Slashdot Mirror

Whatever the reason, it's a natural behavior. Contemporary documentation of strandings dates back to at least the 16th century. Archaeological evidence suggest a stranding about 12,000 years ago. And the earliest evidence is for a possible mass stranding is about 6-9 million years ago.

So these strandings have been happening for a very, very long time. There is no reason to be disconcerted. Interest in the reasons why should be purely academic until prove to be unnatural. While there has been evidence correlating strandings with man-made activities, per scientific standards the burden of proof is upon those advocating such theories to prove a causal relationship.

The hockey stick has not been discredited. It has been replicated numerous times, by numerous people and organisations.

https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
> Climate deniers threw all their might at disproving the famous climate change graph. Here's why they failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Arguments over the reconstructions have been taken up by fossil fuel industry funded lobbying groups attempting to cast doubt on climate science.

https://www.newscientist.com/a...
> In fact, later studies support the key conclusion: the world is warmer now than it has been for at least 1000 years

The graphs we /were/ talking about go back much further - XKCD's 20,000 years, and your favourite the Vostok core, 400,000. And they all show the same data.

Good luck with your research.

*PLONK*

The reason is simple: our brains are way bigger than pig brains (human brain: about 3.5lbs, pig brain: 0.4lbs).

Is it really as simple as you claim?

Tell me why crows are so intelligent despite having brains the size of a walnut?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And how did this guy function despite having a lot smaller brain? https://www.newscientist.com/a...
(yes he was stupider than average but he still counted as human).

I get that impression from the fact that plants absorb it and in current times they're starved of it (compared to paleo history).

I think "some plants" is a more accurate term, since it not only depends on whether they have adequate access to water, nutrients etc, but as I understand it, it is not actually all plants that benefit from this, even if all other needs are met. Here's an article about this subject: https://www.newscientist.com/a...

I think the only thing you can accuse me of here is cherry picking.

Is that not bad enough? Climate change - as indeed science in general - is far to important to be dragged down to the level of politics.

again you post completely wrong information.

They refuse to release un-'adjusted' data sets, even going so far as to attempt to use copyright claims on publicly-funded research

Wrong.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data...
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

Also, BS on the copyright claim.

They will not release the actual programs, algorithms, and data used in their computer models,

Wrong.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data...

which still are unable to both track past climate changes while modeling the future global temperature rise rates claimed.

Wrong.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
https://www.wunderground.com/c...

Models which most accurately track past changes do not show the predicted increases,

Wrong.
See above.

while models that show predicted increases in global temperature averages do not track against past climate records.

Wrong.
see above.

In order to assume this is reason enough to greatly disrupt the US national economy (guaranteed other nations like China, Russia, and India will not harm *their* economies b/c of CAGW alarmism) requires a 'leap of faith' equal to that of a religion.

That is a completely BS talking point.
No one is harming anyone's economy as a result of fighting this.
The idea that this somehow requires harming your economy is complete BS.

China and India are already more committed to it than the US is, and have, relatively, done more. And China's economy is both the largest in the world, and fastest growing, growing at a whopping 8% GDP every year for the past decade and a half, including during the global recession (ie, they weren't even hit by the recession), and while they are enacting more and more environmental regulations to do their part.

And in the US the "Green Energy Revolution" has created thousands of jobs and economic opportunity.
But that's what happens when a new industry grows; the naysayers (like you) who said it would be different this time, that it would harm people, were idiots.

It requires faith without any more proof than Christians have to believe in the God of Abraham. The way that CAGW alarmists have been acting has not been that different from the Westboro Baptist Church nutters.

This only shows that you are ignorant about both groups of people.

They try to shout-down and silence opposing voices, substituting outrage, anger, and argument/appeal from/to authority for reason and logic.

No, that's what you're doing.

Even their precious IPCC/Dr. Roy Cook "97% scientific consensus" is bullshit. The "97%" includes scientists who think humans have *some* effect on climate, which humorously includes many on the "Denier(TM)"-side.

