Slashdot Mirror

Imagine you believe that DDT *might* be dangerous ... Now watch as over 40 years, malaria ravages Africa and kills tens of millions of babies, and keeps most of the continent in abject poverty.

Mosquitos were already showing DDT resistance (DDT-resistant mosquitoes were first detected in India in 1959), and it wasn't banned in Africa, it was banned from production in the US -- and not until 1972. In short: DDT had basically become useless against mosquitoes by the time it was banned. It doesn't take much math at all to show that once genetic resistance appears in a fast-multiplying organism that it can quickly spread to nearly 100% of the population, rendering DDT useless. (See http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/tutorials/The_theory_of_natural_selection__part_1_13.asp)

I've also seen books that claimed that small amounts of cancer-causing agents actually prime the immune system and improve health. That seemed like an industry's wet dream. Whether it's true or not, it adds enough doubt to the system which (under a libertarian system) requires absolute certainty on the part of the government before doing anything. It sounds to me like a libertarian system automatically results in a world where governments can't do anything because the businesses will be so powerful that they can *always* add enough doubt and uncertainty to prevent any action. (Which reminds me of the decades of denial by tobacco companies about a smoking-cancer link. I remember one claim put out by tobacco companies that people who were nervous were more likely to get cancer, and more likely to smoke - because smoking calms them. That was their way of throwing a wrench into the evidence that smoking causes cancer.)

Humans, in general, are terrible at weighing risk
I agree, but I'd add that individuals are the worst at judging risk because it's often based on anecdotal evidence (e.g. my aunt smoked for 50 years and never got cancer). Studies and research and double-blind tests are far superior to individual judgment. This is why I think the libertarian system of "everyone decides for themselves" ends up being worse-off for society: because it ends up elevating ignorant individual judgment.

When I read that headline my immediate reaction was, "Uh oh... pseudo-science incoming". However this comes from a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience and the European Journal of Neuroscience. So perhaps we can enhance our brain through the (in a 1950's movie scientist voice) POWER OF MAGNETS!

MRSA is a contagious disease. If you don't get a Staph infection it doesn't need to be treated, so the goal is to avoid transmission. Although MRSA is less prevalent in Norway than in many other countries it's alive and well there

I'm not sure how this will work out in the current economic climate, unless you have god powers or some other very rare skill. I'm not saying you're wrong, but you know... if there's 10 people in line for a job, and one of them is making demands... I'm just saying.

Then again, would you want to work for a company that seems to think of you as not much more than a tool...

Peacock's Tail

Are computer science and philosophy related? Yes! I have BA in philosophy, and I focused on cognitive science and artificial intelligence, where the two meet head to head. Computer science needs philosophy in order to help evaluate the status of machines in terms of whether or not they have consciousness. And philosophy needs computer science to help answer open questions in the philosophy of mind.

Also, the two have a mutual interest in the study of information--what is it, how do you use it efficiently, how do you organize it, how do you process it, etc. If you have any interest in it, you should definitely check out Luciano Floridi--he's part of/started a movement he calls The Philosophy of Information that encompasses but AI and the philosophy of computing in general, including questions in ethics.

Currently I'm taking courses in computer science (and I work in IT), and I hope to start grad school in cognitive science next year. So yes, for me philosophy and computer science are intimately entwined.

Google a bit further and you will find that a lot of those studies are flawed: their ring species are not true ring species at all.

Ernst Mayr was the scientist who conceived the idea of ring species, in the 1940's. His example was a continuous variation in seagulls on the northerh hemisphere. This example has been in the biology textbooks for decades. So it came as a bit of shock when Peter de Knijff of the University of Leiden together with Dorit Liebers en Andreas Helbig of the University of Greifswald analyzed the DNA structure of the actual birds and found the American and European populations were not related at all. When they contacted Ernst Mayr - who was in hist late nineties at the time - with their findings, he found it all quite amusing: the University of Greifswald was the same one where he had started his scientific studies.

But, even though the schoolbook example has fallen, the theory of ring species still exists. And some species - a lot less then the textbooks make you believe - are ring species indeed. Check Darren Irwin of the University of British Columbia for details.

