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Except that the article says "this has nothing to do with dark matter" twice...

No, colour blindness is a broken trait

No, we don't know enough about this or any other trait to understand under what condition there might be benefits. For example, color blindness seems to present advantages in hunting, or an advantage in seeing that color-camouflaged predator. As an individual I would want the treatment if it were safe and affordable but what is good for an individual isn't necessarily good for society. For society the safest "rule" would be to allow this kind of genetic tweaking of "mostly harmless" traits only with consent of the individual and only in individuals who will not subsequently have children and pass the designer gene on to the next generation without their consent. Even terrible diseases such as Tay Sachs and Sickle Cell Anemia appear to have some beneficial effects (offering slight immunity to TB and Malaria in carriers).

With a recent docco I saw claiming that 95% of the universe had to be Dark Matter and Dark Energy, this simply didn't make sense - and not in the way that Quantum Mechanics doesn't make sense, but in a truly "This just can't be the way it is, how come we are so special we're living made out of stuff that just 5% of the universe is made out of, why aren't we made from dark matter as well?"

Apparently not - from TFA:

I’ll note: this has nothing to do with dark matter. As it happens, 90% of the matter in the Universe is in a form that emits no light, but affects other matter through gravity. We know it exists, and you can find out why here. We know it exists locally, in nearby galaxies and clusters of galaxies, too. This new result doesn’t affect that, since the now un-hidden galaxies are very far away, like many billions of light years away. They can’t possibly affect nearby galaxies, so they don’t account for dark matter.

The Bad Astronomy post talks about dark matter: [Note: before you ask, this has nothing to do with dark matter. See below!] I’ll note: this has nothing to do with dark matter. As it happens, 90% of the matter in the Universe is in a form that emits no light, but affects other matter through gravity. We know it exists, and you can find out why here. We know it exists locally, in nearby galaxies and clusters of galaxies, too. This new result doesn’t affect that, since the now un-hidden galaxies are very far away, like many billions of light years away. They can’t possibly affect nearby galaxies, so they don’t account for dark matter.

Yes, they definitely extracted mitochondrial DNA (that's DNA that isn't in the nucleus but is rather in the mitochondria and is only passed down by your mother). Yes, the DNA looks different enough that they're pretty sure this isn't any form of contamination from modern samples (always a worry when doing this sort of thing). However, it is far from clear that this DNA is belonged to another species. There are multiple possible other explanations which could make this not another species. The details are a bit technical, but anthropologist John Hawks has a piece on his blog laying out the basic issues- http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/denisova-krause-2010.html. A slightly more lay-oriented piece by Carl Zimmer (the writer for Science Times and author of the very excellent book Parasite Rex) is also worth reading: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/03/24/the-x-womans-fingerbone/. The bottom line is that concluding that this is a new species is as of yet very premature.

It made the news recently, of course not everyone buys it.

While I agree with you that cuts are necessary, it must be said that Obama is increasing NASA's funding despite canceling Project Constellation. The cancellation seems more politically driven than anything relating to the federal budget. Even if NASA's $18 billion budget were left the same, it would still be only 0.5% of the total federal budget. The real pork can be found in the $901 billion defense budget and the $696 billion social security program.

Evolution has been going 100 times faster in the last 10,000 years than in the long, tedious years before it during which we let our "weak" people die because we hadn't invented medicine more advanced than "lie down and hope you get better soon." http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

Now, kindly turn in your keys at the door and never come back.

Humans use their minds to recognize traps. There aren't a lot of us who know how to avoid the 'genetics' hook, but it is possible...

I think even the most coldhearted persons must admit that your genetic makeup is something you cannot influence

I may be the most coldhearted person you'll never meet (the man who used to train mercenaries said I missed my true calling), and I do a damn good job of influencing my genes.

DNA Is Not Destiny (Discover Magazine)
Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny(Time Magazine)

Why do some people with the "bad gene" develop a given disease, while other people do not? Epigenetics FTW! :)

Eat right, productively deal with your stress, balance your nervous system, indulge in creativity, etc, and you won't have to worry about your genes.

The use of vaccines is a public health necessity; vaccines are by far the most cost effective tool we have for preventing the spread of communicable diseases.

There have always been controversies about vaccines: there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment, and significant benefit to the population as a whole. As a single individual, you remove the (very small) risk by not having the vaccine, and you gain most all of the benefits if most everyone else around you has been vaccinated.

