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Citation? Any evidence of this bullying, like, say, an increased suicide rate?

And even if this bullying did exist, how would you know that it was due to Savage's efforts, and not Santorum's? Having the same name as a nationally famous jerk doesn't necessarily make you popular, either.

"which was doing that". Feel free to quote and point out how.

My objection is to anyone driving claiming that "they're not dangerous". That's just not true. Bad drivers are much more dangerous, sure, but the chance of human error is always there, and that car you're driving can do a lot of damage. Not 20 minutes ago, I had a guy in broad daylight run a red light at an intersection I was almost in. If I was going faster, I would have been less able to stop, and if we had collided (a distinct possibility, perhaps avoided only by lucky timing) the faster I go, the more energetic the accident. My car adds danger, even if driven legally, and the faster I drive it, the less time I have to see and react to other people's mistakes.

99% safe is typically not regarded as very safe -- stats I just found googling around put the risk of giving birth or the risk of skydiving once at about one death per 100,000 (in Sweden). So skydiving once is 99.999% safe. Cave diving has an estimated risk of 138 deaths per 100,000 dives (1957-1979 figures) which earned it a reputation as an incredibly dangerous sport -- it's 99.862% safe, or 138 times riskier than sky-diving, depending on how you want to look at it.

I had a biology professor who studied with someone who had a tapetum lucidum, which was great fun when they were working on a field survey in the desert at night -- the guy almost got shot as an aggressive coyote until he got close enough for the others to see his outline. Fortunately, the professor wasn't a trigger happy sort of person.

Anecdotal reports in that class suggested that humans were selectively bred for lousy night vision; those whose eyes glowed in the dark were burned as witches or lynched as werewolves or whatever during the middle ages. Also, physics suggests that increasing light sensitivity by using a tapetum lucidum comes at a cost to resolving power and angular resolution.

I'd like to see a source for this -- having a human spontaneously develop a tapetum lucidum seems unlikely and details about any human who did so should be well documented since it would be such an unusual case.

http://www.livescience.com/18209-china-cat-eyed-boy-night-vision.html

Furthermore, there is no single genetic mutation that could produce a fully formed and functioning tapetum lucidum, Reynolds explained; such an ability would require multiple mutations, which don't just happen all at once. Evolution happens incrementally, he said, not by leaps and bounds. "Evolutionarily, mutations can result in differences that allow for new environmental niche exploitation. But such mutations are modified over long periods. A functional tapetum in a human would be just as absurd as a human born with wings. It can't happen,

There was a recent study by a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario which found (amongst other things) that low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.

Now, what was that about supporting the Republicans?

yeah, you have seen, IN FACT, bullshit. nothing. dont use the word 'fact' as fox news uses it.

http://www.livescience.com/6472-study-ocean-warmed-significantly-16-years.html

oceans significantly warmed in the past 16 years. big water bodies are the bumpers that smoothen out the temperature changes - in micro and macro climate - and the agents that spread the heat around.

Most people are not fit nor do they have good eating habits at any age much less their 40's, to much fat, sugar and salt will lead to an earlier decline, so someone that exercises regularly and eats fruits, vegetables, healthy fats and no sugar are going to have far less decline than the average American.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#Fitness_and_Exercise
http://www.livescience.com/2675-good-diet-exercise-brain-healthy.html

Look around you at all the people you see in the 40's, how many of them are overweight? How many obese? I would say that the environmental challenges (food, food additives) people face are the most likely cause of early decline in brain function.

On top of all that most people stop challenging their brains at around 35 moving forward so if you don't use it you lose it.

The following is what I could dig up on the effects of multi-lingualism. It does impact the brain in many different areas and there appears to be a growing belief that learning a new language at any age will have a pronounced impact on your ability to think and reason, but that if taught young the improvements are far more dramatic still. I didn't want to clutter the submission with this stuff, especially as these studies don't have nearly the same level of rigour as the MRI scans of the taxi drivers (where a whole host of variables can now be examined directly versus the somewhat more indirect studies done on polyglots). They're also a bit more controversial, with opposing studies claiming that the benefits either don't exist or don't exist in the way that is claimed.

