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A lot of people haven't even read Kuhn, let alone anything more modern that would help them understand what science is.

And by that, I mean on the whole spectrum of the stupid bird called politics. Both big flapping wings.

Best play of words I've read in a very long time. Virtual +5 Funny to you, my good sir.

Actually, I assume it was just a reference to this internet meme from over a decade ago with the same puns. Still funny though.

DNA is DNA, it has no memory of how it was created -- through genetic engineering or through natural mutations which were then bred because humans or animals intentionally or inadvertently favored them in some way.

What a wonderfully ignorant statement that captures the very essence of this argument. While DNA has no "memory" of how it was created, DNA is not the only concern with GMO foods. GMO foods are engineered to contain genes that express proteins that are advantageous to the recipient plant. Proteins, when expressed the wrong way can wreak havoc on the humans (or animals) that consume them. About the agent that causes CJD: It is difficult to kill, it does not appear to contain any genetic information in the form of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA), and it usually has a long incubation period before symptoms appear. In some cases, the incubation period may be as long as 50 years. See Prions. Prions cannot be destroyed through cooking, and therefore would be present in any product manufactured from the ingredient that contained them. Not to say that GMO products will contain Prions, but if a GMO protein contained in a foodstuff was harmful, it could take decades before it was discovered.

Additionally, our understanding of how DNA works is laughably limited. While we know that DNA contains the instructions to produce a protein, the exact mechanisms that determine the expression of those genes are complicated and aren't always understood. Our understanding of how proteins work and how they interact with each other and RNA is even more limited, especially when you consider how many interactions that must be considered to determine if a GMO protein will be safe to consume.

What hubris you, and everyone who claims that a few years of very limited research, is enough to prove that something this complicated is absolutely safe and warrants no caution by the consumer.

As for myself:

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Quit trying to stuff words in my mouth. The answer is "not really".

So 1.8% of interstate accidents in Kentucky involved a stalled vehicle.
http://uknowledge.uky.edu/ktc_...

The link is old but it makes the point.

If you don't live close to a busy highway I can understand why you don't understand the danger of stalling on the road while cars are passing you at 75 MPH

Ask the author of TFA, he wasn't a random victim

Who said random? The blame is on all of them. There's a reason testing is done on isolated tracks.

we may have some ideas about how the brain works — at an electro-chemical level — it has been well studying and documented. a good text would be by neurologist — john eccles:

http://www.amazon.ca/Evolution...
http://home.earthlink.net/~joh...

as for treating a simulation of the brain as having the same qualities as a real functioning brain is to fear getting wet from a simulation of a rainstorm. there are scientists which would disagree that human consciousness is actually simulable in this way:

one of the worst mistakes in cognitive science.. is to suppose that in
the sense in which computers are used to process information, brains
also process information. (john searle, cognitive scientist, 1990)*

* Is the Brain a Digital Computer?
https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/...

Maybe I'm missing something but, but you appear to be asking what currently available GMO crops contain "entirely separate species". Ignore this if I misread.

There are only a few currently on-the-market GM crops, where GM refers to transgenic modification, not hybridization. Probably the most commonly known is the Roundup ready line of crops, including soy and corn, but I'm a little sketchy on the details. It appears to have something to do with the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens . Almost as commonly known are crops such as Bt corn and potatoes, which have a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis , The SunUp papaya has a gene fragment from the papaya ringspot virus. Liberty Link corn, soy, etc., has a gene isolated from Streptomyces bacteria. Golden rice has been produced different ways, including genes from daffodil, bacteria, and corn.

Anyway, that's a partial list, in case you're interested. I don't suppose you are actually claiming that there is no practical difference between cross-breeding and transgenics.

This touches on the effects, Hollywood was apparently worried that the original plan for 60 fps in theatres looked to "realistic" and would put audiences off.
http://clockworkbrothers.com/?p=1836

This is off topic, but imagine if the study I mentioned was true and then you showed people ultra violent TV shows at ultra high frame rates.
http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/Bandura1963JASP.pdf

I digress.