Not sure what your point is here.
Best I can tell is that you're disproving your own point and not even realizing it.

This is essentially what you just did:
-You said gravity wasn't real
-You threw an apple in the air
-It hit you on the head.
-You then said "See? Gravity is BS."

Hell, *I* believe humans have *some* effect, I've simply seen no evidence that justifies massive immediate changes

Well, the willfully ignorant typically remain that way until forced into action.
Especially when they are as determined to ignore reality as you are.

Unfortunately (especially for those of us in the UK), Mr.Hunt has a number of views that appear to be at odds with reality. e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/a...

In the UK, if you speak to many doctors about the minister, prepare yourself for a very, *very* long stream of invective.

They where proposing to use sugar beet for biofuels as a method to speed up decontamination of the land in Belarus (noting that much of the contamination fell in Belarus and not Ukraine). New Scientist article on the subject.

https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Oops,suspected cases, first confirmed in 59...
https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Actually, the Japanese, who had followed this discussion, decided to postpone the measles vaccination, after which the autism rate in young children suddenly and spectacularly dropped.

The only study I'm aware of is from 2005 and it shows nothing of the sort. Is there some new data that shows a change in trend later on? If so, how do we account for the timing?

How about this? Or maybe this?

So yes, NASA does not use SI units exclusively.

The ISS is closer to you than most destinations on this planet!

Well, that all depends on where it is at a given time. At best, it's between 250-350 miles away. At worst, I'd imagine that it's around 7400-7500 miles, if you go on a straight path. Of course, to do that, you have to go through a big chunk of rock.

Time? Well, generally it takes 2 days, which is about how long it takes to fly half-way around the world commercially. That said, with proper planning, it can be done in as little as six hours.

Not so much solved as a serious hint. The reason you know this might be the direct result of my great aunt dying. When she died she was the oldest living person in the world and she gave her body to science. (She open sourced her body)
And the result was published : http://www.medicaldaily.com/bl...
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
http://www.the-scientist.com/?...
among other places you might find info on it.

You don't have to believe, you just have to draw eyes on the wall...

Wired
New Scientist
Scientific American

Lie on.

And keep lying.

Re:

My great aubnt lived to be 115 and was at one point the oldest know living person in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Many people wanted to talk about life then. She lived inb a time people in the Netherlands lived in "plaggenhutten". When people asked if she kne when the first cars came, she laughed and said she remembered when the first bikes came. Imported from the US.
She lived alone till she was 106. She was always positive minded, even though almost all she knew had died.
She wanted people to learn and she gave her body to science. From that came the knowledge that alzheimer is 'just' a dissease and not something everybody will get when you get old. She was the basis for other discoveries as well as a push to do research with 100+ year olds.

She wanted the knowledge that came from her body to be her gift to some students that would cut her open or look at in a bottle. She never thought it would be such a success and she would have been delighted.

She never gave the impression that her universe left town. More that she was welcoming a new universe of things to learn. With that I learned that contact and optimism are very important. She always wanted others to learn and that is why she open-sourced her body. She insisted that the knowledge should be used by all. Again: she open-sourced her body.
An other thing the found : https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...

DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them! :-)

Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!

That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...

Somebody didn't get the memo about fMRI studies; fMRI right now is only about half a step away from being pseudo-science. What with sofware bugs rendering thousands of studies meaningless, and widespread methodological errors leading to voodoo correlations, any claim of a discovery based on fMRI right now should be taken with a bucket-sized pinch of salt.

Just a followup on my previous posting - I found the article I referred to: https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Hydro-electric dams cause more greenhouse warming than coal

Yes, but No actually.

(methane caused by stagnate water and anaerobic metabolizing of dead plant materials under water), but there's plenty of other toxins coal emits.

Long story short: A hydro dam (specially in alpine regions) has more in common with mountain lakes than with swamps.

