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- 3D chips are decades old and have never materialized.

24-layer flash chips are currently produced by Samsung. IBM works on 3D chip cooling. Just because it "never materialized" before, doesn't mean it won't happen now.

- Memristors do not enable any new approach to computing, as there are neither many problems that would benefit form this approach, nor tools. The whole idea is nonsense at this time. Maybe they will have some future as storage, but not anytime soon.

Memristors are great for neural network (NN) modelling. MoNETA is one of the first big neural modelling projects to use memristors for that. I do not consider NNs a magic solution to everything, but you must admit they have plenty of applications in computation-expensive tasks.

And while HP reconsidered its previous plans to offer memristor-based memory by 2014, they still want to ship it by 2018.

- Photonics is a dead-end. Copper is far too good and far too cheap in comparison.

Maybe fully photonic-based CPUs are way off, but at least for specialized use there are already photonic integrated circuits with hundreds of functions on a chip.

- Spintronics is old and has no real potential for ever working at this time.

MRAM uses electron spin to store data and is coming to market. Application of spintronics for general computing may be a bit further off in the future, but "no potential" is an overstatement.

- Quantum computing is basically a scam perpetrated by some part of the academic community to get funding. It is not even clear whether it is possible for any meaningful size of problem.

NASA, Google and NSA, among others, think otherwise.

So, no. There really is nothing here.

I respectfully disagree. We definitely have something.

It is fascinating that we continue to find artifacts from the ancient world that show far more sophistication that people today generally realize. This finding is one. The Antikythera Mechanism is another. I recently read a fascinating article about ancient Roman military medicine which was so advanced that it was not equaled in some ways until the 1900s. I have little doubt that there is much more to be found. Our ancestors could be quite astonishing in their abilities, and very human in their flaws.

For a less sensational take on it: http://www.livescience.com/41075-coral-castle.html

You contradict yourself.

Are you seriously trying to claim that we have no proven science?

Yes. So are all scientists.

Then in your last paragraph you state.

Absolutely. Math and logic are able to show proofs all of the time. But science never does.

That's repetition, not contradiction. I say there is no proof in science, then I say there is no proof in science. Though, in your defense, I made a typo: I should have capitalized "logic" as "Logic", so perhaps that threw you off.

I think Biology, Physics, and Chemistry have as much proven work as math does. As to Logic, well, I'm not sure you know what 'Logic' is if you are claiming it's a field of science.

They don't, but luckily science isn't based on what you think, only repeatable observation. And no, Logic is not a science, it's an artificially constructed and self-referencing system, therefore it can have proofs. And it does! Scientific theories are never proven because they are observations of nature, which is infinite and always changing (as far as we have so far observed, anyway).

Dog breeding is not the missing evidence for evolution, and neither is a flu virus. I'm pretty sure that they point in the right direction, but that does not get us the missing proof.

There is no missing evidence for the facts or theory of evolution. Dog breeding is one example of the fact of evolution. Flu virus mutation is another. Those facts, plus thousands more, contribute to the body of knowledge we call the Theory of Evolution (ToE). A theory can never be missing evidence, though will always allow for new evidence. There is no one ultimate fact that will finally prove a theory to be true at all times and in all conditions.

I never said evolution was wrong, in fact quite the opposite I stated that I believe the theory will be proven in time. I stated it's not proven, and for some reason you refuse to accept that.

I don't refuse to accept that you said the ToE isn't proven, because you did. I do refuse to accept, however, that it can be proven, since it can't be. No theory can be. The ToE (like all theories) can only be strengthened by new supporting evidence, modified or nullified by new conflicting evidence, or incorporated into new theories as our knowledge of nature expands. Like when Newton's Theory of Gravity was incorporated into Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The fact of gravity never went away while we sorted it out. No one floated into the sky while we looked for the missing evidence. We just learned that Newton's observations no longer apply in all conditions at all times, e.g., at speeds approaching c , but are perfectly valid in "everyday" conditions.

Do I get to burn in hell for not believing like you do?

You are already burning in the hell of ignorance. At this point I'll have to assume you are either remaining willfully ignorant to the formal definition of scientific theory, and are therefore a troll, or you are just incapable of learning anything new. Either way, it's pointless for me to continue to explain it to you. There are plenty of resources online that do a wonderful job illustrating what a scientific theory is, if you ever care to educate yourself about it.

Perhaps you personally believe it's proven and don't want more data. You are not alone, but that is a belief and not a scientific point of view (which claims it's a good theory with lots of promise). You having convictions in that belief is different from a person that believes a deity did it how exactly?

A "theory" is something which fits a lot of facts. it is not an unproven idea. You are simply wrong. Look it up, like here: http://www.livescience.com/21491-what-is-a-scientific-theory-definition-of-theory.html In Science we are supposed to apply Occam's Razor, and take the simplest theory that matches all the data given. A theory is also, as the definition is given, falsifiable, that is it can be proven wrong if new data shows up that contradicts it. "A deity did it", a) can cover any arrangement of facts imaginable, so has no predictive value, b) is the cosmic equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine, something vastly more complicated than anything being explained. c) cannot be evaluated as better or worse than the creation myths of thousands of other religions. So if you want your pet hypothesis to be granted greater weight than the thousands of discredited ones from historical religions, you have to find convincing good reasons why yours fits the facts better than any of these ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths )

Think really hard about that one, because it's not any different.