The one thing that kills them dead, and permanent, is boric acid.

Really? We don't have any significant cockroach problem on this side of the Atlantic - I had to struggle to recognise them the first time I saw them, in the Middle East - but it slightly surprises me that what is so often reported as a terrible scourge, could have such a relatively simple solution. (OK ; I'm more of a chemist than the average street full of people, so I'm more realistic about the hazards of using such chemicals ; but if that's going to put people off, more fool them.)

Googly-google ... Looks good. OK ; cockroaches no longer considered a problem by me.

Colorado State University says that corn requires 22 inches/year for a high yield crop with a range of 20-25 inches/year. You can get a low yield crop of corn on 15-16 inches/year.
http://www.extension.org/pages/14080/corn-water-requirements

Oregon State says that hemp requires 20-28 inches/year for optimum yield.
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/

For comparison, Switchgrass can grow everywhere and needs 15-30 inches/year.
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Forage/switchgrass2.pdf (PDF)

The GP stated that there is a better crop for every climate zone. That may or may not be true, I'm not going to look through every zone and every crop, but I will say that hemp is not the end-all-be-all crop it's made out to be. To me, switchgrass looks better for general industrial use (the plan is to grow it on shit land like near highways since it doesn't require much upkeep). In the southeast kudzu since it grows so easily and offers a lot of biomass. But whenever industrial crops are brought up it seems hemp is the only answer. We have lots of different crop possibilities that fit the different climate zones and needs. Hemp is just one of the possibilities and isn't necessarily the best for all purposes. It's just made to sound that way.

No. You seem to be applying some wildly incorrect, reductionist logic that if the total population size doesn't matter, then magically the sample size doesn't matter. The sample size is important. What's not important is how large the population that sample is drawn from. What dictates the sample size is how high you want your confidence and how large the effect size is.

Let's say you're measuring the fraction of tweets containing at least one happy word for a geographical area. If, in reality, 50% of tweets from that area contain happy words, you don't need a very large sample size to accurately measure that. If, on the other hand, 0.1% of tweets contain happy words, you need a much larger sample size.

Note that this is only really true for large populations -- which is most surveyed populations. For ludicrously small sample sizes, all statistics are bad, but then, statistics tells you that tiny sample sizes are very bad. So stop using that as an example.

A handful of trivially-found references.

well there is this
http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24

and this
http://www.pro-music.org/Content/questions/DosAndDonts.php#Q13

and this
http://www.uky.edu/UKIT/security/policy_riaa.htm

and so on... but more over, why in the world would it make any sense to make copyright infringement only kick in after 24 hours? who would write a law like that? nobody would, because nobody has. it's an urban legend, continually circulated, just like all urban legends.

That's a very good question. The digital media with the longest lifespan is based on core and gives you a 100 year lifespan (generally considered "archival quality" in physical formats) but it's horribly expensive to build core-based memories and even modern derivatives are usually bulky.

I'd also like to point to this article on the subject:

http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/DL/hedstrom.html

A quote from it:

"Most librarians and archivists have accepted the basic wisdom -- for now at least -- that digital preservation depends upon copying, not on the survival of the physical media (Lesk). But copying, also referred to as "refreshing" or "migration" is more complex than simply transferring a stream of bits from old to new media or from one generation of systems to the next. Complex and expensive transformations of digital objects often are necessary to preserve digital materials so that they remain authentic representations of the original versions and useful sources for analysis and research (Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information)."

The problem with the solution described is that most modern formats are lossy, so migration-based techniques (with the accompanying transforms) will degrade quality -- sometimes faster than copying analogue media. Only lossless formats are degradation-free from migration and most digital media is not transmitted in a lossless format. Too bulky. Which, ultimately, means that the primary reason for using digital (the ability to copy error-free) isn't valid for the way we currently use digital media, which in turn means that the kind of preservation you're talking about simply isn't possible without a major change in the way people approach data storage.