- The water isn't stagnating that much (the whole point of a dam is not to keep the water forever sequestered, but to use its flow to produce electricity. The artificial lake forming is only a *temporary* storage of energy - like a big battery).

- Water in colder/high altitude region is less likely to encourage proliferation of anaerobic bacteria deep in the water.

- Both (water flow and seasonnal cold temperature causing currents inside the lake) increase level of oxygen in (artificial-) lake water, favorising more aerobic metabolizing compared to what is typically found in swamps.

- Colder climate among other means less water loss in normal operation. The level won't go that much down simply because it's dry and hot (as opposed to more power output needed). Depth contributes to the above effect.

- Mountain lake (and dam) configuration is different, they tend to be deeper (they happen/they get constructed in valleys which were dug by glaciers), which again contribute to above effect.

- Banks around alpine damns are steeper, meaning less vegetation forming between low and high water level, less biomass is injected to rot (and anyway it tends to rot less in this water as said above)

- Why let good wood rot at the bottom of a flooded valley ? Lots of the biomass get lumbered away as precious resource.

All the above (and much more factors) brought the realisation that the greenhouse warming caused by hydro-electric dams has been grossly over estimated. They actually end-up being more environmentally friendly than previously taught and more than fossil-fuel burning power plants.
Specially the deeper (as found in alpine regions) artificial lakes in colder/higher altitude region.

On the other hand, shallow dams in tropical area are a very bad idea (even from a mosquitoe point of view if you want to ignore the carbon impact).

Here we go. Hot news from 1999!

https://www.newscientist.com/a...

zoonotic pathogens are a very real concern, and the mutation of endemic animal pathogens into strains able to infect pure human cell lines *HAS* been documented, and was documented nearly a decade ago.

Specifically, early studies of mixed-culture embryos (an animal blastocyst that has had cloned human inner cell mass cells injected into it, along with the animal embryo's normal contents) resulted in unexpected results: In some cases, the resulting tissues were not just heterogenous admixtures of cell lineages, but cell fusion had clearly happened in embryonic development, and genetically hybridized tissue was present. These genetically hybridized cells in the culture tested positive for porcine endemic retrovirus infection (the tissue was of mixed pig and human lineage) and the retroviral sequences involved had adapted to be able to infect the pure human cells in the culture, some non-trivial number of them also testing positive for infection.

https://www.newscientist.com/a...

While modern techniques may permit the creation of genetic hybrid animals capable of growing human organs, the usualy subject of interest for xenotransplantation hosts is the porcine (pig) model. Recent studies into PERVs (Porcine Endogenous RetroViruses) have identified several strains that have strong capacity to adapt to infection of pure human tissues, meaning organs grown in animals that have the viral pathogen present can cause illness in human hosts they are introduced to.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-008-0141-7

www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/6/5/2062/htm

These are serious issues with the fundamental concept of using pigs as hosts for xenotransplanted organ harvesting, completely outside the scope of the ethics of creating "Miss Piggy".

Currently, it looks like trying this with pigs will be very difficult, if impossible, to accomplish without dangerous risk of introducing new and dangerous zoonoses into the human population at large, and possibly introducing human specific dna into the porcine germline at large. (The latter being especially easy to have happen by a combination of outstanding need to produce more animals quickly to meet organ demand, costs of proper controls, and human nature where potential profit meets regulatory obstruction)

This is just a bad idea, at least as far as swine host model is concerned. it is just asking for trouble.

It might be that other host animals have lower risk of serious zoonotic transfer, but I am unaware if that is the case or not-- all of the work I have seen has involved mice, rabbit, or swine models, all of which have some form of endogenous viral load that can become infectious to humans after infecting hybrid cell culture media, at least in vitro.

These scientists would do much better with using organ tissue priting techniques to produce organ analogs to support real organ growth in vitro. (eg, you grow a real organ on a tissue printed support system, made of "unsuitable for transplant but functional" printed organs, that is sustained in a tank.)

