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Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2004
TarrVetus writes "Science Magazine's The Top Ten Science Breakthroughs of 2004 have been announced. The winner: The NASA Rovers and their evidence of water on Mars. The runner up was the Hobbit species found in Indonesia. Other breakthroughs include cloned human embryos and the first discovered pulsar pair."
Largest man-created crater on the surface of Mars? That's got to count for something!
I consider that a pretty awesome feat as i assume many others do
I still dont understand how finding water on mars is beter then other scientific advances. I mean come on it's only water.
If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor. Was this discrediting discredited itself?
Love, Stu
Just as a generic curiosity. I wonder how many winners of the past eventually turned out to be false or incorreect? Cause the Hobbits are still debated (although it's not some big controversy). Just to put "breakthroughs" in perspective, because some breakthroughs just lead to empty mineshafts, not gold.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
ie Short, fat and hairy?
Cowboy Neal doesn't come from Indonesia, does he?
Your ignorance is interesting.
It's not illegal. You just won't get federal funding.
yes, the recent turn of events shows people are actuall RTFAing!!
Sorry, my mistake, it's not ready yet.
Prohibition on Federal Funding for Cloning of Human Beings
In case your interested.
The discovery by Nasa's robotic rovers of a watery past on Mars has topped an eagerly awaited list of the 10 key scientific advances of 2004.
Compiled each year by Science magazine, the list has always divided opinion, and this year's has proved no exception.
The rovers triumphed in a strong field, including the discovery of a dwarf human species in Indonesia.
But Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine, said selecting first place in the list "wasn't a headache".
Not everyone shared his assessment. For some, the announcement in February that South Korean scientists had cloned human embryos had far-reaching significance.
"It has a whole range of implications; it's a very important development," said Professor Christopher Higgins, director of the Medical Research Council's Clinical Sciences Centre in London, UK.
"I wouldn't put the rovers at the top. It's a great technological achievement, but they haven't found life. If they had, that would have been extraordinarily exciting."
To actually see another planet - even though it's probably not at all like our own - is extraordinary
Simon Singh
The South Korean work was an important step along the road to therapeutic cloning. But Professor Higgins also sees philosophical implications in the work.
"The fact it can be done begins to move us away from some of the mysteries surrounding human beings; things like the existence of a soul, which frankly is pure imagination," he told the BBC News website.
"It begins to get us to that point at which we realise we are just a different form of animal. Science is about trying to understand where we come from, what our purpose is.
"Cloning a human embryo starts to address those questions. It may not be in the way that people like - as it may suggest there is no purpose - but I think it's very important."
'Short-changed'
Runner-up status went to the mind-boggling discovery that a dwarf species of human - dubbed "the Hobbit" by some - had survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until 13,000 years ago.
The study, published in the rival journal Nature, had seemed a strong contender for the top spot.
2M1207, European Southern Observatory
This direct image of an exoplanet (below left) did not make Science's list
In his editorial, Mr Kennedy said the find - known to science as Liang Bua 1 or LB1 - had "gripped the imagination of many". But, he added, it also raised questions and controversy.
"The lone skull and related postcranial remains are now under re-examination. We'll see how the story unfolds," Mr Kennedy wrote.
Also featured in Science's picks of the year was the discovery that junk DNA is not as useless as previously thought, and disturbing declines reported in plant and animal diversity.
But for writer and broadcaster Simon Singh, the stand-out discovery of the year was the first direct image taken of a planet circling another star. The picture, taken by astronomers in Chile, did not even make Science's top 10.
LB1 was an adult female that stood just one metre in height
Enlarge Image
"We have found literally dozens of planets outside our Solar System and that in itself has changed our view of the Universe," Dr Singh told the BBC News website.
"We now know there are other planets because we can see their effects on other stars. But to actually see another planet - even though it's probably not at all like our own - is extraordinary.
"Extraordinary not only in that we have the technology to see this object, but because it suggests one day we might see a planet like Earth and perhaps see evidence of life.
"To me, it's an historic image and I can't believe it wasn't splashed on front pages around the world."
Science magazine's breakthroughs of 2004
* Winner: Water on Mars. Nasa's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered compelling evidence for the prolonged existence of salty, acidic water on the surface of the Red Planet.
I submit the work of Dr. Valerie Hudson as an important breakthrough in 2004. She wrote a book called "Bare Branches" and explained how the sex ratio imbalance can have dire consequences for not only the affected nations (i.e. China )but also normal nations like the USA.
For discovering that all previous science and history is false and the world is in fact a giant ant farm created 6000 years ago by a cloud dwelling egomaniac
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If you have a scientific breakthrough, please wait till the next year to announce it, otherwise you won't make it the top 10 list.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
However, if you actually do manage it, the story was also covered by the Independent today.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
that happened in 2003...
