dividends. Capital gains tax for the recipient is an entirely separate question.
> If a company can't think of a good use for their profits, do we really want to force them to keep the money within the organization?
In such situations they can pay dividends of course, which are taxed in my proposal. The point is that there is no point in buying back stocks instead of paying dividends.
Deflation is bad for debtors only if nominal interest rates don't drop to compensate for the increased value of the currency. But given that any instability of the value of a currency is bad, inflation has historically done much more damage than deflation.