Spreading fear and misinformation about the safety of vaccines can cause direct, measurable and irreversible harm. Measuring the connection between a medical treatment and possible harmful effects is something drug companies can do very well, and the FDA approvals process (when it works) keeps the companies honest. We have solid, irrefutable and repeatable scientific evidence that shows vaccines do not cause these diseases, like autism.

The best article covering this was in the Bad Astronomy blog from Discover, aptly titled Antivax Kills.

More accurately, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/03/10/ncbi-rofl-top-10-absurd-papers-from-2009/

TFA is pretty short - mostly a list, with a short paragraph above it. The link posted in the summary isn't the original, and they don't have links to the articles, just to the /original/ article, which then has links to more on each paper.

Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel. (Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition)

Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour. (Journal of Experimental Biology)

Swearing as a response to pain. (NeuroReport)

Pigeons can discriminate "good" and "bad" paintings by children. (Animal Cognition)

The "booty call": a compromise between men's and women's ideal mating strategies. (The Journal of Sex Research)

Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats. (Alcohol)

Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time. (PLoS One)

More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy? (Cyberpsychology and Behavior)

Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull? (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine)

The nature of navel fluff. (Medical Hypotheses)

If any of those look interesting, here's the link that actually links: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/category/ncbi-rofl/

Pumping stuff into the ground that isn't normally there tends to give me the willies anymore. "Stick it where the sun don't shine!" isn't such a great solution, IMO.

Exactly what could go wrong? I suppose the pressure cave could rupture and you get an air volcano, so don't build on top of it. Pockets of gas under pressure are nothing new in the earths crust.

Besides which, why not just build Vanadium batteries or invest in carbon nanotube ultra-capacitors (which could have direct benefit to mobile energy storage)?

What is the duty cycle on Vanadium batteries, carbon nanotubes and ultra-capacitors? The battery in CAEF is just a big cave with little to wear out..

Pumping stuff into the ground that isn't normally there tends to give me the willies anymore. "Stick it where the sun don't shine!" isn't such a great solution, IMO.

Besides which, why not just build Vanadium batteries or invest in carbon nanotube ultra-capacitors (which could have direct benefit to mobile energy storage)?

(wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable)

And easily solved with the use of Vanadium batteries. I'll continue to signal boost this as long as there are people who think there is no solution to variable renewable energy generation.

I believe that grandparent is indeed referring to mother and fetus.

I've always enjoyed Discover Magazine more than PopSci or PopMech. While the latter have more fantastic and sensational pictures, I like the more detailed articles and writing style of Discover... I'd almost liken it to the difference between Time magazine vs. US News & World Report (OK, maybe not THAT bad, but it feels like that sometimes).

http://discovermagazine.com/
The archives only go back a few decades, so not as much historical interest as PopSci's archives. But my world view was probably more impacted.

William Gray thinks it's likely that he lost his funding because of it. Harrison Schmitt says that people have lost their funding because of it and it's causing people to stop being willing to oppose it.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/02-the-real-rules-for-time-travelers/article_print

Thanks for that comment. It inspired me to post a snippet of a similar conversation I had months ago, with your links and some others added:

Is it right, however, to lump together those who are skeptical of evolution with those who are skeptical of AGW, particularly CO2-driven AGW ?

Creationists confuse religious faith with falsifiable science. Among the general public, climate-change contrarians (and your average Greenpeace/PETA loony) confuse political affiliation with falsifiable science. In both cases, scientists are much less likely to agree with either claim, and that likelihood decreases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field. That's probably why both groups tend to accuse the scientific community of conspiracy and/or widespread incompetence.

At my blog, the following statement is both legible and has popup titles describing why that link was chosen. Here it is without the links first: "And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational levels."

And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational lev els.

It's already got class action status, trial by jury. The filed suit

I've not heard of Craphound.com either, but the link is from this article

I believe the climate is changing, as it always has and thank goodness we're on the upstroke of an interglacial age - the crop growing region is moving toward the arable land, which is good for feeding our teeming billions. Another 5C and most of Russia and Canada become farmland instead of permafrost. I would say that this would make much of southern California uninhabitable, but that would be redundant. The first three settlements there were never heard from again - it's a desert made habitable with water resources that are desertifying millions of square miles of external lands.