http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0012brain.html
http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainbriefings_thebilingualbrain
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/11/10/cognitive-ability-improved-when-bilingual/20740.html

(Press coverage adds yet another level of indirectness and potential sources of errors, but there's still some useful info here)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3739690.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/18/bilingual-alzheimers-brain-power-multitasking

The impact of music on learning is also not very well studied - I can find press links that talk about the research, but not much actual research.

http://www.livescience.com/5327-music-memory-connection-brain.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801122226.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3095807.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12135590

However, the story gets MUCH more complicated...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15791973
http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/misc/amnesia.html

There IS a fascinating "reverse" case, where alteration of the brain resulted in a remarkable alteration in musical ability, but as far as I know there has been no real work done on what changes the brain has undergone as a consequence of the new obsession.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cicoria

If anyone can add to the list, that would be great, especially for the different areas you were mentioning.

Yeah, some time back I was thinking that perhaps while creatures like amoebas and ants might not be smart, they might not actually be that stupid.

But how are they going to show their intelligence given their limitations? You're not going to be able to communicate an IQ quiz to them.

Same goes for humour - they might find things funny, but what do you expect them to say to you?

I do know that at least some dogs have a sense of humour. I believe other animals have too. Especially animals that play. Even rats play, and some think they even laugh when tickled: http://www.livescience.com/6946-joke-animals-laugh.html

There was an art piece at the MOMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit titled "Victimless Leather" which involved growing a batch of stem cells into the shape of a tiny jacket. The piece eventually had to be "killed" when it grew out of control... as stem cells tend to do (and why their promise is over-exaggerated because they give you cancer).

I appreciate people working on innovations like this, but we are decades and decades away from getting anything practical out of it. The meat we get from mother nature has billions of years of natural selection going into it, making it grow more efficiently. We co-evolved with it, meaning we are selected to make to the most efficient use of its nutrients. It's going to take a lot of time in the lab to match the nutrition and efficiency of muscle meat produced from 3.5 billion years of evolution.

This is a common problem with ancient religious texts as often they are fragmented, scattered, and in some cases the bits exists in different parts of the world. A type of recognition tech was used to help piece together parts of the dead sea scrolls:

http://www.livescience.com/16620-digitized-cairo-genizah-texts.html

I recall copying some of the original texts myself, and frankly, I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did in the earthenware jars we made for them.

On the other hand, when the warming models were seriously questioned, in the mid 00s, suddenly we weren't suffering from "Global Warming" anymore and started suffering from "Climate Change". See, your logic works both ways.

This is a serious issue, where opinions have become extreme, and where I really don't trust most participants (everyone is religious on the matter).

In the end, I think it's a shame that the global warming subject was hijacked by dumb^H^H^H^Hextremist ecologists, leading to good solutions being thrown out of the window [1], and stupid solutions being implemented (taxing carbon).

[1] No politician is discussing the possibility of mimicking the eruption at Mount Pinatubo which, because of being large and extremely recent, was very well studied. A global warming solution of this type costs 2.5Billion US$ (on a world scale, it's peanuts). Unfortunately, it's "messing with the planet" so it irks all kinds of ecologists. Newsflash: We mess with the planet from the day we're born. There's a decent article on the solution here http://www.livescience.com/901-scientist-inject-sulfur-air-battle-global-warming.html (shooting balloons with artillery is not the most efficient solution, the best one is a lightweight "hose", supported by balloons, which was already tested on a smaller scale, but the article gives the general idea).

Greenland was once GREEN

The denialist keep using this over and over again. It is wrong and has been disproved multiple times. Greenland hasn't been completely green in the last 400,000 years. Sure the Vikings may have found a green spot, but that isn't the same thing.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-used-to-be-green.htm
http://www.livescience.com/7331-ancient-greenland-green.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
How about you stop using faulty proofs?

I suppose that many flowers will look different, as well as the plumage of many birds, which have UV color patterns that humans usually do not see:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/science/aaas/2002-01-03-budgies-glow.htm
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cockatiel_under_blacklight.jpg
http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_ARNI_ANG.html
http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_LATH_PRA.html
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/7881/i02/fish-uv-pattern-100225-02.jpg?1296089823

There are a number of species of animal that can see ultraviolet light, and a number of plant and animal species have evolved to take advantage of this. Parrots are known for having UV patterns in their feathers, butterflies use UV patterns to communicate with each other, and most flowers have UV patterns to attract insects. Some fish-eating birds use UV light to help identify fish underwater.