And, since you're right in discussing what the consumer gets (versus what the studios have), that ultimately means consumers have to get archival-grade digital data for any kind of consumer-based archive (including libraries, who - as far as studios are concerned - are still consumers) to work at all.

Also, read this. It does a better job than I did explaining just how pathetic Coyne is.
Haught letter to Coyne

Kinda funny how much atheism resembles every other religion when the voice of an obsessive militant is viewed as the collective representative.

I would recommend that anyone, before reaching conclusions about what occurred, read Haught's open letter to Coyne (which really should have been linked from TFA) and, of course, watch the video.

....over debates that are many centuries old are two smaller, perhaps more relevant, and sad facts.

1. The first is that the release of this video was apparently, at least in part, worked out by Haught and Coyne themselves. Haught wrote Coyne a letter, asking Coyne to post the letter on his own blog and stating that, if Coyne did so, he would agree to have the video released. Coyne, apparently did so, complying with the letter, at least, of Haught's request.

2. Missing from this action entirely is Dr. Robert Rabel, who, at least according to Coyne, threatened to sue over the incident. Instead, the statement concerning the release of the video was provided by the Provost of the University of Kentucky. Rabel's absence from the current drama, in light of his threat to sue (if true), leads me to be concerned on his behalf.

After reading both Haught's letter and Coyne's blog side-by-side, and after stepping back and looking at the situation as a whole, I am of the opinion that we most likely have here is a situation in which what at least one group views as an unfortunate and un-collegial exchange of ideas was blown up into a far more damaging scandal by forces unleashed by one party, that, once released, spiraled out of control. And the scandal could conceivably have lasting impacts on careers -- though probably not given the seniority of the dramatis personae.

While it is impossible to avoid seeing the actions of all tree primary actors (Rabel, Coyne, and Haught), as contributory, I cannot help but think that primary the culprits in the act of throwing gasoline on this already smoldering blaze, were none other than ourselves -- the /. subscribers. I don't know Drs. Coyne, Haught, or Rabel. Because I have work to do (as most of us do), and a lot of it (as many of us do), I don't have time to watch the exchange between them. Because of that, I am, thankfully, also able to say that I didn't have time to write the NEH, the UK Provost, or Drs. Rabel or Haught. But again, that's because I don't have time and not, I am sorry to say, because I thought doing a bad idea when I read the original post.

However, admitting my own culpability, at least in terms of what I thought, if not what I did, I do want to take a moment and suggest that the community of IT enthusiasts and professionals has again been complicit in contributing to one of the uglier aspects of new media -- a sort of digital mob justice in which mundanely flawed people and even good people are forced into an anti-celebrity roles by strangers. We all want justice folks. And, our new overlords notwithstanding, I know that everybody on this forum wants free speech. But justice doesn't come over the internet. It happens person to person and face to face. I suspect that the outcome could have been the same if everyone who had written angry, abusive, or profane letters to Drs. Haught or Rabel (or the NEH or the UKY Provost for that matter) instead wrote respectful and collegial letters that explained merely explained their points. It could have been the same, except it wouldn't have been so painful to the primary players involved. So, that's my two bits. Maybe now it's my turn to be /.-ed.

....over debates that are many centuries old are two smaller, perhaps more relevant, and sad facts.

1. The first is that the release of this video was apparently, at least in part, worked out by Haught and Coyne themselves. Haught wrote Coyne a letter, asking Coyne to post the letter on his own blog and stating that, if Coyne did so, he would agree to have the video released. Coyne, apparently did so, complying with the letter, at least, of Haught's request.

2. Missing from this action entirely is Dr. Robert Rabel, who, at least according to Coyne, threatened to sue over the incident. Instead, the statement concerning the release of the video was provided by the Provost of the University of Kentucky. Rabel's absence from the current drama, in light of his threat to sue (if true), leads me to be concerned on his behalf.

After reading both Haught's letter and Coyne's blog side-by-side, and after stepping back and looking at the situation as a whole, I am of the opinion that we most likely have here is a situation in which what at least one group views as an unfortunate and un-collegial exchange of ideas was blown up into a far more damaging scandal by forces unleashed by one party, that, once released, spiraled out of control. And the scandal could conceivably have lasting impacts on careers -- though probably not given the seniority of the dramatis personae.

