Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: smithsonianmagazine.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to smithsonianmagazine.com.

Comments · 9

  1. Re:Bah, move the servers offshore. by westlake · · Score: 1 · on TorrentSpy Must Preserve Data In RAM For MPAA
    Because someone just might be willing to provide the firepower to back it up?

    You just might need someone with the firepower to back it up. Piracy on the high seas is still very much a going concern. The Pirate Hunters

    Living outside the law is pure Fantasyland.

  2. Re:English? by noSignal · · Score: 1 · on Worm Threat Forces Apple To Disable Software?

    Along with tatoos, and piercings, I hope that trendy style of spelling words goes into the annals of stupid fads. You're right: tattoos and piercings are nothing but fads that sprang up in the 90's as a way for teens to piss you off.
  3. Checkers, Not Draughts by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Checkers Solved, Unbeatable Database Created
    From the Wikipedia entry:

    The most popular forms are international draughts, played on a 10×10 board, followed by English draughts, also called American checkers that is played on an 8×8 board, but there are many other variants. Draughts developed from alquerque.[2] Draughts would be a much much larger gamespace than Checkers. I noticed that draughts appeared in the tags of this story but it shouldn't.

    Also, I've heard before that "it takes longer to learn to play checkers at the master level than it does chess. What checkers lacks in breadth, it makes up in precision and finality." I realize that puts me at risk of being modded as flamebait but I wonder if any other Slashdot reader can confirm or contest that.
  4. 9/11 Truthers are shit-for-brains morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait · on Senator Warns of Email Tax This Fall
    And Ron Paul is too damn close to that.

    9/11 was not the fault of the US. And if you understood Sayyid Qutb, you'd know that.

    Turning a haircut into a matter of grave moral significance is the work of a fanatic. That's the light ultimately cast by Qutb's American experience on the question of why his disciples might hate us. Hating America for its haircuts cannot be distinguished from hating for no sane reason at all.
  5. Re:How often does this happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative · on LED Forty Years Older Than Thought

    A lot! E.g. refrigeration, including Air Conditioning, was invented long time ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigeration#First_r efrigeration_systems/.

    One of the first "modern" refrigeration systems was dismissed as blasphemy, and was trashed in the media by an ice merchant http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2002/jul y/object.php/ who had a vested interest in shipping ice to warm places instead of making the ice on the spot.

  6. Re:Overpopulation: Overblown? by JasonKChapman · · Score: 1 · on U.S. Population Hits 300 Million
    While we may be overpopulated in the metropolitan areas, but I am absolutely positive that you cannot say you do not contribute to that overpopulation. Go to any truly rural area - like Montana or Alaska - and you will see that overpopulation of the planet is probably not within the grasp of our children's, children's, grandchildren's wildest imaginations.

    Indeed! A recent article in Smithsonian stated that the entire population of the U.S. is only using about 4% of the land. We cram ourselves together because we like to be crammed together, not because there's nowhere else to go.

    The U.S. population originally clustered around seacoasts, lakes, and rivers for the same reason the rest of the world did--transportation and industry. Now, even though geographical location is less important, we still feel the need to cluster together, with the trend leaning toward populations flowing back into urban areas and revitalized downtown sections.

    Incidentally, it also indicated that without immigration, the U.S. would likely to be following the same growth-rate-reversal trend that the rest of the industrialized world is in.

  7. Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Qzukk · · Score: 1 · on Soft Tissue Discovered In T-Rex Bone

    The Smithsonian Magazine has sort of a followup on Mary Schweitzer (more about her and her history than the actual fossils) from May 2006. It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a start. According to her university's information page, she hasn't published anything this year, yet. Or that page just isn't up to date.

  8. Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Qzukk · · Score: 1 · on Soft Tissue Discovered In T-Rex Bone
    How pathetic.

    So we have a bone with flesh inside. Either
    a) the flesh was added long after the dinosaur died
    a1) by a burrowing animal that got trapped inside the bone
    a2) by a palentologist who wasn't getting enough fame watching 80's TV
    b) blood vessels and cells can be preserved for millions of years in the right conditions

    or if you're a fundamentalist, the answer is obviously

    c) the earth is 6000 years old

    Funny how when you pick the fundamentalist source, there doesn't seem to be much discussion about the possibilities here. The other guy's source on Science News went on to point out that
    Using the extraction technique, Schweitzer and her colleagues subsequently recovered what appear to be blood vessels and osteocytes from two other well-preserved specimens of T. rex. They've also obtained osteocytes from an 80-million-year-old hadrosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur.
    I didn't see any mention of that in your "same story".

    But hey, let's look and see what's been going on since last year. Why, the Smithsonian has decided to not let Mary Schweitzer slide into oblivion so easily. According to that May '06 article, not only has she been finding blood cells since the 90's, it seems she's gone on to dissolve a few more fossils in acid and recover organic material, so I think we can rule out A2, unless Schweitzer is just that good.

    What exactly is it you're trying to debunk again?
  9. Smithsonian artical by Jimmy Carter. Pease Read by bg2500 · · Score: 1 · on Bill Gates Donates $258 Million to Fight Malaria

    Read the article here I read this article in the print version of the magazine a couple weeks ago and I think it is relevant to this discussion. Most the things I want to say, this article says better. I will leave it to you to read and discuss.