So if you are truly able to see UV light, you should be seeing a very interesting world!

The answer is simple, but really worth saying, so I'll blow two moderations to make it (sorry, ChromeAeonium and Fluffeh.)

To quote Julian Huxley:

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution — appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

Not since the beginnings of life on this planet has one species had the ability to affect so many others, so quickly. Species have started going extinct at a far greater rate since humans started mucking things up than before. What we've been doing to this planet's biodiversity is a lot more than it did to itself before we showed up.

Of course, stories like this one pop up from time to time, but if the truth is that we really don't know, then it's probably wiser to be careful and protective than presumptuous and selfish.

Evolution is trivial to prove.

We know about genetics. The first genetics experiments on dominant/recessive genes and horticulture that we have on record were done by CHRISTIAN MONKS.

We can easily observe, through plant experimentation and experimentation on shorter-lived creatures (mice and fruit flies are used often, specifically because they have well-mapped genomes and a short enough lifespan to do the experiments without taking decades per generation), the effects of selecting for certain genetic traits. In the long term, we can observe the same being done by farmers, who select certain crop traits to favor for planting and controlled seeding or insemination (Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat, and the varieties of wool produced by various sheep subspecies based on the desire for whatever characteristic is needed in the thread produced from it), or even the development of recognized breeds of dog and cat.

It is sometimes hard to see why a particular trait is selected for in nature - sometimes, it's not the specific trait, but merely the fact that it coexists on the same genetic area as something else that was an advantage, and just tagged along for the ride - but it is rather obvious through observations of changing climate and ecosystem that certain animals have developed certain traits, due to their carrying an advantage in lifespan or procreative ability, and that certain other traits have "selected out" of the population. It's even fairly obvious in the other direction, when different species develop very similar abilities because the surrounding environment pushes them in the same direction, a process called "convergent evolution."

If you say we don't "fully understand" evolution, that's fine. Feel free to say we need to study it more. I certainly agree, the more about it we know, the better off we'll be, though we also get dangerously close to the day when people start selecting out the dumbest fetuses for abortion, or even start to try genetic teasing in the womb to eliminate certain traits. Then again, we may finally eliminate the genetic quirk that makes some people so mind-blowingly stupid that in the face of overwhelming evidence, they still can convince themselves that evolution is a "lie" and that we were all put here by some damn critter no more real than the spaghetti monster behind the moon.

"Predictably, the mixed economies which have tried to balance known approaches tend to be the happiest. "

Since 50% of happiness is inherited, one has to be cautious about causality.

It might be that happier populations prefer more socialism (or can stand it, anyway).

However you may also want to look at happiness versus economic freedom, where research shows a positive relationship between national levels of happiness and economic freedom. GDP per capita also exerts a strong positive influence on happiness.

There were many more factors besides slavery that led to the Civil War and the confederacy.

Your statements demonstrate a determinedly ignorant commitment to apologetics for the Confederacy. Your suggestion that anything other than slavery was the casus belli take only a few minutes with Google to utterly refute, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for attempting to excuse these evil-doers.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world ... a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization." -- Mississippi's declaration of secession

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable". -- Texas Secession Convention

South Carolina's declaration noted "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery" and protested that Northern states had interfered with the return of fugitive slaves.

"We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery. Men fight from sentiment. After the fight is over they invent some fanciful theory on which they imagine that they fought." -- Confederate Col. John S. Mosby

Jefferson Davis himself, in his address at the ratification of the Confederate constitution -- a speech that is nothing but a fairy tale about the wonders of slavery, the evils of abolitionists, and his ignorance about the U.S. Constitution -- said:

In addition to the long-continued and deep-seated resentment felt by the Southern States at the persistent abuse of the powers they had delegated to the Congress, for the purpose of enriching the manufacturing and shipping classes of the North at the expense of the South, there has existed for nearly half a century another subject of discord, involving interests of such transcendent magnitude as at all times to create the apprehension in the minds of many devoted lovers of the Union that its permanence was impossible. When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the colonies by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. The increase in the number of slaves by further importation from Africa was also secured by a clause forbidding Congress to prohibit the slave trade anterior to a certain date, and in no clause can there be found any delegation of power to the Congress authorizing it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice, detriment, or discouragement owners of that species of property, or excluding it from the protection of the Government.