While it is impossible to avoid seeing the actions of all tree primary actors (Rabel, Coyne, and Haught), as contributory, I cannot help but think that primary the culprits in the act of throwing gasoline on this already smoldering blaze, were none other than ourselves -- the /. subscribers. I don't know Drs. Coyne, Haught, or Rabel. Because I have work to do (as most of us do), and a lot of it (as many of us do), I don't have time to watch the exchange between them. Because of that, I am, thankfully, also able to say that I didn't have time to write the NEH, the UK Provost, or Drs. Rabel or Haught. But again, that's because I don't have time and not, I am sorry to say, because I thought doing a bad idea when I read the original post.

However, admitting my own culpability, at least in terms of what I thought, if not what I did, I do want to take a moment and suggest that the community of IT enthusiasts and professionals has again been complicit in contributing to one of the uglier aspects of new media -- a sort of digital mob justice in which mundanely flawed people and even good people are forced into an anti-celebrity roles by strangers. We all want justice folks. And, our new overlords notwithstanding, I know that everybody on this forum wants free speech. But justice doesn't come over the internet. It happens person to person and face to face. I suspect that the outcome could have been the same if everyone who had written angry, abusive, or profane letters to Drs. Haught or Rabel (or the NEH or the UKY Provost for that matter) instead wrote respectful and collegial letters that explained merely explained their points. It could have been the same, except it wouldn't have been so painful to the primary players involved. So, that's my two bits. Maybe now it's my turn to be /.-ed.

I feel Coyne was the one in the wrong here. After reading Haught's open letter to Coyne I'm somewhat dismayed at the reaction here. It's painfully obvious that most of you just assumed Coyne was telling the truth and that the only reason the video was not released was due to Haught not liking the outcome. However, its far from the truth. Personally, I'm on the science side of the fence, but Coyne's presentation was pretty bad and misrepresented a whole lot. If I were Haught, I'd be dismayed as well. Moreover, Coyne blatantly lied about the supposed agreement that the video would be released afterward. I know a lot of people don't read the articles, but I feel like it's somewhat lame to have such strong feelings on the subject when you have no idea what actually happened. Haught's Open Letter to Coyne: http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/GainesCenter/Letter%20To%20Jerry%20Coyne.pdf

Do we actually know Haught's side of the story? When this topic was last discussed, we only heard what Coyne and his supporters were saying about the refusal to release the video.

An open letter has been posted in which Haught says "I never gave permission before or after the panel to post the video". If this is true, then the whole matter needs to be seen in an entirely different light. In particular, I'm not sure exactly what Haught needs to seek forgiveness for? Unless thought crimes such as Christianity are themselves a sort of sin?

My initial views about this were similar to the popular sentiment on slashdot.

However, it is a shame that the person at the receiving end of the criticism wasn't given a chance to present his version of things, and now that he has, it has still not received the same attention that the original controversy did here on slashdot.

Here is John Haught's own version of the events: http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/GainesCenter/Letter%20To%20Jerry%20Coyne.pdf

I am sure I will disagree with his views if and when I do read about them. And I have no idea how accurate his version of the events is, but he damned well has the right to be heard.

It's also interesting to read his open letter to Coyne that is posted along with the video.

He may be wrong, deluded, full of himself, or just lying, but I have a strong sense that the reporting of this whole event was very badly skewed against Haught. At least now, with the presentations and video made available, we can see how it really played out.

Well, I present a radio show for the blind and disabled, so at least some of the targets will be hearing about it next week. Meh.

http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/ckre/
http://tunein.com/radio/CKRE-s69088/

Are you so unschooled that you do not understand that Personification is a fine rhetorical device and has been in use for thousands of years? Even by those who do not worship Gaia?
The point being that you can only push the ecosystem so far before its degradation starts having an adverse effect on you. But then, I'm sure that you are intelligent enough to understand this. Because, otherwise, your opening salvo would be an ad hominem attack on the OP, attempting to paint him as irrational, something that I do not believe you have evidence for.

