Slashdot Mirror

How about I look for what I actually claimed, which was the people were saying that cyclones were caused by global warming:

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=30541&Cat=1
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/97558/super-storms-linked-to-global-warming
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/global-weirding-how-global-warming-will-mean-more-cyclones-and-fewer-cyclones/
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/14/tropical-cyclones-warming.html

Oh look, about five seconds.

I'm neither genetic engineer nor patent lawyer, but my guess would be that what is patentable here is transporting the gene from one species to another one.

Not always. This, this, this, this ... all of them indicate that merely identifying the gene allows them to be patentable.

Not create. Not move from one species to another. Merely identifying the existence of it.

Sorry, but in my mind they're naturally occurring and have no business being patented.

If there is ice on Mars, then that means there is a source of Hydrogen (fuel) and Oxygen (oxidizer).
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-ice-sheet-map-climate.html

Well, I take some exception to that. The U.S. space program proved that no matter how dangerous the mission, there would always be volunteers. However, NASA (as far as we know) never forced men into capsules that they knew were doomed.

A few people have giving other Einstein quotes that don't go in the same direction. And they exist for a really simple reason: Einstein was a person, and like most people, his views changed over time. His early beliefs were close to deism, and over time he became more agnostic and in some of the comments made in his last few years (such as the quote given by langeljm below) closer to outright atheism (although his views were always complicated and changing enough that even this narrative is a simplification).

But none of this is really that relevant. There are clearly some very bright people who do very good science who are religious. Ken Miller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller is a prominent biologist and religious Catholic. Similarly, Robert Aumann is an Orthodox Jew who won a Nobel Prize for his work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aumann. While it is true that successful scientists are in general much less likely to be religious than the general population (see discussion here http://news.discovery.com/tech/are-scientists-atheists.html), some people are able to do very good work while still believing. The problem with ID proponents in a nutshell is that they can't keep straight which of of their beliefs fall into science and which fall into religion, and indeed by and large, they don't wan to.

But even this isn't that relevant to the matter at hand. In this particular case, the individual wasn't a scientist but a computer technician. And according to NASA he was fired for being disruptive, not for his actual beliefs. If it turns out that he was fired solely for his beliefs that will be a problem, but it is not likely. The ID people have a long history of claiming persecution where none exists. A very good example of this is how Expelled, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed Ben Stein's movie about ID being mistreated by the "scientific establishment", claimed that many people interviewed were fired or blacklisted for their pro-ID views, yet every case when actually examined turned out to be baseless. http://www.expelledexposed.com/ The same thing will probably happen here.

The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

I guess you don't keep up with the news: Military Chaplains Mull End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

I'm pretty sure that "Bible thumpers" weren't involved in the normalization of open homosexuality in the Armed Forces. I think the phrase you are looking for is "political correctness".

Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".

Try reading Bin Laden's Letter to America. His demands before his followers would stop trying to slaughter Americans are that Americans convert to Islam, and that the Constitution be replaced by Sharia law. Most Americans would consider forced religious conversion on pain of death, loss of the Bill of Rights, including the 1st Amendment, the treatment of women, the fact that a woman's testimony in court could only be treated as at most half that of a man's, the execution of homosexuals, the prohibition of alcohol in addition to all drugs, and many other consequences of Sharia to be a significant loss of freedom. The Islamists literally do hate American's freedoms as an offence to their values. There is no corresponding movement of any significance to impose that type of law in America by Americans, all fantasies and polemics aside.

Maybe letting homosexuals serve openly will chase off some of the religionists. It should improve Sub Sailor recruiting! (I kid! I kid!)

I'm sure, I'm sure.

Homosexuals constitute approximately 1.7% of the general population. Something like 80-90% of Americans are religious. You would have to work that gay 1.7% pretty hard to make up for any significant loss of religious Americans due to institutional hostility to their faith. But cheer up! I'm sure that the Omama administration finally putting women on nuclear submarines, the navy's diversity policy, and open homosexuality can only combine to make the independant launch capable nuclear submarine force ever more capable and reliable in the hands of its diverse, navy chosen future leadership.
  .

That guy is a complete xenophobe. I wouldn't trust a word he said. He goes on "crusades" liberating Egyptian relics from museums in other parts of the world. He personally dictated if you got to see off limits spaces, off limits relics in "his" sites in the country.

He got kicked when the fascists were overthrown.

That said, this is very interesting because that is the one mystery left (unless there is another door :P). Is there alien shit in there? is it just a pile of poop? If you watch any recent documentary about the pyramids, its always leaves you with a mysterious allure of the It is like finding jimmy hoffa or something.

http://news.discovery.com/history/great-pyramid-secret-door-mystery-111209.html

Their not useless, their causing cancer just as intended.