...

As soon, how ever, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures a

Actually, a lie is exactly what it is. Or, more accurately, it's hysterical propaganda (originally published in that prestigious scientific journal Forbes Magazine) by a pretend scientist (who uses the term "alarmist" no fewer than 14 times in this 567-word, 9-paragraph pile of fresh, steaming nonsense) who quacks on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute (an organization whose "work" has been funded by an array of right-wing billionaire's foundations, tobacco companies, and Exxon Mobil), based on junk science by a well-known climate skeptic and "intelligent design" advocate who has made a fundamental scientific error by confusing correlation with causation.

Nothing to see here. Move along,

Here's more: Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast

The paper was mostly unnoticed in the public sphere until the Forbes blogger declared it "extremely important."

Dessler, the A&M climatologist said that he doubted the research would shift the political debate around global warming.

"It makes the skeptics feel good, it irritates the mainstream climate science community, but by this point, the debate over climate policy has nothing to do with science," Dessler said. "It's essentially a debate over the role of government," surrounding issues of freedom versus regulation.

Spencer himself is up front about the politics surrounding his work. In July, he wrote on his blog that his job "has helped save our economy from the economic ravages of out-of-control environmental extremism," and said he viewed his role as protecting "the interests of the taxpayer."

Slashdot editors, please try to remember that a single paper normally doesn't overturn scientific understanding, and try to avoid habitual hype sources. Thanks.

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

This is the best website for science news for reasonably educated but not specialized people: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Science News has a website - http://www.sciencenews.org/ and a weekly magazine which are always good, if overly sober, though the magazine doesn't have near enough content to cover everything that happened that week.

New Scientist is a weekly mag that has drifted towards Omni or PopSci lately ('IS SENSATIONAL THING TRUE? (...no)'), but will still keep you up to date on most happenings including things you might miss online. http://www.newscientist.com/

Scientific American is a monthly mag that's a bit too political but has some good articles: http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Then there's Discover Magazine, which is a step down from either but has some good blogs: http://discovermagazine.com/

Live Science is a further step down, a good site for training wheel science: http://www.livescience.com/

I won't recommend the mag Science, because even though it's The Magazine, it's not suited for the dabbler.

My balanced suggestion is add the news feeds for all of these to your RSS reader (like Google Reader), click on what looks interesting, and subscribe to New Scientist in print or on Zinio and read it every week.

Phallus jokes aside. It would be great to understand how this works. We've somewhat recently started looking more closely at the notion of acoustic levitation for solving all manner of problems. Particularly containerless manufacturing. It's been suggested based upon various ancient texts that this may well have been the means by which so many of these massive megaliths far exceeding modern engineering capabilities were transported and placed. The ability for something so small to produce such a relatively massive acoustic pressure definitely helps bolster the case.

The bug does not use wings. It props itself up on three legs (a tripod), points its propulsion unit at the ground, and levitates.

Phallus jokes aside. It would be great to understand how this works. We've somewhat recently started looking more closely at the notion of acoustic levitation for solving all manner of problems. Particularly containerless manufacturing. It's been suggested based upon various ancient texts that this may well have been the means by which so many of these massive megaliths far exceeding modern engineering capabilities were transported and placed. The ability for something so small to produce such a relatively massive acoustic pressure definitely helps bolster the case.

Marijuana usage isn't 100% safe. It can cause or speed up the development of schizophrenia:
http://www.livescience.com/10700-marijuana-worsens-schizophrenia.html.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2005559,00.html

I still agree with you that it should be legalized. The war on drugs is a lost cause, and causes more problems than in solves. But making false claims doesn't help in this discussion.
Personally, I think marijuana should be treated like tobacco: just sell it legally, put a warning on it about the health hazards, and tax it to pay for the resulting medical costs.

Yes, living in a pineapple no less!
 