I understand that you believe that your currently impressive quality of life depends, in many ways, on continued assaults upon the Earth's ecosystem and that halting the same might impact your economic status or the quality of life that you now enjoy. However, I believe that you overestimate the impact that reducing mankind's wastefulness would have and, as such, attempt to rationalize the harm you and the other inhabitants of this world cause by using a false comparison with someone who does not have the technology you enjoy - including technology that could be harnessed to clean the world's ecosystems rather than to assault them.

Try http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html
http://www.uky.edu/PR/News/Archives/2002/July2002/AndyMarshall.htm

an Anglo-Saxon tale like Beowulf

A nitpick about literature heritage, the earliest copy of Beowulf is a translation written in Anglo-Saxon, not Anglo-saxon itself. So it is Anglo-saxon or English literature only the same way that Ibsen is.

Genetically modified foods are just foods. There's nothing "natural" about selectively bred crops.

I used to take exactly the same view, but having thought about it a bit more I've realized it's a little silly for essentially two reasons. 1) The selective breeding that was used throughout most of human history introduces changes relatively slowly and involves either selecting out a subset of the crops you're already using that have desirable characteristics or cross-breeding with other crops that you're already using for food. So you're talking about a process that will lead to small changes over a series of growing seasons, which larger changes only being accomplished over a much larger timescale. Because the process is slow and usually involves selecting traits for things you can already eat*, there is a fair degree of safety automatically built in. Modern techniques of genetic engineering allow one to make significant changes to the genome of a plant over a comparatively very short timescale, and one can add in genetic material from a totally different sort of organism that may well not be a human food source at all. As such, there is a far greater risk of introducing significant harmful effects.

To emphasize the point that very different genetic material can be added, it seems that in some cases genetic material is added to produce toxins that act as an insecticide. I believe that Bt-corn is one such example. I presume that this compound is known to be safe (in reasonable concentrations) to humans, yet my point is that adding in genes from non-food sources for the production of insecticidal compounds it considerably different than, say, selectively breeding corn with bigger sweeter kernels.

Understand, I share your frustration with anti-science Luddites who assume that "natural" means good and "chemicals" are bad. I also think it's silly that people don't understand the level to which our modern food crops are a human creation (resulting in things like "the atheist's nightmare" video). I believe these things should be examined through a rational discussion based on scientific evidence. I don't think genetically modified organisms are generically a bad thing, but I do think that saying that directly injecting foreign genetic material into the genome is no different than selective breeding is disingenuous, and doesn't help us have a rational fact-based discussion of the merits of GM crops. Personally, I'm far less concerned about the health implications and far more concerned about the ecological impact, which I think is both harder to predict and harder to control.

"The UV band in general is absolutely considered to be ionizing."

No, it is not "in general".

See http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q2111.html.

and http://ehs.uky.edu/biosafety/uv_radiation.html

and http://yarchive.net/env/ultraviolet_dna_damage.html

and http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiation_nonionizing/index.html#ultraviolet

and http://www.icnirp.de/PubOptical.htm

Again, vacuum ultraviolet is something people will never come into contact with since you'd literally have to be in a vacuum to do so.
So in terms of the UV that anyone cares about from a health standpoint, it is not ionizing.

Things that I think suck: Public IM connectivity setup takes over a month and is licensed poorly and very hard to order with a handful of different options. E.164 normalization for SIP mediation is not for the faint hearted. No persistent chat support (cant IM people that are offline and get the IMs when you log on) and the group chat is a completely separate client from a merger. Mac Messenger does not support Enterprise Voice so you can use it for AV but not as a softphone.

The edu pricing for OCS would be cheap like dirt and there a lot of organizations and clearing houses that you can federate traffic with. Check this link out: http://wiki.uky.edu/ocs/Wiki%20Pages/Federation%20Partners.aspx

Report unequivocal about dangers of secondhand smoke

Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers

,

As I noted in my post .. the first link as all about studies showing smoking in the home. And that BS about asthma attacks applies to car fumes, carpet outgassing, and a host of other items. Asthma attacks are not caused solely by cigarette smoke, which is why they carry medication with them at all times.