So back to what I closed with, claiming your belief is better than someone else' belief only works with company that believes like you do. I'm not belittling your belief, telling you it's wrong, or asking you to question your belief. I'm suggesting that you recognize your belief for what it is, and understand that it conflicts with other beliefs. When we have the missing proof, then we can all jump up and down yelling 'told ya so'.

If someone says that the sun moves around the earth, or that it is pulled across the sky each day by a god on a chariot pulled by horses, you are going to agree with me that those ideas are potentially meaningful stories to someone, and ought to be studied in mythology, but are not worthy of modern people. I don't think that religious people should be belittled, any more than one should kick someone because they only have lost a leg, or have cancer. You are afflicted with a mental illness, passed on to you by you ancestors. It prevents you from thinking rationally on certain subjects. The world view of the mentally ill are bent such that they think their sick perceptions are true. That's the nature of it. I respect you, the human, and your ancestors, but the infection does not get any respect.

You have an meme-infection, and the infection ought to be cured, but that is very difficult to do in practice. You are a cripple and I would like to help you, but all you will do is spout nonsense and venom at me in the best case, and threaten violence in the worst case. And most of humanity is infected. Zombie movies are real. I should just ignore to ridiculous eruptions, much as one would the ravings of someone delirious with fever. If you press me, however, I have the choice of either agreeing with you to let you calm yourself, or trying, no doubt vainly, to express how you are misguided. I know there is a human in there that deserves to be saved, so once in a while I will try the latter, but it is almost always wiser to pursue the former course.

Being silent does nothing to help you: It abandons you to your fate. It does help me: It lightens the burden on myself, so that I can work on other tasks more likely to succeed, and less likely to breed resentment. So the rational argument to give you silent forbearance is fairly strong, but it should never be misconstrued as true respect of paleolithic superstition. That would be ridiculous.

I have neurosarcoidosis; it is a degenerative autoimmune condition. Like many others with NS, many people with multiple sclerosis, everyone with macular degeneration, many with Lupus, and even some with conditions most do not associate with light sensitivity such as rheumatoid arthritis -- I am highly sensitive to certain spectrums of light. With Lupus, and NS there are often issues with natural sunlight as well. I have special glasses that filter out parts of the blue spectrum, IR, UV, and most the red spectrum. They are similar to shooters glasses, but about 5x as expensive due to the IR coating requirement still being limited to NOIR. Some of you who work with higher powered lasers are probably familiar with NOIR. Lowbluelights is another company that makes specialty filters for things like smart phone screens, and has a few (but expensive) LED fixtures for those of us with special frequency needs.

Right now I can buy amber incandescent lights for $120 for a case of 40. I can buy a single 7w low-blue LED for $35... In terms of dollars its going to be an expensive proposition when I can't buy incandescent bulbs anymore, even if I have to shell out more for amber bulbs as it is.

  There is one maker of laptops that will work with people with custom needs, and that is Toshiba. They were willing to put in custom LEDs in my laptop to make it tolerable when they learned it was a disabilities issue. I wish Toshiba was as accommodating for TV's and computer monitors with the same issue (in fairness I haven't tried to get a custom back lighting TV from them yet, but I did try to purchase custom back lighting monitors from them without success.) I had to void the warranty on both of my ASUS monitors to get the back lighting correct as ASUS was not any more accommodating. The custom frequency LEDs exist (although they still tend to emit IR), but the demand isn't enough for the big makers to notice the need yet.

The challenges can be overcome switching to LEDs, but its not going to be cheap for those of us with needs for non-blue, no UV, and no-IR lighting. The market is at least two million people who have conditions like myself that benefit from them. People don't realize that the issue also includes: smart phones, tvs, monitors, laptops, flashlights, and light fixtures. I wish some of the larger appliance makers would wake up to the issue and I could just go buy a TV without having to make a parts swap. There is a growing body of evidence that it might be in everyone's interest to demand LEDs in those nicer frequency ranges: http://www.livescience.com/31949-led-lights-eye-damage.html

Gee. You other nerds on Slashdot, you're all so THMART.

Except when you're arguing with somebody who's actually aced a college level course in Anthropology.

"The larynx, or voice box, sits lower in the throat in humans than in chimps, one of several features that enable human speech. Human ancestors evolved a descended larynx roughly 350,000 years ago. We also possess a descended hyoid bone -- this horseshoe-shaped bone below the tongue, unique in that it is not attached to any other bones in the body, allows us to articulate words when speaking. "

http://www.livescience.com/15689-evolution-human-special-species.html [livescience.com]

btw -- FYFY (fixed you for you)

BTW, NONE of the shit you or the other guy said knocked down what I was saying about chimps -- they're not going to be human. Get over it. God, I can't get some of you geeks. Next time try somebody in your own high school.

I can't help but imagine you protested my remarks out of some desire to live out some fantasy related to your formative-years viewing of a "planet of the apes" sequel.

Gee. You other nerds on Slashdot, you're all so THMART.

Except when you're arguing with somebody who's actually aced a college level course in Anthropology.