Pfft, common misconception. We all know now that Spongebob lives in the rainforest, under a tree.

http://www.livescience.com/14626-spongebob-mushroom-species-fungus.html

Most "Duh" research isn't "Duh" at all. It only sounds that way because of the atrocious state of science reporting in the popular press. Challenging, technical research has to be translated into terms regular folks can understand, and that often means making ridiculous comparisons or analogies, or just giving an explanation of the research so dumbed down that the researchers themselves would hardly recognize it.

Another contributing factor is the political motivations of people with large audiences who don't know better. For example, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a "report" making fun of a number of studies supposedly representing wasting spending on stupid research. It turns out his examples are actually pretty nuanced and important after all--hardly "duh" science.

The general population just isn't equipped to judge which research is important and worth spending money on. That is exactly why we have organizations like the NSF to evaluate grant proposals for us.

Following a committee meeting just a week before the quake, some members of the group assured the public that they were in no danger.

If this is true, this is decidedly different from telling the public that they don't know whether there is any danger. Saying "I can't predict earthquakes" is fine. Saying "You are in no danger" would probably be interpreted differently than "We have no indications that you are at an elevated risk."

In the aftermath of the quake, which killed 309 people, many citizens said that these reassurances were the reason they did not take precautionary measures, such as leaving their homes.

More specifically, the accusation focuses on a statement made at a press conference on 31 March 2009 by Bernardo De Bernardinis, who was then deputy technical head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency and is now president of the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research in Rome. "The scientific community tells me there is no danger," he said, "because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favourable".

Hasn't it been established that movement of GPS ground stations (slippage) indicates increased risk of earthquakes? That was the basis for claims that the New Madrid fault line is overestimated ... and the above quote employs the exact opposite logic.

It appears that the crux of this case rests upon "he told me to say" versus "it's not our job to tell the public." But the civil servant who "summed" up the scientist's summary appears to have fallen victim to treating this like a forecasting of the weather. He will probably regret maintaining a neutral report and should have just said "inconclusive" instead of "looks good."

Vincenzo Vittorini, a physician in L'Aquila whose wife and daughter were killed in the earthquake and who is now president of the local victims' association '309 Martiri' (309 Martyrs), hopes the trial will lead to a thorough investigation into what went wrong in those days. "Nobody here wants to put science in the dock," he says. "We all know that the earthquake could not be predicted, and that evacuation was not an option. All we wanted was clearer information on risks in order to make our choices".

He says that the committee had precious information that was not passed on to citizens, for example on which buildings were most likely to collapse in the event of a strong earthquake. Vittorini thinks that those charged are not the only ones to blame, and that further investigations might eventually place greater responsibilities on politicians at the local and national level.

Indeed, this sounds to me more like a case against Italy's Civil Protection Agency instead of scientists and seismologists. Not that they couldn't predict the quake but general failure to provide earthquake plans and proper materials/handouts/PSAs to the public.

"...an outbreak that would start from where exactly?"

Maybe from here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2404051.stm

or here:

http://www.livescience.com/2403-climate-threat-thawing-tundra-releases-infected-corpses.html

or even here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-12-26-smallpox-in-envelope_x.htm

Can we assume that the declared US and Russian stocks are the last viable samples anywhere on the planet..?

The real interesting work is being done by the "low energy nuclear reaction" researchers.

Did you hear about the Italian, Rossi? He's fusing a nano-nickel powder and hydrogen to create copper. Newest Cold Fusion Machine Does the Impossible ... Or Does it?:

"Basically, there's a new physical effect that I think was found in the lab more than 20 years ago by Fleischmann and Pons [University of Utah electrochemists who were later derided for their work on cold fusion]," said Peter Hagelstein, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and one of the most mainstream proponents of cold fusion research. "It was not accepted by the scientific community. It's been laughed at and criticized. However, over the years the effect has continued to be seen."

As Max Planck said, "science advances on funeral at a time." Wall Street and the ghost of JP Morgan (Tesla-suppressor #1) are not going to be happy once these things hit mass production...