On whether humans are impacting this process I might admit that we have had some barely measureable impact, though I wouldn't claim to know it for sure. Most especially I would not claim that were a bad thing

But on whether anything ill will come of that, I have much doubt. Most especially whether the ill will outweigh the good is a serious question. Whether we need to do anything about seas that rise mere millimeters a year I would seriously debate. We have much more important issues to discuss from colonization of Mars and the Asteroid belt, beginning the work on interstellar travel, to observing and preparing to defend against the inevitable world-crushing asteroid - to preserve Man against real known threats. To worry about how much it will cost the remote descendants of some residents of the Phillipines to move their huts further from an encroaching sea is absurd. If they don't want to get wet they should move inland at a stately 4 meters per year and they will without intervention as the water comes up. To crush the world economy on the speculation that Global Climate Change might escape to infinity based on the available evidence? That's madness.

And about the "Science" of "Scientists" who won't show their work, I have outright disbelief. We might as well subscribe to the opinions of Kevin Trudeau. What have they got that he hasn't got, and more importantly, what do they not want you to know?

But call me a denier if you want. Labelling and ad-hominem seems to be the message of your political party.

A pity about their children suffering from their parent's stupidity, but maybe they'll wise up once they grow up.

Alas, not just their own unfortunate kids. Ever read about Dana McCaffery? She was too young to be vaccinated, and she died of pertussis that the anti-vaxxers brought back. Then one of the local pro-disease dumbasses went and said that no one ever died of pertussis.

According to my professor (who is very involved in the LHC) the first LHC run will be collecting an integrated luminoscity of 1 fb^-1.

Another professor mentioned today that by the end of the Tevatron's life (in a couple years), it will have collected 12 fb^-1. This is over it's 10-ish year life span.

At this point, some may wonder why the LHC is unable to keep pace with the Tevatron, the old toy. These machines are very complicated, and apparently don't work nearly to maximum efficiency out of the box. Check out this plot of the amount of data collected at the tevatron versus year. The slope is rising continuously, as they improve their beam and detectors to handle more collisions:

Tevatron Integrated Luminosity

This is proven? Really? You have citations? What if - bear with me here - just imagine that people's PERCEPTION of their ability to multitask were proven to be unreliable?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/08/25/multitaskers-are-bad-at-multitasking-study-shows/
http://www.google.com/search?q=multitask+study&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=Swiftfox:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a

Go. Browse. Study.

While it is true that women in general are better multi-taskers than men are, NO ONE is such a great multi-tasker that they should risk their lives on it. Reading the myriad of real studies done on the subject, you will learn that those people who THINK that they are great at multitasking are less likely to be good multitaskers than some of us who DO NOT think we are so great at it.

Personally - I'm a male, and I resent when people want me to do 6, 12, or 100 things at once. I want one task, I want to focus on it, I want to complete it to the best of my ability, then I want to move on to the next task. And, the STUDIES show that I complete more jobs, with better results, than the multitasker who THINKS that (s)he is being productive.

Multitasking. There was a term for that long, long ago. Women who wouldn't focus on a single task, and flitted from one thing to another, were called "flighty".

As for testing people - what planet are you from? Here on earth, we routinely test people for driving skills, and award driver's licenses to people who have zero driving skills. You wish to test them, and award a higher class of license? Get real.

Some people also think that they can drink copious amounts of alcohol, and still be sober enough to drive. Such people are suffering from impaired judgement.

People who think they can multitask efficiently are also suffering from impaired judgement. Such people should NOT be permitted to drive, as they put lives at risk.

I saw this in the news today
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/28/antivaxxer-movement-leader-found-to-have-acted-unethically/

Will this deter Wakefield [the founder of the modern antivaccination movement] and the antivax movement? Ha! Of course not. Note that supporters of Wakefield heckled the GMC members as they read their announcements.

I wonder if developing countries are as paranoid about vaccinations as the 1st world ones are.

FiveThirtyEight provides fantastic political coverage, largely based upon statistical analyses. Although the site became a bit more editorialized after the 2008 election, Nate Silver acknowledges his biases up front, and almost always provides rock-solid data to back them up. He's also been responsible for bringing down a few fraudulent pollsters.