"The larynx, or voice box, sits lower in the throat in humans than in chimps, one of several features that enable human speech. Human ancestors evolved a descended larynx roughly 350,000 years ago. We also possess a descended hyoid bone â" this horseshoe-shaped bone below the tongue, unique in that it is not attached to any other bones in the body, allows us to articulate words when speaking. "

http://www.livescience.com/15689-evolution-human-special-species.html

btw -- FYFY (fixed you for you)

BTW, NONE of the shit you or the other guy said knocked down what I was saying about chimps -- they're not going to be human. Get over it. God, I can't get some of you geeks. Next time try somebody in your own high school.

Take your argument up with the folks at the IPPC. Even they admit it.

And you must have missed the little thing about volcanos erupting underneath the Arctic in the past decade.

A quick search got me:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys.html

same study (I think) with a pro-feminist women-are-smarter-than-men spin near the end
http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html

Not sure about its pedigree because it's pushing a political narrative, but here's more corroborating evidence suggesting biological basis for gender role/behavior
http://www.parentingscience.com/girl-toys-and-parenting.html

Each of these has varying amounts of placative language to satisfy the PC crowd, so, as always, skepticism is the rule of the day when investigating research that's been contaminated with political correctness. I think it is obvious that masculine/feminine traits, both physical and behavioral, boil down to levels of different hormones as one matures.. They manipulate aspects of temperament and behavior that drive people towards some directions and away from others. The reason this is so politically charged is that it conflicts with the liberal dogma that says gender typical behavior is based on social conditioning.

Worse!! The Chinese are invading Roswell New Mexico!! http://www.livescience.com/28428-conspiracy-beliefs-by-political-party.html

I am ever thankful that when the new magic of the world of men, the LHC, was set loose, that the world did not fall into shadow, for there are deeper and darker pits than even those found in Moria.

...can someone explain to me this (american) obsession with zombies?

I can't explain it, for me it was just a weird cult film from the 1970's, pure 'safe' entertainment. Why do people pay to go on rollercoasters, but wouldn't want to get on on a commuter train if they knew it would crash? I did some googling and found these explanations. the first from LiveScience ...

The reason for this popularity may trace back to an unexpected source, according to a new analysis: In fact, zombies may be helping us cope with the aftermath of World War II.

"We use fictional narratives not only to emotionally cope with the possibility of impending doom, but even more importantly perhaps to work through the ethical and philosophical frameworks that were in many ways left shattered in the wake of WWII," Stanford literary scholar Angela Becerra Vidergar said in a statement.

Vidergar, a doctoral student in comparative literature, analyzed mass disaster stories in pop culture for her dissertation. She found that mass disasters such as the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened up new realizations about the human capacity for violence, casting doubt about the upsides of modernized society.

"Instead," Vidergar said, "we are left with this cultural fixation on fictionalizing our own death, very specifically mass-scale destruction."

Predictions about the end times are nothing new, of course. Doomsday believers have been promising that the end is near for centuries, with the December 2012 "Mayan apocalypse" just one in a long line of failed predictions.

In the aftermath of traumatic events like World War II and the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks, interest seems to spike, Vidergar said. Shows like the National Geographic Channel's "Doomsday Preppers" profile people who go beyond pondering the end and start planning for it.

Though few real-world preppers worry about zombies, fantasies about the zombie apocalypse make up a large chunk of post-apocalyptic pop culture, Vidergar found.

Shows like AMC's "The Walking Dead" and movies like 2007's "28 Weeks Later" help people work through how they'd act in a survivalist situation, she said.

"Zombies are important as a reflection of ourselves," Vidergar said. "The ethical decisions that the survivors have to make under duress and the actions that follow those choices are very unlike anything they would have done in their normal state of life."

What's more, Vidergar said, zombie apocalypse tales actually invoke hope amidst destruction and death, as survivors battle for their lives.

"Even if as a society we have lost a lot of our belief in a positive future and instead have more of an idea of a disaster to come, we still think that we are survivors, we still want to believe that we would survive," Vidergar said. http://www.livescience.com/27287-zombie-apocalypse-world-war-ii.html

And from http://www.policymic.com/articles/29334/the-walking-dead-why-are-americans-so-obsessed-with-zombies

In order to understand the connection between zombie movies and American unhappiness, we have to start at the beginning. The first popular zombie movie was in 1968, a tumultuous year in American politics with the Vietnam War, the unrest at the Democratic Convention, and the general malaise of the 1960s. The film, (which, incidentally, was one of the first movies to have a black man play a lead character), “terrified” audiences around the country with its portrayal of huge mobs eating all they come into contact with and destroying society in a blithering mass. The film’s iconic images of the dead, staring blankly into the eyes of horrified survivors, are not hard to tie to the growing disconnect between the youth and the more established generations, th

there is nothing in the biology that makes kenyans faster runners than other countries

Actually, there is some truth to why Kenyan's are faster than other countries. It is physiology related to how the African body compares to that of the caucasian body. There was a study back in 2010, that looked into this. Note that since 1968, the world record holders in the 100m dash have all been of African descent.

The conclusion drawn by the study was that humans of African (vs Caucasian or Asian) descent have proportionally longer legs compared to their torso, so this gives them a higher center of mass and allows them to run faster, even faster than someone that is taller, but has shorter legs.

Compare this with a swimmer. The ideal swimmer's body is one with proportionally shorter legs and a longer torso since it is the arms that provide the majority of propulsion. This is why you see humans of Caucasian descent have success in swimming.