That is significantly less ethically dodgy, would solve a number of other issues besides transplant shortages (developed enough, such support systems could, at least in theory, serve as artificial wombs for reproductive assistance), and would not risk human populations with zoonoses.

But for some reason, there is this love affair with trying to use food animals to solve this problem, damn the data telling them it is a bad idea.

Then zap it. They can already create viruses from scratch anyhow - https://www.newscientist.com/a... So, just dump its DNA sequence to a tar file, and then snuff it out. That simple. And no moral dilemas about genocide because well, we can always tar xvf smallpox.tar, if we need to.

Indeed... http://www.newscientist.com/ar...
Earlier this year, Microflown's researchers discovered by chance that the device can hear, record or stream an ordinary conversation from as far away as 20 metres, says Hans-Elias de Bree, the firm's co-founder. Signal-processing software filters out unwanted noise like wind or traffic commotion. Work is now underway to increase the range. ...

"Not only could this work, it has worked," says Ron Barrett-Gonzalez at the University of Kansas. He has helped boost the sensor's range by 28 per cent to more than 25 metres. It will be possible to record a parade of people on a busy sidewalk all day using a camera and acoustic sensor, and tune into each conversation or voice, live or via stored files, he says.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier says this new capability is unwelcome particularly given the recent claims about the NSA's success at tapping into our private lives. "It's not just this one technology that's the problem," Schneier says. "It's the mic plus the drones, plus the signal processing, plus voice recognition."

Care to explain that one?

Clearly he doesn't. He was probably brainwashed by this drivel. He got it wrong, anyway. The claim is that the INITIAL CONSTRUCTION of a dammed hydropower site converts a large bunch of trees into methane, not CO2. Not that the continuing operation of them has the any greenhouse effect whatsoever.

The hatchet job does not appear to take into account the effect that plant life in the dammed water has in terms of CO2, compared to the trees and vegetation that once stood there. What do they think happens to the carbon in trees and vegetation on dry land as they constantly die and rot?

Hydropower is not clean energy. Hydropower plant operation produces large amounts of Co2 per kilowatt hour.

You need a citation for that, because on its face that is an astoundingly stupid claim. And don't even think of dredging up this weak-ass story, which is void of any evidence, and actually seems to be conjuring up a fairy tale of methane release, not CO2.

Also, the loaded terms "clean" and "dirty" referring to CO2 are manipulative and ignorant. CO2 is not "dirt". It is a colorless, odorless gas, food for plant life.

At the Correos de Cuba and the hotels, you have access to practically all news websites such as lemonde.fr, bbc.com, El Nuevo Herald (a Miami-based Spanish-language daily) and even to dissident sites. This is also the case for government employees with a computer and Internet access.

“I haven’t opened Granma for years,” says Luis, who works for the culture ministry. “I get my news from Google and the BBC website and I have never had any problem getting to websites operated by government opponents.
In fact, of all the news stories I wanted to read on the Internet, only one has been blocked.

North Korea:
I don't know what really happens in N. Korea. All I know that I hate Kim Jr Il hair style, his chubby face the same as I hate gangnam-style. But, while some N. Korea stories seem to be a propaganda's productions, the horrible stories about S. Korea are real: they covered mass killings, abuse, for "preparation for Olympic 1988", or disable-slaves in salt farms, which:

Although 50 island farm owners and regional job brokers were indicted, national police say no local police or officials will face punishment, despite multiple interviews showing some knew about the slaves and even stopped escape attempts.

Vietnam:
this country just got out of wars in 1991.

There has been extensive research into and testing off grills in more recent years. This New Scientist piece from 2009 sums up where it has reached; the grills are either too lightweight and shatter on being struck, or else they are too heavy and bulky, reducing efficiency and playing havoc with airflow.

Always be wary of the Dunning-Kruger effect when asking why people "don't just do something" in a given specialist field. If there's a seemingly "obvious" solution that isn't implemented, chances are it has been tested and found to be impractical.