There's a similar problem with women's birth control pills:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/35663.php

Messing with hormones could also alter the sort of people you find attractive:
http://www.livescience.com/2781-pill-women-pick-bad-mates.html

Magnitude 9.3, between 9 and 10 PM PST to be precise. The only problem with this evidence is that it didn't exist at the time the Japanese were making their design decisions. The man who put the date on the event said, "There was plenty of respectable scientific opinion at the time that an earthquake of a magnitude-9 was just ludicrous. A tsunami modeler in the late 1980s could not have assumed an earthquake of that magnitude without being called an alarmist or being laughed at." All in the citation.

So, no, they could not have predicted a 9.0 quake.

Read a little more about the incident

    Really, for those who know much about the breast implant procedures, they'd know that the silicon is not just under the skin. A boa, if not defanged, would have fangs that are maybe 1cm (0.3") long. Since she apparently didn't have any blood dripping, nothing pierced the skin.

    Now for the NSFW portion of this message.

    Here is a comparison of subglandular breast implants to subpectoral breast implants. ... and the full page, with more illustrations.

  Here is a doctor talking about the subglandular implants (over the muscle)

    As you should be able to spot from the first link, there is skin and fatty tissues that would have been thicker than the fangs are long, regardless of the implant type. Consider it's a constrictor and not a viper.

    Also, the snake would have bitten to scare its attacker. It didn't like the way it was being handled. If it thought she was lunch, it would have curled up with her for a nice long nap. When biting, it wouldn't have been sucking.

    If it did die, it was most likely treated like most animals who attack humans. It was put down. Maybe she and the station demanded it. Maybe the trainer just said it was put down.

You mean, the fact that there is a hidden cost of using a credit card built into your daily life doesn't bother you? Of course, you don't see the price increase, the merchants build it in. Generally speaking, you can get a cash discounted price at a mom and pop store for simply paying debit or cash - because then they don't pay the CC company and the related merchant fees. So, yeah, I guess just so long as you don't actually *see* the increased cost, it won't bother you. And for big-box stores, those prices are part-and-parcel of their merch, so abstaining from using a CC may not help you there ... but if you're okay promoting the practice, then keep on plastic-ing.

In addition to this flaw, from a psychological standpoint people also spend more when using a credit card.

How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? Take away one chamber and the whole thing doesn't work. Add a chamber to a three chamber heart and it fails. Nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart.

See here. Reptiles have a 3 chambered heart, but some (turtles) show the beginning of the formation of a septum separating the ventricle in two chambers. An article in Nature back in 2009 described the discovery of the genetic mutation that led to complete separation - I couldn't find the link to the Nature article itself, but here's a digest and here are a few quotes. The most important conclusion there is IMHO that there exists a relatively minor genetic change which leads to the formation of the extra heart chambers, advantageous for natural selection

Except for threat modelling done by the RAND corporation nothing shows the F-35 to be effective in Combat... if you can't evade, you die.

Sounds then like the Rand corporation was lowballing the aerodynamic performance of the F-35 in their estimates when running their simulation.

Personally, I'm going to go with the opinion of the test pilot, who has also flown all those other craft and the F-22. He seems to think the F-35 performs extremely well, about equal to an F-16 and getting very close to or matching the F-22 in some respects. The performance of an F-16 with the targeting, avionics and stealth capabilities of a 5th generation fighter sounds pretty survivable to me.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/081107-f-35-fighter-jets.html

Note in particular the part near the end where he says that unlike any of the 4th generation aircraft, the F-35 can achieve it's excellent flight performance in a combat configuration -- i.e. when it actually matters.

I mean, we won't fully know until it's actually operational and real war games (or war, heaven forbid), but if the opinion that the F-35 won't be effective in combat is based on presuming it "can't evade", then I'm not going to put much stock in it.

You're probably actually a Leo:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/your-astronomical-sign.html

He isn't claiming China is NOT corrupt but that unlike the US, it is doing things about it. Like executions.

No he isn't:

corruption has been far less than I've seen in the US

He directly is saying that corruption is less than in the US.

China has executed a lot of people, but it is not fixing the corruption.

The clear air during the olympic games. Could never have happened like that in the US.

The government shut down the entire area for 30 days. And the air still wasn't clean, it just was transparent. China has plenty of "clear air days" where the pollution is still high.