Not all the pyramids, those of Chanchan in Peru are in the midst of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world and the largest pyramid of all, the Great Mound near Kehokia, is in the Great Plains of North America. My time was off a bit though, it was during the period of 10,500-5,500 years ago that the Sahara was grasslands.

Is this the same federal govt that developed movies and campaigns saying that smoking pot would cause you to go insane...

Why Pot Makes Some People Psychotic

People who smoke pot may be at increased risk for psychosis if they have a certain genetic marker, a new study finds.

The results show people with this genetic marker who use cannabis are twice as likely to experience psychosis compared with those who use the drug but do not have the genetic marker.

Among people who use the drug every day, the risk for psychosis increases sevenfold for those who have the genetic marker.

The Marijuana-Psychosis Connection Goes Both Ways In Teens

That said, this is apparently also very old, so I'm not holding my breath ever seeing this in reality. (That is a link to basically the same synopsis of the same guy's research, from 2006.)

Shows what he claims; the business of producing alcohol for consumption is blocking his research and efforts.
In a Nutt shell he's fighting Budwiser, just one of the many companies that would involve themselves in blocking this.

The effects of alcohol are occasionally fun to experience, but what aren't fun are a. attempting to get drunk and failing because it takes a lot, b. attempting to get drunk, overshooting and being too drunk, and c. even after drinking exactly the right amount, getting a hangover because you had to drink a lot to get there. I totally applaud this research.

That said, this is apparently also very old, so I'm not holding my breath ever seeing this in reality. (That is a link to basically the same synopsis of the same guy's research, from 2006.)

The thing is they are likely exactly correct about that. The thing go to do is to change the framework that guided the behavior to begin with. The only way to do that is to have a clearly defined right to privacy. Now the Fourth Amendment can be argued as granting the right to privacy, unfortunately it isn't that clear cut.

The second thing you have to do is put in another amendment that says the plain language of the constitution means what it says. Words like "Shall" and "Shall Not" mean what the dictionary says and get rid of the tens of thousands of loopholes that have already been drilled into the Constitution over the years. You see those loopholes set precedent that make any kind of right to privacy worth about as much as your right to free speech or to bear arms.

Until you create a clear Constitutional limit that "you shall not cross" and start doing things like removing the ambiguity from words like "shall" there is no legal standard to use as a hammer. That means the constitutional framework that might be used to stop this kind of thing is riddled with loopholes. Legislatures are very skilled at exploiting these loopholes to do end runs around Constitutional rights. That means your framework that could stop this kind of thing is worthless.

Want to stop this kind of thing from happening? Demand the removal of Constitutional ambiguity and embrace Constitutional constructionism.

A curve can make glare worse by focusing the light

Indeed...

Marijuana, which is no more a drug than anything in my spice rack, yes

The active ingredient in marijuana is THC.

No shit, Sherlock. Ever tried smoking some nutmeg? Not that I would recommend it, but it's perfectly legal to possess and, when smoked, is purported to have psychotropic qualities. Granted, I haven't actually tried that one myself, but I can tell you that smoking dried banana peels can get you pretty fucked up.

Anyway, considering that I have nutmeg in my spice rack, my quoted statement above is factually sound.

It is as much a drug as the nicotine in tobacco, psilocybin in certain mushrooms, or any other drug for that matter.

Or the caffeine in coffee, the theobromine in chocolate, or any of a thousand other substances people dose themselves with all day, every day, with no legal repercussions. Hell, even oxygen has been noted to have psychoactive properties under the right use conditions.

Sorry, did you have a point?

Marijuana, which is no more a drug than anything in my spice rack, yes

The active ingredient in marijuana is THC. It is as much a drug as the nicotine in tobacco, psilocybin in certain mushrooms, or any other drug for that matter.

This isn't new, "The idea that the human brain sees tools as an extension of the body is an old one. Now scientists have some proof that it's true." Link: http://www.livescience.com/9664-brain-sees-tools-extensions-body.html

That's not very sporting of you. Beating them up is much more fun.

Don't be a nitwit.
Google is your friend. That page links here, and here's the damn "reputable peer reviewed Scientific Journal".
And just so you know, Contrary to what the mainstream media would have you believe, Men's Rights Advocacy isn't for hate-mongers, its memebers are frequently also Women's Rights Activists, and many vocal members are Women. It's actually the opposition that's hateful. The feminists have a majority voice in media and politics right now, so I don't blame you if you adopt their easy to believe lies without wondering why they're not based on any science, but untestable opinionated ideas instead...

Interestingly, ABC also brought us D is for Dad and Dumb" the weekend of this past Father's Day... Wha? But isn't that kind of... anti-men? You wouldn't have a segment like that on mother's day eh? Interesting that I made this comment on the 20/20 article page about the "manosphere", and provided a link to the source of some of their material that proves that they were purposefully factually wrong about A Voice for Men -- They cited "hate speech" that's an example of will get you banned...

Protected by the anonymity of the Internet, men feel free to post hateful and violent comments. Posts such as "I really wouldn't mind shooting a [expletive] dead in the face, they are evil, all of them," and "Women are the natural enemies of men" are commonplace on sites like "A Voice for Men," a Manosphere blog run by Paul Elam.

Search that quote, the page it appears on AVFM is here, where he says this about that comment:

No Redpill, fuck this kind of post. It has been sent to the trash where it belongs, and I am willing to do the same with your username if you ever post this kind of garbage to my website again.