Yeah, about as much as 2 minutes aboard an airplane at 30.000 feet does.

It's not like it hasn't been done before.

Nobody picked me up on it but I meant to say I paid $600 a year roughly in NI contributions vs $50 a month private.

Also here are some stats about Norway: http://news.discovery.com/human/nations-quality-of-life-rankings.html

low dose don't cause mutations. The 'normal' bugs produce and overwhelm the fewer mutated bugs.

Low doses don't cause mutations? That's why there is no research on how low doses cause mutations and resistance

Koko has a tested IQ of between 70 and 95 on a human scale, where 100 is considered "normal."

Elephant outwits human on IQ test

The second link in summary leads to an article that is internally contradictory. That page from Discovery News is all over the place.
Which is not surprising given the bio of the author:

Klotz came to Brevard County, Fla. (aka The Space Coast) as a copy editor for the local paper 24 years ago. She switched to writing because it was obvious the reporters were having way more fun than the editors for the same money. After a year or so of writing for the business section,
Journalism major trying to wear the big girl shoes.

The Link to the planetary society page seems much more reliable.

..."The radiation you get from body scanners is the same as what you get in two minutes in an airplane at 30,000 feet." http://news.discovery.com/human/travel-body-scanners-radiation.html

But the feelings caused by having your liberty, freedom, and dignity taken away will last the rest of your life.

'Cancer causing radiation'? From microwave backscatter? Better not go anywhere that has microwave ovens, radars, or mobile phones then. Oops too late.

Or actually board a flight.

"The radiation you get from body scanners is the same as what you get in two minutes in an airplane at 30,000 feet." http://news.discovery.com/human/travel-body-scanners-radiation.html

But I'm afraid Team Reaper's been making a bit of a rally of late.

The advances you cite:

washing hands before surgery -- Joseph Lister, 1867
vaccinations -- Edward Jenner, 1796
antibiotics -- Alexander Fleming, 1928

Are from a while back, and I've had time to rally.

The US the highest infant mortality of any civilized nation. Fewer babies die in Croatia than the US. Tuberculosis is once again a major concern in American cities. Drug-resistant strains are becoming a real problem, and the doctors in charge are screaming panicky warnings that we may be approaching the end of the Age of Antibiotics. Life expectancies in the US are actually declining, mostly due to heart disease, diabetes and cancer from the industrialized crap we call food. We're eating beef rinsed in ammonia, product that is literally called "pink slime."

Sarah Palin and Megyn Kelly are actually convincing most Americans that healthcare is a frivolous luxury. I love those two!

Sad to say, Mortality Inc. looks like an "BUY" for the forseeable future.

That sounds unpleasant.

For the 98.5%*, yes.

The 1.5%

Sorry, but that idea only flies on Fox News. Actually, human activities cause 135 times as much CO2 emissions as volcanoes do.

It would be nice, but our brief moment in the sun has faded on that one. For a while, we had Discovery, Animal Planet, History Channel, and the like.

Now, we see things like Animal Planet running 'documentaries' on Dragons. http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/ Where they tell you how they will "Make you believe that dragons were real, and still might be."

Flynn Effect

(Link didn't work the first time)

Errm, IQ Scores are always centered at 100 by definition. Ergo average IQ score can't go up or down, only the raw survey scores can. Who would have thought that the very channel you praise for not dumbing down the populace would dumb down that fact.

Erm, no, sorry. IQ Scores are NOT always centered at 100 by definition. As raw scores shift higher, IQ scores will likewise shift higher until the the raw-score-to-IQ-score conversion process is renormalized. How often are they normalized? It wasn't an easy question to answer, but I found one website that claims they are only normalized "every 10 or so years".
http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/culture_iq_notes_5.html

Also, it seems that before the Flynn effect was discovered, there was no such periodic renormalizaion (which makes sense...why would you renormalize before anybody has even discovered that they've become unnormalized). Therefore at the time the Flynn effect was defined, scores were not normalized, and the Flynn effect was indeed described as IQ scores increasing over time. Look around the web. Every single reference to the Flynn effect I can find, even those from reputable sources, describe it as an increase in IQ scores over time. For instance, here's a page on it from a Psychology Professor at Indiana University:
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml

But congratulations on getting a +5 Informative for posting incorrect information. Maybe you should watch more Discovery Channel.