The second talked about eliminating smoking indoors. NEITHER attempted any measure of the affects of a person walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke on their way into a building once or twice a day. Yep .. smoke has bad stuff in it. Check the air you breathe if you live in the city, and I'm sure you will find a host of nasty things also.

I have no problem with eliminating smoking indoors. But I'm tired of all the BS that is thrown about by people who are ignorant and don't bother to read what is really in the studies, what they actually studied, and how the statistics can be used and abused.

But NOT walking through a cloud of smoke for 5 seconds, or working on a computer.

You can be working on a computer - or computer repairs - 9 to 5. That is far more than your five seconds of casusal exposure.

Even a few minutes of exposure to tobacco smoke can be enough to trigger an asthma attack, heighten the chances of blood clotting, damage heart arteries and begin the kind of cell damage that can result in cancer.

Report unequivocal about dangers of secondhand smoke

Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers

,

One of my projects for a comp sci class in college was a scheduling system, of sorts

I also had to write a scheduling system as part of the intro to software engineering course for my comp sci degree. Of course, being that we were all rank amateurs at the time most of our programs were embarrassingly bad. However, it did serve as a good lesson for us that writing good software is actually difficult and problems that seem simple can actually be quite complex; the devil is in the details as they say. For those of you who didn't have the pleasure of implementing the class or exam scheduling program in your comp sci curriculum, let me just say that scheduling a large number of courses and exams such that as many possible combinations can be selected without conflicts is NOT a simple problem. In fact, the scheduling problem is a variation of the Graph Coloring problem which is known to be NP-Complete. For those who are interested, a discussion of the relationship can be found here.

...until I Googled "plamsa actuator" and found a relevant article ranked number one...

http://www.engr.uky.edu/~jdjacob/fml/research/plasma/index.html

...and a bunch of other good articles listed after it.

Does the DOD think they not have the Internet in China and Iran?

Just by reading this article, you can get a good sense of the concept, which has to do with creating high-speed, non-mechanical aircraft control surfaces via boundary layer manipulation. Is this really that big of a secret?

I'll post more on this after I investigate the thump on the roof and see who's at the front door.

You mean like how fleas carrying the plague made rats and humans extinct during the dark ages?

IIRC insects predate dinasaurs. Sorry, I'm a skep tick.

The book's author isn't a palentologist, he is with the Department of Entomology at Oregon State University. He is (like I am now) making claims he does not have the credentials for.

Or the farming business is being outsourced: http://www.ca.uky.edu/AGC/NEWS/2005/Feb/imports.htm

No it's not about permanent eye damage, it's about bringing down the plane by distracting or blinding a pilot on final.

Class IIIa lasers aren't to be pointed into people's eyes but permanent damage from a quick flash is rare

http://ehs.uky.edu/radiation/laser_fs.html

IIIb is s a different story.

Here is a pointless example of XSLT+XML. I feel like something didn't work right in Safari, though...

Computers are increasing by a factor of about 1000X in performance per
price per decade. By the time any toddler of today is finishing
graduate school, computers will be about 1000X (for the first decade)
multiplied (not added) by 1000X (for the second decade) or about
a million times faster than they are now -- just like computers are
about a million times faster than twenty to thirty years ago (at
constant dollars, or so MIPS per $). Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?pr intable=1
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0126.html
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
(The rate of exponential growth itself is even increasing!)
According to that last link, those AI computers had about 1 MIPS
processing power. (And it's a funny idea Hans Moravec had, and I think
correct, that only for the last decade or so has AI been taking
advantage of faster desktop CPUs going beyond 1 MIPS..)