Speaking of political commentary, Andrew Sullivan is certainly an interesting beast. His tangents about Sarah Palin are a bit silly, although his general political commentary tends to be spot-on.

Bad Astronomy is an all-around fantastic science blog.

Jason Kottke's blog has very little original content, although his content selections are impeccable, reminding me of what Slashdot used to be. He's good at his job in the same way that NPR is good at what it does.

There are more excellent music blogs than I can even possibly begin to enumerate. These have helped launch a mini revolution in the music industry. Although mainstream pop is still the same recycled garbage as it always was, the alternative music community is thriving, and occasionally some of the good stuff does trickle up into the mainstream.

BLDGBLOG is a great read for armchair architects. Infrastructurist is a great read for armchair civil engineers.

FlowingData is a fascinating read about data visualization.

Want to look good at work? Read this.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few good ones. Google solicited the reading lists of a few experts. Their recommendations are generally quite good.

In Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, as in nature, certain patterns are repeated again and again at various levels of magnification. Such fractals have varying degrees of complexity (or fractal dimension, called D), ranked by mathematicians on a series of scales of 0 to 3. A straight line (fig. D=1) or a flat horizon, rank at the bottom of a scale, whereas densely interwoven drips (fig. D=1.8) or tree branches rank higher up. Fractal patterns may account for some of the lasting appeal of Pollock's work. They also enable physicist Richard Taylor to separate true Pollocks from the drip paintings created by imitators and forgers. Early last year, for instance, an art collector in Texas asked Taylor to look at an unsigned, undated canvas suspected to be by Pollock. When Taylor analyzed the painting, he found that it had no fractal dimension and thus must have been by another artist.

If you don't get something, it doesn't mean there is nothing there. Sometimes it takes time, examination, and a willingness to have an open mind. Whether that was because of Pollock's natural ability or the psychedelics is up to debate but in my view there is definite relationship between high quality art and artists who use or have used psychadelics. Think about the music you listen to if you don't believe me.

Actually electronic systems can indeed have randomness - it's called noise.
There's a lot of effort put into designing existing logic gates etc in computers to ensure that they are not switched off/on from noise, and this gets harder and harder as the designs get smaller - because our current designs depend on say, A & B always generating exactly the same result. This also means that the logic circuits have to use higher voltages, use more power to get above the noise threshold.

A different approach would be to have multiple gates all doing the same computation, but working much more closely to the noise threshold, and thus using much less power - each individual gate might be much less reliable (say, 70% accurate), but if you averaged hundreds of them, the accuracy can be improved. This is exactly the approach that is being taken by some dude from africa who has been trying to create new neural network chips that use way less power, with much more speed, than a conventional CPU trying to implement a neural network in software. More info here: here

Yes, one antivax nut in Australia even said that whooping cough has never killed anyone!

I'd like to see her tell that to Dana McCaffery. Of course, the woman in question, Meryl Dorey, is a homeopath to boot, so big surprise.

I wish people would get it through their heads: If you want to treat cancer with crystals, diabetes with magic water, or heart disease with a foot massage, fine, your body, as long as you are old enough to understand how bad of an idea it is, more power to you. But when you forgo vaccinations, you are putting everyone around you in danger. Unless you are one of the minority of people who legitimately can't get vaccinated (suppressed immune system or whatnot), there is no excuse for such recklessly ignorance.

Galileo!

No, Phil Plait!
The summary is a rip off of the Bad Astronomy blog: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/07/the-galilean-revolution-400-years-later/

[..] no connection between CO2 and world calamity.

Oh, I don't know. I consider this to be pretty calamitous.

And I seriously doubt the climate gives a rats butt what the IPCC report says or doesn't say.

[...] there is no really good scientific evidence of a threat from CO2 (and I seriously doubt you can show me any good evidence of a link).

It's hard to receive "really good scientific evidence" if you have your head in the sand.

Actually, it sounds like Perminov has no idea what he's talking about to begin with, so it seems unlikely that this will go anywhere. Consider this quote, from the original AP article:

Without mentioning NASA's conclusions, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.

Note that the NASA conclusion is that, no, there will be no strike in 2032 and unlikely in 2036. It sounds like he's a bureaucrat trying to make himself important by making up a job. That doesn't bode well for the projecting going anywhere.

(Phil Plait has talked about this, too.)