As expected, all of the comments that demonstrate the ABC article as biased and factually wrong have been deleted from it.

Oh, but this is Slashdot, so of course you and the mods can think for your selves, eh? You don't need help "tracking" any information "origin to its roots".

+1 redundant please, and thank you.

There is only one thing that will bring true freedom from surveillance and that is a massive Coronal Mass Ejection EMP event.

On top of the corrections that the others have heaped on here, you've got some misconceptions about QM and chemistry.

the new electrical interaction with the other atom would cause the electrons' WF to collapse and molecules wouldn't form.

Uh, it's not like molecules can't form if there's not some QM going on. "Having a waveform" isn't, like, a requirement for forming molecules. I'm not sure that sort of idea even makes sense. But say you're measuring how many molecules there are. The waveform definitely has to collapse once you know how many molcules there are. Or a version of you knows a discreet number in one of the worlds that was spawned.

as the electrons' wave functions immediately collapse and the electrons spiral into the nucleus.

Yeah, the collapse doesn't really have that sort of effect on the atom. The waveform is a collection of everywhere the electron could be. When it collapses, it chooses one. I mean, I guess one of those possibilities could be the start of... what is that? Lowering it's energy state? Yeah, that's possible, but there has to be a reason it does that. Like, if it's an atom in the middle of a lightning strike. The vast majority of the waveform is going to have the electron jumping to a higher energy state, on account of all that energy around it, but there's a chance it'll go lower.

Anyway, there's a question out there about how big the system can get before a collapse. You seem to think that individual electrons have to collapse because they're interacting with the nucleus. But no, the waveform can encompass the entire atom. It doesn't matter how the electron interacts with the nucleolus, the whole thing is in superposition until it interacts with something. How big does that go? if a whole atom what about molecules? What about people? Planets? Answer: I dunno. But it appears that QM effects are constrained to small things. But, since all larger things are made up of smaller things, those effects propagate, we see the butterfly effect, and the whole world cannot be considered to be deterministic. It's more like probabilistic. Life is a pachinko game.

but we have observed quantum behaviour in things as big as a virus

Huh, really? That's neat. Got a link? I mean, news about the physicists gearing up to do that experiment made the rounds around 2009. But I can't seem to find out their results. Indeed, this article from 2012 seems to imply that the German and Spanish guys failed. Still, in 2012 they showed QM effects on a molecule of 100 atoms (a far cry from the billion of atoms that a virus has) which is something.

God, I need to read more about this. Apparently this is one of those points of contentions that has been around forever:
QM observer
Mind-body
Wigner's Friend Which, as a thought experiment, includes a separate person in the system existing in quantum superposition (IE, it has a waveform to collapse).

But I think it's put to rest by the many-world interpretation. It offloads the question of "which one happens when?" to "well if they all happen, which one do I/we experience?". You know, I really don't have the math or physics chops to really understand all this, but the many-world interpretation feels to jive more with the rest of what I know. That's kind of the definition of a bias, but meh.

Why do you think that a link to the BBC site implies they were the first to report on it? LiveScience reported on it a week ago.

Apparently not... artificial lights are the reason people drift into either being a "morning person" or "night owl"

http://www.livescience.com/38604-camping-resets-circadian-rhythms.html

When you have faith, true faith you see the weird man-made scaffolding of intelligent design theories as unnecessary and counterproductive. Where God seems to conflict with science some choose to believe that one is right and the other is wrong when the truth is that both are in harmony and it is our understanding of both that is flawed. Those who read only their own ephemeral rules, theories and prejudices into the bible have not accepted the spirit which is necessary to guide each of us through the poetry of God's creation whenever it seems to conflict with the logic of what we think we know.

A faithful person also knows (as any honest scientist should know), that those "gaps" where God must exist are enormous. The amount of her universe(s) we truly understand is vanishingly small, far less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe is known to us. What we know is certainly smaller than ourselves, our brain, a leaf of grass, , DNA, atoms, quarks, strings and everything. While we've come to learn more about each of these things with each passing day, we should accept that a scientist 50 or 100 years from now would look at the social constructs we know as scientific beliefs as being remarkably simplistic. Even for agnostics and atheists who choose to disbelieve in a universal creator with more embedded intelligence than the 3 pounds of chemicals within their brains, the Judeo-Christian bible contains remnants of the human story which pre-dates agriculture and civilization. In this age of short attention spans we need such an anchor to counter-balance pop-cultural fads and give us a longer view of humanity.

Somebody photoshop a top hat, goggles and pocketwatch for the first steampunk insect! http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/056/820/i02/planthopper-insect-leg-gears.jpg?1379008166

Absolutely. The helium supply on earth is fixed, it's hard to make any without kicking up a big mess, and we're going to run out, just when we need it for air transport because we won't have hydrocarbon fuel any more.
http://www.livescience.com/38990-looming-helium-shortage.html

I don't know where you are getting your information from, but I'd love to see your source.

How about the Japanese government? "The murasoi fish â" similar to a rockfish â" was contaminated with 254,000 becquerels (Bq) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of radioactive cesium, according to a study released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Daily Mail reports. "

Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?

a marine biologist from Stanford University found radioactive tuna chilling out in California. But I'm sure it was just an isolated case.