As an example, compare the late 1970s Apple II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II
with todays' (2007) eight core Mac Pro.
http://www.apple.com/macpro/
Then --> Now (approximate increase)
CPU: 1 Mhz --> 8 * 3 Ghz (8000X faster, but about another 100X internal
improvements from wider data operations and pipelining and such).
(somewhere in x100000 to x1000000)
RAM: 4K --> 4GB RAM just starting to be common. (x1000000)
Disk: 300K disks --> 300 gigabyte disks. (x1000000)
And all for about the same price (adjusted for inflation).
Some other considerations:
Bandwidth: 11 bytes/sec modem at $10 / hour --> 800000 bytes/second by
cable at $60 / month (about x10000 faster, well that doesn't quite fit,
but its still a big improvement -- and if you factor in the cost for
continuous access, there is probably another 10x or 100X boost in there,
producing effectively close to a x1000000 improvement of price/performance)
Printing: about 1000 characters per minute for $1200 printer -> 10 pages
per minute each with millions of color pixels -- with the printer often
now free with the computer (not sure how to call this as a multiple,
since quality has changed so much).

So, here are possible specs for a personal computer of 2027 if it was a
million times faster than today's:
CPU: 8 * 3 Ghz --> 8000 X 3 THz (1000X more CPUs each 1000X faster,
though I think it likely such systems might just instead have a million
processors at about today's speeds, perhaps interweaving memory and
processing power)
RAM: 4GB --> 4000TB (enough to hold all of the current surface internet
in RAM, see:
http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/ho w-much-info-2003/internet.htm
)
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
for MB, GB, TB, PB, EB series and their meaning
DISK: 300GB --> 300PB (which is 300,000 TB)
For reference, a DVD movie uncompressed is about 5GB.
Note that, according to:
http://elegans.uky.edu/blog/?p=49
300 TB would allow you to record your entire life in video for 16hr/day
for 100 years at 500MB/hr. So you could do that for 1000 people on just
your own $3000 2027AD personal computer. Or you could just perhaps store
the interesting bits of life video for perhaps a hundred thousand people
or so. Needless to say,

From my collection:
* Nanotechnology information [archived] [2002]
* Bibliography of nanotechnology and nanoscience [pdf] [2004]
* Brad Hein's nanotechnology website
* Ned Seeman's DNA nanotech bibliography
* MEMS/nanotech reading list
* Even more publications in nanotechnology
* sci.nano archives
* The open micro/nano-manufacturing project
* Nanotech in scifi

And if anybody has links on nanomechanical synthesis, that'd be much appreciated. IIRC, nanolithography is one of the main areas of development, along with nonlinear optics to get the required precision manufacturing.

http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/courses/CS585.html

I think this is one of the best Linux kernel training courses you can get anywhere.

I was interested in learning more about (like Calculus) on Wikipedia and found that I couldn't even understand the description of the subject!

If I remember correctly, Monsanto modified soybeans and corn to be "RoundUp Ready" as they called it. Basically they GE'd the plants so that they would not be affected by Monsanto's RoundUp pesticide, allowing farmers to spray their whole field with the pesticide and leave their crops untouched. So I would venture to say that in order to make these plants resistant, there is probably something being produced by them that is not entirely natural.

'The studies show that the genetically superior corn protects against rootworm'

Won't the rootworm beetle acquire resistance to this trait in the long run. According to this, you have to plant a ring of non-GM corn in order to prevent such a thing, and you still have to use insecticide.

'allowing farmers to produce more grain from the same amount of land'

Can the farmers reuse seeds from their own crop or must they buy new seeds every year. Will non-GM corm be banned as 'uncertified'.

'And what if the studies do show that the corn is harmful to rats if they're fed it exclusively?'

Well it means that feeding them GM corn for 90 days caused organ damage. A human eating lower doses for years is highly likely to get the same results. Assuming my Googling skills are up to scratch, it's to do with the toxin Cry3Bb1 protein introduced into the corn to kill rootworm beetle. It's supposed to be safe for mammals. According to this it is an artificial form of Bacillus thuringiensis also used as an insecticide.