No, first you need to grow the Ginko organically. Then you need to increase the potency by diluting it homeopathically. Next, you form it into an ear candle. Once you do that, the the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot will contact the aliens from Vega 7 who will beam increased memory skills and ESP into you. But if any of this is attempted by "Western medicine", it will all fail.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/12/02/slicing-up-h-m-s-famous-brain-live-and-on-the-internet/

Whether or not it's copied, it's a very good idea. Until we get smart enough computers, http://discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/06-brain-like-chip-may-solve-computers-big-problem-energy/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C= [discovermagazine.com], our best tools for understanding (finding the best model to fit given experimental data) are biological brains. Personally, I would pay game developers to think of translating problems in modern science into simple games for brains that wouldn't get bored too soon (like children, cats and dogs). Why use complicated learning algorithms when they're already implemented in brains?

...making mine detection a snap

I dunno, sounds like a sales pitch to me... you should have either written it in all caps Billy Mays style or said, "Made in Scotland... you know the Scottish make good stuff"

Reguardless, the article has already been /.ed so here are some other sources: Discover, Treehugger, and DNA

...making mine detection a snap

I dunno, sounds like a sales pitch to me... you should have either written it in all caps Billy Mays style or said, "Made in Scotland... you know the Scottish make good stuff"

Reguardless, the article has already been /.ed so here are some other sources: Discover, Treehugger, and DNA

I'm assuming this is one of those "the body does this beacuse its better in normal circumstances, but in the case of severe trauma it's not so good" kind of things... but can anyone clarify why the body's normal healing process is blocked for spinal injuries?

There's theory going around that our immune system is at fault for a lot of problems, possibly including this one. Basically your immune response has evolved to be so aggressive that it causes collateral damage to your own cells, like the scene in Team America when they blow up the Louvre in order to save Paris from the terrorist.

This is great for keeping you alive long enough to breed if you live in the wild without sanitation but sucks if you don't want your body to fall apart when you get older.

The Bad Astronomer says it's fake.

How can you have a positive slant vaccine article?

"Man gets immunized, doesn't get the sniffles..."

You expand the scale. You report on where's being hit by the targeted disease (and there are many) or not being hit hard--whether it be at the national level, state level, city level, or school level--and look at the immunization rates in these places.

Since the general population hates math and prefers personal stories, you can always focus on a particular unvaccinated child who died as a result. Report on how some kids can't be vaccinated (and on whom the vaccine just doesn't take) and are at risk because other kids who could be vaccinated weren't.

Vaccinations are a social responsibility. If you don't vaccinate your kid, you're putting everyone's kids at risk (and adults, of course, but mostly kids and old folks).

Yes thank you for pointing this out. I read something similar at a science-y blog the other day. Basically it comes about from assuming a particular form of a complex action as opposed to the standard real one. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc Basically there is a good more or less layperson explanation about it. All this hub-bub about time travel is exaggeration.

Sure, the program does teach abstinence over condoms, it still teaches condoms

The only programs shown to actually prevent transmission and decrease infection rates are ones that aggressive promote condoms like in Thailand.

Bush only mentioned condoms once in connection with preventing AIDS (in 2004) while mentioning abstinence hundreds of times. Laura Bush did not publicly promote condom use until 2005 when it was obvious that abstinence only methods were failing.

I hate people that sit around and bitch about other people not doing more while they do nothing themselves!

I have donated hundreds if not thousands of dollars to AIDS prevention programs. When they spend the money in Africa I want my donations to go to Condoms and education on their use.However, a lot of that was wasted because, if the Africa AIDS programs wanted US Gov't $$$ (many orders of magnitude more than what I can afford to give), they *HAD* to teach abstinence as a primary form of prevention.

I don't mind abstinence being taught along with ALWAYS promoting condom use... but abstinence for HIV that the Bush's promoted works about as well as the abstinence for teens that Sarah Palin promoted.

There is lots of skepticism that the asteroid strike "killed off [the] dinosaurs." I saw a study where a microbiologist claims that many factors contributed to the death of the dinosaurs, but mostly it was disease, a competing lifeform that grew rampant well after the strike. I don't remember his name because it was a TV show, but I'm sure you can track it down.