Oh, and you know, the disaster was awhile ago, so I'm sure radioactivity has dropped since then. Unless, you know, it increased 8 fold instead...

Well... 300 tons of radioactive death water a day probably isn't anything to be too concerned about... we can always remain skeptical and demand more citations, more proof, etc. Kinda like if I back into your car, we can sit and haggle about how badly your car was hit ("it's only a scratch!"), or that you have a really nice car and I don't, so you shouldn't be so upset... or you know, logic like that. Instead of, I don't know, say... taking responsibility.

Giant Canyon Discovered Under Greenland Ice Sheet

While flying over the ice sheet, scientists over the past three decades have measured the depths of the canyon using a radar system that operates at frequencies transparent to radio waves—from around 50 megahertz to 500 megahertz. A pulse of energy is sent down to penetrate through the ice, bounce off the bedrock, and travel back to the radar system. (Also read: "'Shocking' Greenland Ice Melt: Global Warming or Just Heat Wave?")

'Grand Canyon' of Greenland Discovered Under Ice Sheet

Reports are, it tasted lousy, due to nearly zero fat content. Additionally, "real" beef has flavor overtones resultant from the feed the animal was raised on. Thus, corn-fed beef tastes different from grass-fed beef, even if both cows came from the same cows.

I don't expect vat-raised hamburger, much less steak, being commercially available anytime soon. . . . . simply because if it doesn't TASTE good and have the "mouth feel" of genuine beef, you're not going to get enough buyers to make it a commercial success. . .

Lets say you have 100 cows of the same breed, and you have 5 fields, each with a different type of grass. Lets say you put 20 cows in each field and allow for 2-3 years to pass. What would be the end result, as far as taste goes? Each field - unique diet input - is going to create a unique taste in the meat. You can eat a steak from a cow from each field, and if your taste sense is sharp enough, you will be able to tell a subtle difference between each of the fields.

The Matrix - the environment - is VERY important, in a number of subtle ways. I would guess that epigenetics and mRNA play a role in all of this. Each field/grass is going to provide different mRNA to the cows, which will have subtle effects on the way their meat develops. A lab and a natural field are going to provide different Epigenetic Signals (inputs), so we should naturally expect to see different outputs.

This link explains this concept a bit further: Affects of mRNA.

The first time I read about this concept, I was instantly reminded of this Jesus quote, from the Gospel of Thomas: (7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."

Just came back to this. I'm curious, do you know of anyone who's published such tests? I'd be really interested to see something like that.

http://www.expertfoods.com/FAQ/labelaccuracy.php
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/action-plan/food-safety-regulatory-forum/presentations/discussion-paper/eng/1369936679236/1369936805623
http://www.cspinet.org/foodlabeling/
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/label-etiquet/nutrition/res-rech/index-eng.php
http://www.healthline.com/health-blogs/diet-diva/are-food-labels-accurate
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/prevention/nutrition/news/study_food_labels.aspx
http://www.livescience.com/26799-calorie-counts-inaccurate.html

Most of this is about the misrepresentation of calorie counts, but there are links to other studies and references to other nutritional discrepancies too. The amazing thing is that these studies have been going on since 1998, have been published, and yet nothing seems to be improving yet.

The phrasing "despite many caveats, our results suggest" doesn't mean "we have shown...", it means "if we make a whole bunch of other unsupported assumptions, maybe...".

Well that's an interesting interpretation, from a person who confuses inter-glacial temperature change over many millennia with a similar number of degrees toward a global hothouse over a few hundred years.

'Caveats' likely means possibly-mitigating factors that they considered but which didn't negate their hypothesis. I have never seen the term "caveats" used to mean "unsupported assumptions" in a scientific paper (that would be setting themselves up for quick dismissal, which is no way to get published) especially when the word is bracketed by "our results are striking" and an evolutionary shortfall x 10,000 when even a factor of 2 or 20 would be considered worrisome.

In fact, they discuss the caveats in the appendices.

Normally, it would be kind of weird to debate this study and encounter dismissals like those you've set out. 'Didn't take migration into account'-- Really?? The paper is based on data about species that reach back into the geologic past. And I never expected to see a disclaimer along the lines of 'We narrowed our examination to species known for their immobility'. IOW, over time those creatures moved however they could to try to adapt.

However, in this case its not weird when you clearly didn't consider the study in good faith and instead attacked it with whatever cheap shots came to mind. No doubt its a familiar attitude to just about anyone reading this, the compulsion to misuse good diction to try to reframe an issue in accordance with market fundamentalism (which, embarrassingly enough, seems married to religious fundamentalism once again... both traditions devoted as they are to producing 'teaming masses').

As for the trend in scientific outlook, here is a sample:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0106/Climate-change-models-flawed-extinction-rate-likely-higher-than-predicted
http://www.livescience.com/16307-climate-path-migration-amphibian.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6970/full/nature02121.html
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1876.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

Ah, the classic left wing approach to trying to paint economics as good-people-vs-bad-corporations. This isn't about "allowing industry" to do anything, it's about not destroying the global economy, the economy that we need to grow in order to be able to make the changes that we need to make in order to reduce population growth and carbon emissions.