They shut down a huge section of the country. They even banned private cars from the roads (of course, many drivers bribed their way back onto the roads). And it rained and carried some of the particulates out of the air. And the air was still dirty.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/etc/090622-beijing-olympics-air-pollution-worse.html

What is there to brag about? The US doesn't need to shut down portions of the country for 30 days to get the air merely to filthy.

Don't pat yourself on the back because your system of corruption is different.

I'm not. I'm patting myself on the back because our corruption is much, much lower. And again, it isn't just Americans who say so.

Again, watch China Blue. There is no comparison to this in the US. Even the biggest factories still don't conform to safety standards, and they the ones who most need to because they actually might be investigated and pressure applied when they make international news for their transgressions. And that's nothing compared to the small factories.

And that's just the factories. It is rampant at the low levels and only tapers off at the very top. And I'm not even getting into Southern China where it's even more lawless. Want to talk about illegal coal mines?

The Chinese have a saying "The mountains are high and the Emperor is very far away". All you need is local buy-in (which bribes help with) and you can get away with nearly anything, until you garner the attention of the party. Then you may be executed, but apparently it's likely enough you'll get away with it that people don't stop trying.

I like China, it feels like freedom. You can make your own way, if you have the money to grease the wheels. But part of this is because of the high levels of corruption. You don't have to worry about the law that much, it's for others.

Just to keep your post going. Conservatives are more likely to read both left wing and right wing news sources than liberals are: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090608-media-message.html.

"People with stronger party affiliation, conservative political views, and greater interest in politics proved more likely to click on articles with opposing views, according to the Ohio State study. 'It appears that people with these characteristics are more confident in their views and so they’re more inclined to at least take a quick look at the counterarguments,' Knobloch-Westerwick noted. However, Knobloch-Westerwick added that her latest study was not designed to assess reader motives, and that she hopes to more carefully study the issue in the future. The Brigham Young University survey found that journalists also tended to read liberal blogs — perhaps a reflection of journalists' political beliefs, although even conservatives said liberal blogs were often better-written, Davis pointed out. Among the political blog readers, a similar trend emerged in which 'liberals read almost exclusively liberal blogs, but conservatives tend to read both,' Davis said." (emphasis added).

I've never understood the correlation between having a model next to anything, say a smartphone.

...

I know it's supposed to incite buying the object, but I don't see any link.

Some research which might be illuminating:

• Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around
• Pretty women make men shortsighted (based on this paper: Wilson & Daly: Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?)
• Ariely & Loewenstein: The heat of the moment: the effect of sexual arousal on sexual decision making

You're an AC, and probably joking too, but the earliest Daguerrotype pr0n was, according to livescience.com two years earlier than this:

"Technology drove innovation in the porn genre. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a primitive form of photography. Almost immediately, pornographers commandeered the new technology. The earliest surviving dirty daguerreotype — described by Slade in a 2006 paper as "depicting a rather solemn man gingerly inserting his penis into the vagina of an equally solemn and middle-aged woman" — is dated at 1846."
Source: http://www.livescience.com/culture/pornography-history-erotica-sexuality-101011.html (no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Greatgreatgrandma?????

You're an AC, and probably joking too, but the earliest Daguerrotype pr0n was, according to livescience.com two years earlier than this:

"Technology drove innovation in the porn genre. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a primitive form of photography. Almost immediately, pornographers commandeered the new technology. The earliest surviving dirty daguerreotype — described by Slade in a 2006 paper as "depicting a rather solemn man gingerly inserting his penis into the vagina of an equally solemn and middle-aged woman" — is dated at 1846."
Source: http://www.livescience.com/culture/pornography-history-erotica-sexuality-101011.html (no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

"Thanks for perfectly illustrating why we are in this situation. "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase."

Acutally according to the article he might be on to something: "U.S. rare earth companies have begun looking to reopen old mines and search for new deposits, but industry experts say that relaunching an independent U.S. supply chain could take 15 years."

I know it says 15 years, but I have a feeling that if China really decided to withhold rare earth minerals for an extended time we'd find a supply a bit faster.

The only reason we use China's rare earth minerals is because they mine it and ship it to the US cheaper than we can mine it ourselves: "many U.S. companies have not jumped into the market because China's state-owned mines keep rare earth prices artificially low."