As they mentioned in the New Scientist article (from January) : if these comets were the source of the Wow signal, these events should happen all the time, since comets aren't exactly rare, and I'm pretty sure people have pointed radio telescopes at them before.

Yours is one of the most remarkably silly frothing rude pointless rants that I've seen in a long time. If I were unkind I could say I'd hope that your meds would be released as generics so that you could actually afford to take them.

I came back after several days to add this news item that may add some light to the flying spittle:

https://www.newscientist.com/a...

which suggests that there isn't much ulterior motive in GSK's actions.

GSK certainly isn't perfect, but it is not horrible (and I own a little stock, and its HQ is just down the road from me as it happens).

Rgds

Damon

Also, consider this: if we had made five Hubbles, we would have screwed up all five of them with the same mistakes we made on the first one, and would never have been able to repair them all.

You wouldn't need to. When the first one demonstrated the error in space, then you can remake the mirrors for the other four before launching them. The gyroscope problem also turned up well before the first service repair mission.

So then you have one bad Hubble that you can deorbit and four working ones that you don't need to deorbit.

Leslie Corrice's Hiroshima Syndrome is the best all-round source. Corrice's site is an amazing work, he has collected into one place facts as they became known, and news coverage of the events. He is particularly attuned to distortions, exaggerations and certain scenarios that have been delivered to the press chosen for their dramatic description despite a laughably low probably. And unlike just about everyone else, he strives to segregate his news reporting from his own commentary.

Some no-hype and anti-hype information sources compiled by The Actinide Age,

What actually happened, written clearly by a radiation professional and teacher, Les Corrice ... Putting Health Risks from Radiation Exposure into Context: Lessons from Past Accidents Professor Geraldine Thomas, Imperial College London, April 2011 ... Also quoted in New Scientist ... The D-shuttle project comparing negligible radiation doses internationally in 2014, and its published open access paper ... Real-time radiation monitoring network for Japan. See if you can find a reading higher than this ... Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (all below detection limit in 2012) ... in Proceedings of the Japan Academy ... Radiation dose rates now and in the future for residents neighboring restricted areas (after 2012, will not cause detectable health impacts) ... in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... Will Boisvert confirms that wild claims of Japanese thyroid cancers in 2015 are based on bad science. Dr Jonathan Kellogg summarises the academic criticism ... Tim Worstall confirms that wild claims of a single Tepco worker developing radiation cancer is mere anti-nuclear opportunism ... Articles on the mental health impacts of long term evacuation in Medical News Today and Tech Times, and the cited 2015 Lancet study ... Ocean contamination in 2012(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and in 2015(Scientific Reports) --- already comparable to natural radioactivity ...

http://www.newscientist.com/ar... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The paper from the actual researchers is far more guarded, and suggest that it may be EMI similar to Perytons, which are radio sources that appear to look like a pulsar signature.

From Wikipedia - "In 2015, Perytons were found to be the result of premature opening of microwave oven doors at the Parkes Observatory. The microwave oven releases a frequency-swept radio pulse that mimics an FRB as the magnetron turns off.[2][10]"

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.0524...

Here is a paper on Perytons, and their possible sources: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.5080...

Here is a link on Pulsar physics, including a very basic back of the envelope derivation of the dispersion medium of pulsars. Apparently two pulses from a pulsar are detected a few milliseconds from one another, and stem from the mass difference between the electron and a proton and their interaction with interstellar space. Still trying to get a handle on this.. http://www.cv.nrao.edu/course/...

Dispersion measure variations and their effect on precision pulsar timing: http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.a...

Here are 10 cases where armed citizens took down active shooters:
http://www.personaldefenseworl...

Google will find more.

Google will find 100 times the amount of cases where the shooter took down an armed victim first... And another 10 times the amount where a person not under threat was shot with their own gun.