Throwing what you get from people back at them (sans data) in reverse is not considered clever anymore. Empty homilies laden with unsupported assumptions (economics>ecology, regulation destroys the economy, etc.) are also unconstructive. Try some humility next time you have the urge to paint an opposing viewpoint as "stupid and unscientific", because the 'more CO2 = good' line you were towing is in fact an Exxon / Koch funded talking point modeled on the "smoking is healthy" propaganda the tobacco industry tried to put across-- you've fallen for their rank denialism.

Ever notice how sliding a desk across a floor is really heard to do, then gets easier?
It's because it's levitating part of the mass on trapped sound waves under the sliding feet...

I don't think so. I think the desk is an example of Stick/slip, not sound wave levitation...

Of course this acoustic levitation stuff isn't new, every few years someone comes up with crap like this... Or somehow suggests that similar standing sound waves which cause sonoluminescence can be used for stuff like cold fusion.

Ask and you shall receive, my friend. http://www.livescience.com/38078-pine-island-glacier-iceberg.html

Don't mean since Gustave Whitehead first took flight? Not the Wright Bros? http://foxct.com/2013/06/09/ct-declares-bridgeport-man-beat-wright-brothers/ http://www.livescience.com/37846-wright-brothers-gustave-whitehead.html

It's a lot less than coal or petroleum

http://www.livescience.com/2324-solar-power-greenhouse-emissions-measured.html

[Facial recognition software] will probably NEVER achieve the reliability standard of a fingerprint, let alone DNA.

Fingerprint matching has no "reliability standard" to speak of, and is likely far less reliable than you may have been led to believe.

Actually, its far more reliable than you have been led to believe.

Whereas I gave you the benefit of the doubt, (and provided a source to support my position,) you've somehow definitively assessed the reliability of fingerprinting, and conclusively determined that I've been misled. As such, I provide the following sources discussing the poor reliability of fingerprinting (in chronological order, 2001-2013) so that others can steer clear and avoid being misled like I was:

Fingerprinting's Reliability Draws Growing Court Challenges
Will Fingerprinting Stand Up in Court?
Investigation: Forensic evidence in the dock
The Real Crime: 1,000 Errors in Fingerprint Matching Every Year
Study questions reliability of fingerprint evidence
Forensic Tools: What’s Reliable and What’s Not-So-Scientific
Deeper into forensic bias
Fingerprint [Validity]

Its just that the numbering system was only intended to allow a computer sort of likely
candidates for manual inspection, but because manual inspection takes some time
and training, some jurisdictions will go just by the numeric analysis, and further
they will accept fewer and fewer actual features to match, especially when partial
prints are all they have.

It's "just that," hm? Sounds legit — though I fail to see how this demonstrates that fingerprinting is "far more reliable than [I've]have been led to believe."

Defense lawyers delight in bringing in their own fingerprint expert and showing up
the state, especially when its as easy as showing the jury two full sets of
prints. Things become very obvious very quickly.

What has this got to do with the reliability of fingerprinting? You wanna know what I'd delight in, is you providing some evidence that supports your claim that fingerprinting is far more reliable I've been led to believe.

They are turning into Neanderthals!

Paleontologists have found 150-million-year-old dino tumors, see http://www.livescience.com/4013-dinosaur-tumor-studied-human-cancer-clues.html

The university is welcoming four renowned curators from Carnegie Museum into its classrooms to teach seminars and use the museum collection, which is considered one of the world's premiere displays of natural history artifacts, for demonstrations. Included in the collection is a 150-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur bone complete with a tumor.

I would not be surprised if there are even older amphibian tumor fossils out there somewhere.

Absolutely, and if you want to solve congestion problems, problems with particle pollution and problems for asthmatics, cars is one place to start. If you want to cut CO2 emissions, even putting cars into the discussion (personal transportation) is ignorant and stupid, since removing all gasoline powered cars will not have any impact on what you are trying to solve... What we should focus on is electricity production etc, since that can have an impact. Moving to EVs will not.

You are simply ignorant of the facts:

Annual Emissions per Vehicle (National Average)
8,000 lbs Electric Vehicle
13,000 lbs Conventional Gas Vehicle

The source even has a graph for you. While it is true that converting to electric doesn't automatically mean it produces less carbon, it is also true that America's current electricity production with zero improvements would produce far less CO2 emissions. Add in some low-hanging efficiency improvements to the electrical grid, and you can intelligently charge vehicles just with temporary spare capacity throughout the day and night.

What you don't understand is that standardizing more of our country's energy usage into electrical power is the easiest way to improve efficiency. Electricity doesn't have to be moved with trucks from one side of a town to the other, and our country is already completely covered in a decent electrical infrastructure. And what's easier or more environmentally friendly: improving the emission standards of a single power plant, or attempting to drag a few hundred thousand cars in to be tuned up?

Do not forget that renewables are extreme polluters though. The most common, wind and solar, uses rare-earth minerals which are strip-mined in China in a process that devestates city after city, river after river and mile after square mile of fertile land. When it comes to absolute pollution, Solar (for example) has a devestating impact on the environment.

Well, perhaps in your bizarre alternate reality. Here on planet earth:

Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. It even produces greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. Still, the researchers found that if people switched from conventional fossil fuel-burning power plants to solar cells, air pollution would be cut by roughly 90 percent.

No, I wouldn't. For many reasons. One, I am not retarded, but I am starting to wonder about you.

Every time you use language like that, you are an embarrassment to every person you associate yourself with.