In the meantime, this is all I have to offer from the Google:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/04/29/new-study-casts-doubt-on-the-asteroid-strike-theory-of-dino-extinction/

At this point, because of the data we have available in the sediment record, the idea of the dinosaurs being destroyed by the asteroid strike is almost mythology. Keller's work has gone a long way to confirming that we still don't really understand exactly what happened.

--
Toro

Since when do laser-carved filament incandescents make the same light as 15W CFLs? A 15W CFL has the same lumen output as a traditional 60W incandescent.

This page says that the laser treatment boosted a 60W bulb to the output of a 100W bulb. Hardly the 3x increase you claim. And they say it's not ready for commercialization (for one, I have to wonder how long that nanostructured surface that gives the greater efficiency will last through hours of operation)

The high energy rays and penetrate deep into the atmosphere where they create nucleation points which increase cloud over. The inreased cloud cover reflects more energy into space and the planet will cool.

Why didn't you provide any citations? Perhaps because it was disproved in 2007.

Thirty seconds with google and the keywords "cosmic rays global warming" brought a wealth of stories describing research which found no correlation of any kind between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Sure, you'll find articles describing this theory, but it's called a "hypothesis," and "controversial" at best. And all those stories are older than the 2008 analysis of MODIS data.

Was that intended as a joke?

+1 Funny

Einstein not good in quantum mechanics..WTF?. He introduced the theory of light-wave duality. It's still taught in high school today.

He also said that "God doesn't play dice" and spent much of his academic career trying to prove it. I'll leave you with a general reference of his mistakes: http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/the-masters-mistakes.

Calling Chinese people quite good at mathematics, though not Einstein. I know a fair share of Chinese grad students, and I've seen pictures of Einsteins notes. I'm pretty sure Einstein was better at math than the average Chinese citizen. Oh.. the skill of Chinese drivers is just fine, but a person cant drive like a westerner on Chinese roadways, it would cause accidents.

It's obvious to me that you didn't comprehend what I said. Re-read, or ask somebody who has English language skills to help you (I'm serious and not Trolling. Math people often do have language problems. It is hypothesized that Einstein had dyslexia, but at least he wasn't in denial about his reading problems nor arrogant about his Math abilities).

Doctors scrub in and out. Otherwise their handwashing habits dont concern me.

That is illogical and unintelligent. It is not only common sense to wash your hands, but their are even right-now public service messages telling people to wash their hands because it spreads diseases. And if you work in a hospital were you touch other people all the time it makes sense. There are even statistical study's to validate this fact. Medical facilities are unfortunately breeding grounds for all sorts of diseases that spread easily. I could deduce without taking the time to educate myself (as I often do). This is yet another example of how Math and science people are not scientific in their practices nor even bother using the statistics that they learned in an intelligent or useful way.

I do have some cognitive bias. Getting all of the parts an RSA cryptosystem working correctly...

You "admit" (and hopefully not just rhetorically) to bias, which is good. The important thing is to realize that just because something is hard doesn't mean that only (or necessarily) "smart" people can accomplish it. Somebody once said "It's 99% perspiration". Never over-estimate the other 1%.

I left "particulary dumb" as a vague term that left some weasel space for the replier. I could say, someone who scores at the 25th percentile of his/her age group across categories (within the expected standard deviation ) in a well recognized and accredited standardized test, given in a fair environment. But that colors it quite unfairly.. So I left weasel space.

And you weaseled your way out of that one. I wish you people would just admit to be unintelligent instead of making excuses and coming up with over-the-top replies.

And yea, I think that people who work in Math all day think themselves brighter than the person who has been scooping the vegetables in the faculty cafeteria for the last 40 years. Almost to the same extent that a marathon runner considers himself more fit than a slashdot junkie. ;)

That just shows your prejudice, your arrogance and your stupidity. If you think that way then you shouldn't waste your time talking to me because I have done that work, and in fact I have never done any other job except what people like you would consider to be "menial". I'm sure my work experience helps to validate what you and other Math Fanboys think of me.

From my perspective your inability to use logic merely validates the fact that Mathematics does not make people smart, in fact it appears to have the opposite effect.

Just don't have any women on board, particularly Canadian women, otherwise the the Russians will kill each other trying to kiss her.

Mars Epic Fail (Didn't last even one month):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6955149/page/3/

Mars Epic Win:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/07/15/after-three-months-in-a-tin-can-six-men-end-simulated-mars-mission/