Flynn Effect (Link didn't work the first time)

Errm, IQ Scores are always centered at 100 by definition. Ergo average IQ score can't go up or down, only the raw survey scores can. Who would have thought that the very channel you praise for not dumbing down the populace would dumb down that fact.

Flynn Effect (Link didn't work the first time)

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/farmerssued.cfm

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/monsanto-sues-pennsylvania-farmer-for-saving-seeds.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/us/saving-seeds-subjects-farmers-to-suits-over-patent.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

I can find you literally HUNDREDS of articles about farmers getting sued by GM seed makers. Only a raving lunatic would say "they dont sue farmers"

This is a good example of the infotainment Discovery and all of its subsidiaries have used to replace what was once great, informative programming. Remember the long, droll documentaries you used to watch on the History Channel that were fascinating, somewhat layered, and informative? That all changed the day David M. Zaslav (former head of NBC, http://corporate.discovery.com/leadership/david-zaslav/) took the helm in 2007. Since then the organization has worked tooth and nail to dissolve its reputation as a place to learn something by replacing any programming focused on science, history, or biology with Big Log Muckers, UFO specials, End-of-the-World simulations, When Animals Attack and anything that can go out on a limb to find scientific proof for Biblical anecdotes. It follows the logic that those who are watching television are uneducated and then offers the lowest common demoninator in order to lull larger audiences. What a blight that man's leadership is.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/soon-seti-to-search-the-moon-for-alien-artifacts_749128.html

http://www.slashgear.com/seti-to-check-moon-for-signs-of-aliens-28204769/

http://news.discovery.com/space/seti-to-scour-the-moon-for-alien-tech-111227.html

I wonder if they'll find Daneel there?

It's a COPV, see here or page 11 here. The wrapping has probably shielded it enough during the atmospheric re-entry and then ripped away, or it could be from lower altitude flight. In fact NASA and ESA have already studied this object, and most responsible news outlets have explained it along with the newsreport. The only real question is which mission or ship it is from, but unfortunately that might never be found out.

Every scientist, tinker, chemist, and engineer who "accidently" found something great had an expressed purpose (at least in their own minds) and intention to the experiments/research they were conducting.

For example http://science.discovery.com/brink/top-ten/accidental-inventions/inventions-03.html
" 18-year-old chemist William Perkin wanted to cure malaria; instead his scientific endeavors changed the face of fashion forever and, oh yeah, helped fight cancer. "

While working over Easter break in his home lab on his malaria cure he made his discovery "that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple colour".

Or maybe you prefer the guy who left the lab a mess when he went on vacation.
http://science.discovery.com/brink/top-ten/accidental-inventions/inventions-01.html

Every scientist, tinker, chemist, and engineer who "accidently" found something great had an expressed purpose (at least in their own minds) and intention to the experiments/research they were conducting.

For example http://science.discovery.com/brink/top-ten/accidental-inventions/inventions-03.html
" 18-year-old chemist William Perkin wanted to cure malaria; instead his scientific endeavors changed the face of fashion forever and, oh yeah, helped fight cancer. "

While working over Easter break in his home lab on his malaria cure he made his discovery "that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple colour".

Or maybe you prefer the guy who left the lab a mess when he went on vacation.
http://science.discovery.com/brink/top-ten/accidental-inventions/inventions-01.html

Nah, NASA wouldn't do anything that sleazy.....
http://io9.com/5659951/nasa-caught-photoshopping-an-image-of-saturns-moons-what-were-they-trying-to-hide
http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-conspiracy-image-processing.html

This is why you can find good deals on great astronomy equipment - also some cheap astronomy equipment, too...

People see these "color enhanced" or "artist's impression" pictures and go buy a telescope, eye-pieces, etc. Then go out on a clear night and besides Juper and Saturn, which are pretty cool to look at, are unimpressed with all the little brown-smudgies in the sky, which are most of what Hubble & Co. make such beautiful images out of.

Considering that we JUST GOT SELF DRIVING CARS, which have been driving around California public roads without anyone being the wiser...

This crap of a law is SO FAIL.

Amend it to say: "None of this applies if the Driver is AI" and I'll think about it.

Oh, and before you reply "A human driver will need to watch the road just in case" PAH! There are already luxury cars that watch the road and stop you BEFORE you even noticed a problem. In fact, once the cars can talk to each other safely one can alert many others MILES AWAY that they slammed on their breaks because of an obstruction, and if it persists DIRECT TRAFFIC AWAY before it creates grid-lock.

Yes, this is it.

I remember when the Discovery Channel was actually educational and even thrilling, showing a packs of lionesses hunting gazelles and whatnot.