Allow me to use research, instead of an obviously biased site based on unverified news reports.
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed/

So it seems carrying a gun increases your risk of being shot and killed.

It should also be noted that the biggest risk from being shot and killed came from a family member, not a robbery.

Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported.

Seems packing heat is a good way to kill the one you love.

Enjoy. https://www.newscientist.com/a...

That's cool, but my understanding is that the limit on processor speed isn't the switching speed, we've had transistors that switch at 600GHz for a while now. The problem is making good wires to connect them together, while dissipating heat.

Well, acidification isn't an issue because of the vastly more powerful pH equilibrium which is maintained by the various minerals the oceans rest upon. Most issues of decreased alkalinity can be more easily explained by upwellings of cold water which carry a higher concentration of CO2. This is why the seas outgas at the equator and intake as they go to the poles.

As to thousands of years, the seas shouldn't have a problem with it. As to the land, as you say... good for plants.

The only negative consequence you're likely to even try to cite here is ocean acidification which is actually the red herring you keep looking for. The oceans are alkaline and there is no way that you're going to make them acidic. Less alkaline? Maybe... but the variation from what I can see is something like between 8.2 and 7.5 globally and that is from what anyone can tell entirely determined either by local run off and pollution of rivers... or upwellings of cold water in the region. Absent either of those... I'd like to see the data. And if we really want to get serious about the acidification discussion, I'm going to cite the pH records that predate the 90s. You'll see the sine wave.

Also, because its funny:
https://www.newscientist.com/a...

No organism has evolved to cope with harsh conditions of space.

Oh?

So does NASA... Goes to show how horrible imperial is

Hmmm ... interesting: NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units

“The Shuttle and US segments of the ISS were built using the English system of measurements,” says NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma. “And much of the Ares launch vehicle and Kennedy Space Center ground systems are legacy hardware built in the English system, too.”
US law

NASA recently calculated that converting the relevant drawings, software and documentation to the “International System” of units (SI) would cost a total of $370 million – almost half the cost of a 2009 shuttle launch, which costs a total of $759 million. “We found the cost of converting to SI would exceed what we can afford,” says Hautaluoma.

“Given these budget constraints and the need for consistent units throughout the Constellation Program lifecycle to minimise risks, and to contribute to mission success, we’re revising the previous management directive to a primarily English-units-based program,” he says.

Question: What is this?

A) Assembly line for Imperial starfighters built using metric? Or ....

B) Assembly line for metric busting SR-71 built using imperial?

Answer: It's a trick question, there are no Imperial starfighters. The answer is B: an assembly line for SR-71s built using imperial.

Something to ponder on my 5km walk.

Interestingly, the east coast land is sinking around 20 times faster than the sea level is rising. Maybe the sinking land is displacing seawater that is causing the sea to rise? Just a thought. In any case sea level itself is kind of an academic concept when the entire surface of the planet is in continuous motion, the planet itself is not quite spherical, and gravity itself is unevenly distributed. (Interesting articles: http://articles.chicagotribune..., and https://www.newscientist.com/a...)

In my opinion, Miami's perceived problems are likely due to overdevelopment, land subsidence, groundwater depletion, and perhaps climate hysteria -- not unlike Venice. The one thing I am pretty sure of is that the 1/4 inch of sea level rise is not a significant factor. The gizmodo article is misleading, and sadly the comments indicate that people are eating it up.

Just saw this garbage in the "news" today: https://www.newscientist.com/a... epic, completely new, unique, interesting, etc. All for a shitty video of penguins splitting a squid.

Prove that it's a mismatch of the body and not a mental problem. Considering that they have either XY or XX it sounds to me like the body isn't wrong.

Already been proven:

• Caught Between Male and Female
• Transsexual differences caught on brain scan
• Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus

Also, obviously I've discussed it with specialists, and it's no longer classified as a mental problem per se - but the stresses imposed by the mismatch are capable of causing untoward stress, not just with living with it, but the reaction from people such as yourself. So, you're part of the problem :-)

We should change the patent system so that it works more like how you imagine it works, namely that patent examiners only do some simple sanity checks, and that validity only gets established through court challenges. But that's not the patent system we have right now.