I have only stuck to the reality of the matter, and when it comes to CO2 emissions, the reality of the matter is that if you move the entire world to EVs using magic tomorrow, the total impact on CO2 emissions would be very close to zero. That is the only thing I am saying. I am not talking about the virtues of renewables, so why you bring them up is a little unclear to me.

Because your idiotic and baseless assumptions are further entrenched in the premise that all power generation is from fossil fuels. Eliminating CO2 from the electrical generation process would almost completely eliminate a person's carbon foot print if they were driving an EV. (Hopefully you understand how that works.) The only polluting portion would occur during the manufacturing process, and with all of the advances rolling in from materials science, I'm sure that can be tackled as well.

I don't know who is filling your head with all of the lies you are spitting back up, but you may want to consider who benefits from your ignorance. Maybe you are the member of some doomsday cult wringing yo

Generally parasites co-evolve with their hosts. Because of this, it is actually fairly unlikely to unearth some vicious ancient virus from waters a billion years old. Billions of years ago all that existed was bacteria and the oldest viruses we know about go back only hundreds of millions of years.

That said I fully endorse your Hermetic seal and wish you well in your initiating our flippered friends into the alchemic ways.

Now how about an experiment about the optimal water quantity for a wet t-shirt contest? Something about capillary action certainly has to be discovered...

I'd rather be involved in the next 15-year study to confirm the latest findings on saggy breasts.

As a study subject?

Now how about an experiment about the optimal water quantity for a wet t-shirt contest? Something about capillary action certainly has to be discovered...

I'd rather be involved in the next 15-year study to confirm the latest findings on saggy breasts.

That was sure a long post with little more than "La la la I can't hear you" head-in-the-sand reaction. There is a lot more to the story that you could have found if you hadn't latched on to the first denial you had found and dismissed anything said by people that you have ideological differences with. The New American has some good coverage of the whole story. Whatever you heard about something "misreported", you have characterized it in an even less true way. The fact is, the guy had to appeal to the Supreme Court of New York to get his gun back and his permit restored. So, yea, after the slap-down by the court in this particular case the state police said they should not have targeted that guy, which doesn't mean there aren't others. So they found some ignorant local police "representative" to disavow any knowledge of how the SAFE act works, which is only credible because it's a new law and the bureaucrats haven't distributed guidance yet. But the law can be interpreted to allow it, and clearly will utilize local police ("issuing agency") to do the confiscations.

That's a bit like saying no one should not use "NoScript" because they know someone who had trouble using Facebook with it installed.

If someone has a localized cancer that is easily treatable completely by surgery, then surgery can make a lot of sense of course. Steve Job's cancer apparently was one rare such situation. In that sense, he did regret not having surgery sooner. But many cancers, by the time they are detected, can't be easily removed surgically. Procedures to remove cancers can also let cancerous cells loose in the bloodstream. Removing one cancer may allow others that cancer suppressed to grow. Even when cancers can be removed 100% surgically, the conditions (diet and lifestyle) that contributed to the cancer growing would likely just support more cancers or other health issues. There are also quite a few cases of a person's immune system rallying and the cancer going into remission.

Consider:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/27/opinion/weil-steve-jobs
"Steve Jobs had a long run with a rare form of cancer (a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor) that is sometimes curable by early surgery. While I was not his physician and don't have access to the details of his illness or its treatment, assertions that his use of alternative medicine shortened his life strike me as uninformed. No one knows how long he would have survived or what his quality of life would have been had he opted for immediate surgery and used only conventional treatment."

And:
http://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-medicine-pancreatic-cancer-treatment.html
" "I don't think waiting nine months for surgery was a bad decision," Dr. Maged Rizk, a gastroenterologist at Cleveland Clinic, told WebMD in an interview last week. "Especially if it is limited disease, especially if it is an islet-cell tumor and the cells are [typical of early cancer], and as long as you don't have symptoms, you can sit on it a bit," Rizk said. (Neuroendocrine tumors are also known as islet-cell tumors.)
But what about Jobs' use of alternative medicine? Could that have had an impact on his cancer?
Some experts say that, if anything, use of alternative medicine approaches may have helped Jobs' overall health. Jobs lived 8 years after his diagnosis.
The average life expectancy for someone with a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor is about two years, according to PCAN. (It remains unclear whether Jobs' cancer was metastatic when he was diagnosed.)
"I believe that he must have really refocused his heath practices," through changes in diet and exercise, said Dr. Ashwin Mehta, an assistant professor and medical director of integrative medicine at the University of Miami's Sylvester Cancer Center. "To do as well as he did, he must have done a lot of things right," Mehta said."

So yes, eating better may have helped Steve Jobs live a lot longer, whatever one can say about his decision about surgery. Iain Banks says parts of his cancer are inoperable, so it is a very different situation. He says he is considering chemotherapy; I pointed to potential ways as to how to make it more effective,

People are always getting pre-cancerous and cancerous cells. They usually don't get "cancer" because their body's immune system kills the cells. So, anything you can do to strengthen your immune system can help you do better. So can anything you do to remove additional toxins and also to remove things that may promote cancer growth (including apparently some substances in dairy).

The worst thing about making cancer treatment decisions (beyond all the personal trauma) may be that most oncologists get paid by the treatment. So there is no financial incentive for oncologists to suggest anything other that treatments they can supply. This sort of conflict-of-interest between patient and specialist physici