'Neither humans nor cows are raised exclusively on corn, so rat studies have to show a big difference in rat health before any action is taken on them'

Ok, lets feed you exclusivly on GM corn for 90 days and get back to us. Why not include your whole family as well. Ask the family across the street to eat non GM corn as a control

was: Greepeace values rats over humans

These are found quite often.

If you found a frog in most products you'd be disgusted. Here it's a good thing. Anyone know who does their PR?

A solar car for an engineering competition. We get to compete against many other universities in the Formula Sun Grand Prix and North American Solar Challenge... The North American Solar Challenge is a 2500 mile rayce strictly on solar power. :-)

I managed the team for the last 2 years, and as a Computer Science of Engineering major, it was cool to get to help with aluminum chassis and fiberglass fabrication, programming microcontrollers, and of course the not as fun, fundraising. Lots of hard work, but I volunteered thousands of hours of my own time and it was a great experience.

several other universities have already done similar projects in the past few years.... http://www.engr.uky.edu/news/archives/2005/BIGBLUE IIIlaunch.htm

Funny you mention TTS readers.

I was friends with one of the kids of Deane Blazie

The guy was heavily involved (in the late 70's & early 80's) with the developement of the first text to speech devices and braille printers for blind people. He co-founded the company that essentially invented the field.

He created his own company in '86 and that company became the #1 designer and seller of braille/speech output devices and created the first note takers for the blind.

The guy deserves a lot of credit for his technological contributions to the blind. I also found it interesting that the suit was "NFB v. Target". NFB is the National Federation for the Blind, whose convention is where Blazie got his start many years ago, selling the first ten devices he made (with all the money he had at the time).

Since it didn't make it onto the "Related Stories" tab, I'll throw the good old Periodic Table Of Comic Books back into the discussion.
Just to keep it all over the table I am related to one of the people responsable for this.

This is a very narrow answer to your very broad question, but here goes: Some crops -- corn in particular -- have been GMed to produce their own biotoxin called Bt. Bt is fairly selective, targeting only lepidoptera -- butterflies and moths. The intended target is the corn borer, a moth caterpillar.

Here's a site that lists the possible problems with Bt. Warning: it's a scare site, so take all claims with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, there is one claim it makes that I can speak to. Butterflies and moths that nectar in or near the corn field are alleged to be at risk from Bt. Wiki has a good summary of the issue. As it turns out, the risk is relatively low in this case.* However, issues like this raise our general distrust of GM crops because we fear the law of unintended consequences.


* It should be noted with great displeasure that Bt is also sprayed in areas in order to wipe out the Gypsy moth. In that case, unlike the GM crop case, most butterflies and moths in the sprayed area die.

Dude, you're wrong.

You *can* get a degree in a field and then get certified on your own, but you can also get an undergraduate degree in one of many areas of education. Or a graduate degree (including PhD) in one of even more programs. There's an entire College of Education at the Univeristy of Kentucky. Ironic that you made such a big deal about how wrong GP was, huh?

I took a look at the University of Kentucky simply because that's where I am, but I'm sure it's the same many other places. Look for yourself.

There are a total of 18 undergraduate degrees offered by the College of Education, fully 2/3rds of which "lead to initial teacher certification", whatever that means. There are a total of 45 graduate degrees offered, some of which seem to be variations on the same thing based on your certification level, and some which are admittedly focussed on school administration rather than education, but I'm pretty sure at least half would be considered unique and education-based. Even if only 10% did, that would still prove your "there are only 2 degrees you can get in education" assumption wrong.

I don't usually get a kick out of proving people wrong, but I do when they make a big deal about rubbing someone else's face in the mud, especially when that other person was correct to begin with.

Right tail of raw scores is approximately log-normal or Pearson type IV- the higher you go the more the proportion of scorers is greater than the normal ditribution would predict.

http://sweb.uky.edu/~jcscov0/ratioiq.htm
http://www.abelard.org/burt/burt-ie.asp

For me and my state, adding that $.08 to cigarette tax would be much more productive.

Raise the tax on tobacco? In Kentucky?? What, are you trying to get your head chopped off? :-)