I love what Prof. Higgins said about the human cloning:
"The fact it can be done begins to move us away from some of the mysteries surrounding human beings; things like the existence of a soul, which frankly is pure imagination," he told the BBC News website.
Amen, brotha.
We have the first actual picture of a planet orbiting another star... not inferential data, not radio info, but optical (not sure about wavelength, but that's irrelevant).
And it's not even on the list? The still questionable "discovery" of a wet Martian past makes the top of the list, but a deffinitive leap of scientific discovery (ie a fuzzy and blurred but very real picture of an extrasolar planet) doesn't even receive mention on the list (even if the article was kind enough to mention it)?
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
with ricketts.
There is not enough evidence to confirm the existence of "Homo Florenesis". So far, it's
a big hoax.
BBC have more bandwidth than God. Slashdot is more likely to get BBCed than BBC is to get slashdotted. =)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I think the BBC can handle the effect just fine.
maybe we should start looking for silicon based life forms (wasn't this mentioned in some Isaac Asimov story?).
BP http://www.card-central.com
They forgot: Non-geek Slashdot Reader bones found!
A Brittish satellite found evidence of water on Mars three weeks before Mars Rover found its own evidence of water. NASA has a policy of stealing the glory of every advance in tech. Take the Scram-jet. An Australian professor invented it a decade before NASA "reinvented" it. The Australian scram-jet had a successful flight before the NASA scram-jet as well.
I bet you have a nasty case of "swamp ass" too! You better wipe your ass with your hand and smell it to check!
David: Look, whether or not Anton is a midget, or a dwarf-
Man: No, he's a midget.
David: What's the difference?
Man: Well, a dwarf is someone who has disproportionately short arms and legs.
David: Oh, I know the ones. (He does a dwarf impression)
Man: Yeah, it's caused by a hormone deficiency.
David: Yeah. Bloody hormones.
Man: A midget is still a dwarf, but their arms and legs are in proportion.
David: Sure. (Gareth suddenly appears out of no-where)
Gareth: So, what's an elf?
David: Do you want to answer that?
Man: An elf is a supernatural being. Sometimes they're invisible, like fairies.
David: They don't actually exist, do they? In real life?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You can say whatever you want about Bush--just don't let his secret police hear you.
So if there isn't a soul... What is it?
I think therefore I am, but I'm not sure I am a being existing through a soul or a brain, but why can't we explain conciousness of the individual. I have my doubts about being a soul rather than a conciousness attached to flesh because I have often had conversations with person while being drunk and not remembering any of it.
I don't happen to believe in the soul as it appears in most religions, but I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea that helps countless millions cope with their lives. Statements like these hurt the image of the scientific community in the eyes of the public, i.e. the people the science is supposedly trying to improve the lives of.
If he had really disproven the soul or God (which is impossible to to the vague nature of their descriptions) then he should by all means spread this proof, but since he hasn't, then he should just STFU.
He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real. That's just stupid.
_____
Thank you.
I've always wondered why the excitement over embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells seem to be safer, and umbilical chords and liposuction seem to be a plenty good source for these little wonders.
Well had I hung my hat on the theory that it justified abortion (and that may have much to do with it) until I learned about cloning embryos (listed above as one of the top 10 scientific advancements). And cloning embryos is a patentable process.
So here in California we have the distinct honor of going in debt to fund yet another health-care industry attempt to corner an emerging market with patents?
If it were only not true...
Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
...They're basing this "Hobbit" on a single small human skull they found in Indonesia? Sorry, but that's not all that convincing to me that the entire body of the thing was ADULT, and also small. Just a bunch more psuedo-science BS.
...every single one of John Titor's predictions came true.
more to come..
So I guess the greatest achievement of manking would be to clone human hobbits and colonize mars with them?
Though the implications of Earth terraforming Mars just to create Middle Earth just to watch from hidden cameras would provide some good entertainment on Saturday mornings.
In the United Nations a measure was considered to address human cloning. That measure was not taken up and has been postponed until next year. The following countries wanted to take up the issue and are assumed to be against human cloning: Against: Albania, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (the Federated States of), Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Spain, Suriname, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela and Zambia.
As a biologist, I have to say that I'm incredibly disappointed by the inclusion of "junk" DNA in the list. I don't know what specific research results they're referring to when they say there's a breakthrough there, but the entire concept of "junk" DNA is absurd. I've never met a single molecular biologist who believed that non-coding regions were unimportant, and in fact it's been known for at least forty years that non-coding regions are important in regulation of gene expression. Maybe what bothers me most is the term "junk" DNA, which I've never actually heard another scientist use. It's a fictitious concept perpetuated by science writers so that they can feign surprise every time someone can attribute a function to a non-coding piece of DNA (and claim that the scientific community was surprised as well).