Now, it's a bunch of bullshit "reality" shows which all could be titled something like, "Ignorant wooden-acting rednecks hamming it up while doing tedious or dangerous jobs." Seriously, the West Coast Chopper guys?

Disco, get your fucking cameramen back out to the damn jungle or rainforest. I want to see strange animals and their mating habits again.

I can't wait for the SyFy movie based on the 'true story' :)

Here you go:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-lightning-strikes-twice.html

I submitted this story a while back but it never took off - the video of the robot assembling itself from spray foam is pretty cool:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/robot-builds-itself-with-foam-111020.html

"Because if what we've found so far is at least a somewhat representative sample, the overwhelming majority of planets tend to be either gas giants, frozen balls of rock and ice, or roasted balls of rock and lava. You have to be terribly imaginative to see life coming up on worlds like that."

There are plenty of life forms that live in unusual environments right here on this planet. Geothermal vent ecosystems for example:

Deep-sea bacteria form the base of a varied food chain that includes shrimp, tubeworms, clams, fish, crabs, and octopi. All of these animals must be adapted to endure the extreme environment of the vents -- complete darkness; water temperatures ranging from 2C (in ambient seawater) to about 400C (at the vent openings); pressures hundreds of times that at sea level; and high concentrations of sulfides and other noxious chemicals.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast13apr_1/
There are also bacteria that live in sulphuric acid in caves.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/guide/caves.html
It isn't unreasonable to think that life may have evolved in unusual environments elsewhere.

And more often than not, this "population correction" involves war and genocide. People will chose invading their neighbor or eliminating the "undesirables" of their own society over starving. They have for millenia.

What is your solution?

ORLY?

Yes, really.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028136.200-renewable-oil-ancient-bacteria-could-fuel-modern-life.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028135.100-prepare-for-the-renewable-oil-gush.html
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html
http://news.discovery.com/earth/bacteria-turn-coal-and-oil-into-renewable-energy.html
http://www.drfriendly.tv/PDFs/Huntley+Redalje200611.pdf

You might also be shocked to know that every country lies about their oil reserves to speculate on the rising prices. There are new oil fields being worked on right now that have enough capacity to last for years at current rate of consumption and some are kept secret for future development.

I've worked in the oil & gas industry for a while now, its second in corruption only to governments, if you think "peak oil" has come and gone it what they want you to think so that you are happy shelling out at the fuel pump. Even if you drive electric and have solar panels on your roof you still bought the electricity from a coal power plant and had your panels manufactured out of plastics made from oil.

There is a huge plastics plant being designed right now to cope with the extra oil... http://www.chemaweyaat.com/home/

Lots of other "Mega" projects on the drawing board. Stuff that takes 15 years to plan and another 30 years to finish building. They are increasing oil processing capacity with a look-ahead of 50 years, this would not be happening if we were in peak oil.

The article explains why the asteroid looks like a pixelated sprite taken from the era of Monkey Island.

For those that didn't want to bother reading both articles and just wanted to have a look at the image but then thought "WTF" after having a look at it:

"The individual pulses can be timed very accurately as well, so that the shape of the asteroid can be determined, too. If there is a bump on the asteroid, like a hill, then a pulse hitting that won’t travel quite as far as a pulse that hits a crater. It gets back sooner, and this can be measured. The spatial resolution of this method at the distance of YU 55 will be about 4 meters, so they’ll be able to make an image that’s about 100 pixels across of it."

image: http://news.discovery.com/space/2011/11/07/asteroid-2005-yu55-new-825.jpg

According to the discovery article, "[Sterling Allan] told FoxNews.com that Paul Swanson with the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems unit (SPAWAR) can vouch for the demonstration." Also, "FoxNews.com spoke with a man at SPAWAR who identified himself as Swanson, and who said only that he was "not in a position to talk to the press." Several other sources within the Navy and the Pentagoneither declined to comment or did not return messages."

Discovery, like myself, is still skeptical. However, if it's true someone from the SPAWAR was there, it's possible there's something to it.

When true scientists are asked about God the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence one way or the other.

When true scientists are asked about invisible unicorns the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence of them so most likely they don't exist. And if someone were to claim they exist they better have some proof to back those claims up.

Well here is the evidence of unicorns: http://news.discovery.com/videos/animals-mythical-unicorn-found-in-deer-form.html. ;-)

Bah ... it doesn't bother me, as long as these cameras still miss cars travelling at over 170 mph

Yes, I have a clue about how business works; I ran a contracting company for 3 years and learned some things the hard way; after that, I sold my interest to my business partner and went to a job with fewer headaches.

I agree that my knowledge of tax incentives is limited, but many governments have tax breaks for R&D.