But we have plenty to mine: "the U.S. holds rare earth ore reserves of up to 13 million metric tons. By contrast, the entire world produced just 124,000 metric tons in 2009". That means we have roughly 104 years worth of rare earth ore reserves, I think we'll be just fine.

China's kind of like the neighbor kid that knocks on my door and offers to mow the lawn for $20. It's not that I can't mow myself, but when it's so cheap to pay someone else why do it myself? If he ever didn't show up for a couple weeks I'd just do it myself, but as long as he's offering I'll keep paying him.

Unless you want to wait a few millennia for alpha decay to replenish our supply, there simply won't be anything like this... at least not for more than a few years. We are foolishly squandering our remaining supply.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/helium-reserve-shortage-expensive-party-balloons-100823.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Livesciencecom+(LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed)

Okay, the technology might be a decade away, and the railgun thing obviously wont happen for a while (and was somewhat sci-fi inspired, i will admit), but keeping an eye on that possibility might be a good thing to do

http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=080201-railgun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54aLcC3G74

might be closer than you think.

or you might be accounting for government program delays.

1) yes, the data indicates so
2) yes, the data indicates so
3) yes, if we're doing it, we certainly can stop doing it. There's the question of whether we started a runwaway effect or not, but in that case we still could slow things down. And in this case, the speed at which it happens is most important.

Until you can explain the equally obvious global warming on Mars at present as somehow caused by human activity don't ask me to destroy my lifestyle over something I can't actually affect anyway.

Two things:

First, the current consensus seems to be against the idea of global warming on Mars, and on the Sun causing it.

Second, your lifestyle doesn't have a damn thing to do with global warming. It either exist or it doesn't, no matter how convenient or inconvenient would that be for you, me, or anybody else.

I put more faith in the article they referenced than the one in context.

From the first grade to 5th, I was a bit of the timid type that "played well with others" and tried to keep a somewhat low profile.

At 6th grade and through the rest of the school years I developed a "I don't give a rats *ss what anyone things"-attitude and I always said what was on my mind since I'd come to hate double speak and "political intrigue". The rationale was that it would be better if people knew that what I said was what I meant and thus know me based on that, rather than having to guess hidden agendas and conjecture their own ideas of who I was or what my intentions may had been.
    Or as I would have then thought of it "Why would anyone say something they don't mean? That just makes stuff unnecessarily complex and it is therefore a stupid thing to do."
I also had the impression that most people were fools because they couldn't see the obviousness and patterns in situations that I could (rather arrogant I admit) and said so when "stupid things" were said and done. Not appreciated by some, why, I didn't understand then.

The first four years after graduation, I came to realize that this "open and frank" attitude didn't really work too well in the corporate world and I tried hard to suppress my outer voice and instead try to find different angles to what people were saying and how they were saying it. This provided a new realization that there probably were less fools around than I had previously thought. After yet a couple of years, it had turned my view of the world and people in general completely 180 and since then I believe that most people have a lot of valuable ideas and valuable which I could learn and benefit from. My personality had returned to the personality which "plays well with others".

Now this evolvement from one type to another and the return to the original shows that personalities can indeed change with or without effort, as postulated by the article I linked. However the outcome of my little anecdote, if used in the study under discussion, would have supported that theory as well, which would obviously have been a false positive.

I don't know if it is common that people change personalities during their youth and then regress to an initial personality or if my example was just a fluke, but since the article in question claims that personalities would remain the same into adult life, I simply felt obliged to provide a counter example to negate that theory.

A quick, easy to interpret, cheap test may serve to stem the tide of people self-diagnosing as gluten intolerant. I guess as fads go this one is fairly innocuous...

As stated in the original article, "About 150,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with the disease, but the actual number affected might be closer to 3 million, according to Anderson." Prevalence of gluten intolerance at about 1% of the population has also been found by other studies.

So it's not so much a "fad", as spread of knowledge about gluten intolerance.

How about a cloaking device that makes the car pink when parked? Oh wait..why not make it then ;) D'oh!

Obviously you don't want it to be invisible! If your car was invisible while parked someone else would try to park in the apparently open space and hit it!

How about a cloaking device that makes the car pink when parked? Oh wait..why not make it then ;) D'oh!

will this do?
or this?