Those systems exist in other countries, and they're uniformly terrible. Remember all those stories about someone patenting the wheel in Australia? That was a registration-only system.
They're also much more expensive for people accused of infringement, since the trials are much more involved, with having to first examine every aspect of patentability.

We should not be in such a hurry that we are sending people in fragile tin cans reliant on chemical rockets. Instead we should be working on building an actual Ship in orbit.

What is a "Ship"? First, it is a vessel with ample power: some kind of reactor that can run all the ship's systems, plus a magnetic shield. The other systems a reactor would power is the engines...Ion or those EM drives (should they pan out. I expect the truth should be sorted out by the time they get around to building something like this). Sure...they are low thrust, but you can have a lot of them. And they have some pretty powerful ones in development.

Another thing it would have to be is big. Room for rotating sections for artificial gravity, hydroponics, a workshop (because AAA doesn't serve Space yet). Storage for fuel, water, a lander of some sort, etc.

Sure, it sounds all futuristic, but we have the essential technologies or they are on the drawing boards, or can be with just a bit of political will. It's time we took the next step in Space Travel...the step where it's actual travel and not just joy rides to lower orbit. We can put off Mars for a decade or and instead focus on building something that is safe, reliable and not a one and done soda pop can.

You invented maglev again?

Maybe you could try to patent it in Australia...

interesting but irrelevant puzzles

Like "why does this lump of rock ruin my film?" and "as if we'd ever figure out how to stick two atoms together?"

If you want a practical application of neutrino detectors and their relevance today, you need look no further than Online Monitoring of the Osiris Reactor with the Nucifer Neutrino Detector which has direct applications in the field of nonproliferation. Here's a map of the world as a function of its antineutrino flux. It's a little low-res as of last month, but it looks really interesting - as in, it's a map of every nuclear reactor on earth - once you subtract out the background from decay of naturally-occurring elements in the crust.

Not only have we used knowledge of new fundamental particles to learn how to split and fuse the atom to release energies that would have been unimaginable to the Curies, we can use knowledge of newer, harder-to-detect, and "irrelevant" fundamental particles to detect bad actors trying to build bombs on the sly. If the fundamental particles underlying the first nuclear war are Nobel-worthy, surely the particles that are being measured in order to prevent history's second nuclear war, ought to be worthy of consideration, even if nobody's figured out how to make a bomb out of them.

Why would you want to switch neuron off? On a medical standpoint I mean.

There is no medical reason, but there are research reasons. Turning neurons on and off helps us understand how brains work, and what causes brain disorders, like epilepsy and dementia. Even single neurons can have an effect. For instance, there is the Jennifer Aniston cell.

For ocean communications coverage, they attached a laser communications system to some sharks.

Generating the artificial sharknado in order to improve coverage was challenging, but necessary. A shark's laser at sea level just doesn't provide enough coverage to be cost effective.

Microwave relay.
https://www.newscientist.com/b...

It's not about the medium, it's about the use. Point to point communications can compete with fiber and copper, but once you start broadcasting to multiple users you lose range and bandwidth as broadcast wireless is a shared medium.

If you have 100 studies you are replicating, by sheer chance you are likely still going to have a few who you successfully replicate but aren't real. So the problem may be worse than that (slightly). Psychology isn't the only field with these issues. There have been a lot of problems in medicine also. See https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528826-000-is-medical-science-built-on-shaky-foundations/. Part of the problem is one of incentives: the incentives to do a study which simply replicates a pre-existing study is low, and many journals won't even publish them. This also combines in bad ways with post-hoc analysis where you look at your data and find a pattern in it that is worth publishing; the worst offender here is medicine where people use different statistical tests and different subgroup analysis until they get a positive result.