Also, I'm referring to the car; this page should be up - http://news.discovery.com/autos/fisker-green-car-solyndra-scandal-111025.html. It's a safe bet that Fiskars (with an "a", not an "e") isn't getting subsidies for making scissors, but hey, they may be too.

Oh, it's silicon, not silicone that you are referring to; check your spelling and grammar before you insult someone. Perhaps you're just being "snarky".

Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?

You're the paranoiac, you tell me.

I'll do it for DNS-and-BIND; here's one - Solyndra.
Here's the next one - Fisker

I think you knew at least one answer when you made your post. If the US government supports a particular business, it should be on strict, well known criteria; not because some "civil servant" will personally benefit. Basically, Solyndra is a "cute and green" version of Halliburton and Steven and Allison Spinner, Steven Chu, (and others) are the Obama administration's version of Dick Cheney and Richard Perle. At least no one died from the Solyndra scandal (that we know of).

It makes more sense to simply exempt taxes on the amount of R&D that a company does for particular technologies and sales of a particular product.

Sound travels extremely well and fast in water, and is close to inescapable to ocean life. The noise pollution produced by boats is having adverse effects on at least whales and dolphins: http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-scream-noise-pollution.html http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7003587/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/noise-pollution-disrupts-whale-communication/

It looks like this.

The approach in TFA is similar to the story in Discovery, but uses different data. There's no big surprise that 1) they are doing this and 2) it might be useful.

Here's some stuff I turned up real quick with Google:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5402342.stm
http://dsc.discovery.com/survival/how-to-survive/how-to-survive-a-plane-crash.html
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/travelgetaways/4536344/detail.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-flight_safety_demonstration

... which would be unprofessional and probably reckless behaviour on behalf of the astronauts. One can understand the emotional reasons, but the huge efforts made for their safety would be in vain if they are not honest about their capabilities.

This is pretty normal among regular air force and navy aircrew.
If you have to go see the flight surgeon, there are two outcomes. 1. remain on flight status, or 2. get removed from flight status. There is no 'up'. Hell...one of the Shuttle crew had Parkinsons when he went up for the last time.

The main problem is going to probably be that Snoopy is tiny. Something this small is very hard to see even with very good telescopes.

I think that's the understatement of the century. How is this even going to be possible. From what I've always heard, Hubble can't even resolve things like this on the lunar surface.

http://news.discovery.com/space/apollo-10-search-snoopy-astronomy-110919.html

The Moon is 384,400 km away. At that distance, the smallest things Hubble can distinguish are about 60 meters wide. The biggest piece of left-behind Apollo equipment is only 9 meters across and thus smaller than a single pixel in a Hubble image

Are the Faulkes telescopes THAT much more powerful that they can resolve sometime of the same size at a significantly greater distances? I'm pretty certain the answer to that is no, so how are they doing it?

I know the UN was considering banning this kind of solution. Anyone know if they've changed their minds?

Lying to public officials, especially federal officers, is in and of itself a crime.

False. If a cop asks you where you were last night, and you say down at the corner bar when you were actually sleeping with your mistress, the act of lying to the cop isn't a crime. In rare cases, it might be obstruction of justice, but that's it.

Likely false. For example, ask Casey Anthony. Then read the statute under which she was convicted. Don't imagine that it's the only one. Are they questioning you concerning a felony? *DING*... you've committed a crime. Are you willing to bet that you're only being questioned concerning a misdemeanor? Because the police are not going to tell you that.

but even then mere lying isn't sufficient, it must be a material lie.

Materiality is a low bar. And if you read the linked statutes, you'll note that materiality is not necessarily required. If you're taking a lie detector examination, you're answering questions under oath. Public officials are not fools. You can study the entire criminal code of the jurisdiction that you happen to be in, as well as looking for specific provisions pertaining to taxation, permitting, and other topics where intentional inaccuracy is highly frowned upon, or you can assume that lying to a public official is generally a bad idea. ACs are big on giving weasel advice where it's not their butts on the line, but as the rest of us can see, taking your advice is a demonstrably bad idea.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/parasite-makes-cat-urine-sexy-to-rats-110822.html In this example, the microorganism makes the rat attracted to cat urine, so it's reproductive cycle can advance. Very cool. Very creepy.

One religion that surely influences epidemics is Scientology. In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, they were out there telling people to avoid all that nasty "Western" medicine and try homeopathic cures. Which involve drinking lots of water. And we know what drinking the water in Haiti can do for you...

http://news.discovery.com/human/amid-desperation-fake-cures-and-false-hope-in-haiti.html