I did find an article on the subject in Dutch, for translations please google around.

The widespread use of DDT had all but wiped out malaria some three decades ago. Then someone named Rachel Carson wrote a fictional book called "Silent Spring" about how DDT was harming birds. The book was fictional, literally. But the irrational so-called "envoronmentalists" of the world took it as a call to action and successfully pressured the government to ban DDT. Now millions die needlessly in Africa as a result of their irrationality.

Wow.

Just, wow man. This is the most ignorant, uninformed post I think I've ever read on Slashdot. Well done!

Here's a Debunking for you - you could have found it yourself with a quick Google.

A simple bit of research would show that something much more interesing happened - a low level contingent of the mosquito population is resistant to DDT and DDT sprayings kill off the rest. The resistant portion reproduce and you're back to a full population again, except this time they're all resistant, rendering the DDT useless.

I can think of nothing more convincing than the evidence. Such as the nearly complete Turkana Boy skeleton, an example of Homo erectus from roughly 1.6 million years ago, as presented in this textbook on evolution. A few ribs my ass. Or how about this nice picture of a whole bunch of hominid skulls from 2.6 million years ago to the present? Teach it for real, and it doesn't take undergraduate level biochemistry. Show the kids pictures of the fossils. Tell the kids about human DNA: how our chromosome 2 is clearly the result of a fusion event between two mid-sized progenitor chromosomes, which are still seen in chimps, our closest relatives. Tell the kids that 200 years ago christian geologists went looking for evidence of the Biblical flood and instead found evidence that the Earth is ancient. While we're at it, we should show them the evidence for creationism and intelligent design, too: a deafening silence lasting 10 seconds should suffice.

You want to falsify evolution? Okay, find a bunny rabbit in the Precambrian. Sequence a mamalian genome and find out that it is more closely related to a banana than another mammal. Find a lizard that doesn't use the standard genetic code or a very close derivative of it. Find a bird with a different set of 20 amino acids. Find a chimera--for instance, a tree with 100% tree features, except that it's TCA cycle enzymes are identical to those found in mice, or if you don't want any biochemistry or genetics, find a goat with bird feathers--can't happen under evolution. Every day, more fossils are found. More genes are sequenced. More papers published, and more proteins are compared. Every day evolution is tested, as it makes specific predictions about how species are interrelated. As a result, evolution is the most thoroughly tested theory in science. Have a look at the evidence--a small portion of it is easily available for the general audience online at talkorigins . Creationism and intelligent design on the other hand are compatible with all evidence, as one can simply say "goddiditthatway" and you're good...unless you want to call it science. You want things taught in science class that are argeed on, fine. Teach evolution.

of course you can also short calls and puts as well.

options have an intrinsic value, which is related to the price of the stock and a time value which is related to the length of time to expiration. Time decay sensitivity is measured by Theta.

There are various other measures as well, DELTA is similar to the Beta of a stock price and measures the cahnge of the option price with respect to the stock price.

VEGA is a measure of volatility

RHO is the measure of price w/ respect to interest rates

GAMMA measures the change of DELTA with respect to the stock price..

For all you number crunchers out there, you can download a program to calculate these values (if it hasnt changed since I used it) as well as the black's scholes values as well. HERE

I recommend the textbook as well, as it talks about many types of strategies with options as insurance/hedge devices, etc.

I just don't know what "doing a phycological analysis of people" would actually mean...

Here's a link to the article, which is accepted to MNRAS.

[TMB]

Authors already do pay to publish in scientific journals. In my own field the biggest journal (Astrophysical Journal, or as we called it ApJ) can cost up to $165 a page.

...which is why I almost-universally publish in Monthly Notices. They don't have page charges, unless a paper needs colour; and even in that case, the expense is pretty low (400 pounds sterling for the whole paper). The fact that both ApJ and A&A have page charges is a major offputting factor for me.

You can read a preprint here, or check out MNRAS vol. 347 (2004),issue 4, pp. L67-L72. I know Shanks by reputation (he was - I guess still is - an important figure in a field I briefly studied in years ago: observational cosmology) and he's no nutter.