All that aside, I'm sure there are big breakthroughs in our understanding of the role of non-coding regions, and it probably deserves to be mentioned. However, one important point to make is that in spite of all this, there ARE parts of the genome that are unquestionably useless evolutionary vestiges. This is not necessarily mysterious, but it is interesting (for example, providing what is in my mind the most convincing evidence of evolution).
Science doesn't advance, civilization is retreating.
. there used to be a sig here.....
In Korea, only old people clone CowboyNeal.
Starting with a soulless being, they avoid the God problem.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
It is ironic that bemoan the science reporting when you don't know the most basic of facts yourself.
Hmm, don't know... reckon we can swamp this lot? It'd be challenging, I admit, but wouldn't it be tremendous to brag about to the grandchildren in years to come?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
But Professor Higgins also sees philosophical implications in the work... Science is about trying to understand where we come from, what our purpose is.
;)
Religion is about trying to understand what our purpose is. Anyone claiming science is for said purpose has merely made a religion for themselves out of science. Science is the accumulation of information using the scientific method. Repeat after me, science is in no way meant to be a search for our purpose as humans. Class dismissed.
There is no consciousness. All is reaction nuclear, chemical, quantum or beneath quantum. All actions, all events. All.
Only if half the internet failed. BBC has more bandwidth than slashdot could possibly get at.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
What about the Dudes who figured out how to filter cheap Vodka to make it semi drinkable?
That's gotta count for something!
See previous "Hacking Vodka" article here on
I noticed Canada isn't on there. :)
I, for one, welcome our new heavily-accented clone overlords.
On
The second sentence doesn't imply the first. It's as if you said: "There is no music. There are only density waves in the air."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Actually, it's a ban against stem cell cloning.
Australia, the USA, Italy, and Israel seem to be the only countries with any possible political power in that list regarding something as grand as a global stem cell cloning ban. Notice that many of those countries are 1)small and 2) predominantly religious. The other big countries like Germany, France, the UK, Japan, and so on have already expressed that they will fight any ban on stem cell research and cloning.
So could the BBC create a webserver that the BBC couldn't crash?
... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.
The last I heard, the remains, of which there are enough parts to conclude that there were more then two such 'hobbits' in that cave, have been locked away and will remain so for some time. How can they know there were more then one you say? Well, it's simple, there was either one three jawed 'Hobbit' or there were three seperate beings all of the same size and shape.
At least that is what I have heard regarding this story.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Did you shoot it down or something?
Or maybe you stole the damn thing and have it sitting in your basement.
That's an awfully incriminating statement to make.
Unless it was Budweiser or some other cheap American-piss beer. Then we'd have to nuke the planet.
Bohr, maybe?
It makes so sense to announce the "top 10 scientific advances of 2004" before 2004 is over, and before the dust has settled.
This page has some of the first pictures of clouds and frost on Mars, likely composed of water ice. It's really quite amazing.
However, as our scientific understanding of a phenomenon grows, it naturally replaces the earlier, superstitious myths that sought to explain it. This is not to say that those myths are completely without value. They may indeed "help countless millions cope with their lives", but that does not give them scientific merit, nor elevate them above the status of "imagination".
Has been "proven" for a long time. Every time they send something up there they seem to do the same story. Just google for water on mars and the first hit is a NASA press release from 2000.
:-)
And that's hardly the first "evidence", there's been plenty of evidence to show that there have been glaciers on Mars at some point. Or so I've been told by someone who studies Mars for a living
If you look at the details of the discovery - the Hobbits lived with real life dragons, hunted minature oliphants and lived in the misty moutains, (plus the locals reputed name for the hobbits is a gaelic word that means trickery) it quickly becomes apparent that the whole thing is a hoax created to make Nature look stupid. Unfortunately, the editors at Nature weren't up on their Tolkien.
Sounds like the start of a new philosophical question!
If a tree falls in the forest while nobody's around, does it make a sound?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
What's God's bandwidth?
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
Anyway, it was one of dem foreign daaawgs.
You forgot Poland!
oops...
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
What was that about the structure of water and its chemical behavior? I haven't heard anything about that at all, and googling didn't turn up anything promising either. Could someone please elaborate?
Human Cloning is one of the top 10 advancements? When you talk about great advancements in science, you cannot divorce ethics and science. This is ridiculous.
The best browser ever
\n.\n
I nominate:
"The one week in 2004 that passed without Micro$oft having to issue a security update".
AT&ROFLMAO
Paperless Voting Machine - think of all the trees that were saved in November.
Right up there with the comment about souls, is this doozie:
Jenet and Scott Ransom of McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, have developed a theoretical model to explain the behavior of this one-of-a-kind set of pulsars.
"One of a kind"? Just because we haven't seen any others, means there are no others?
For shame. Feynman would totally kick these people's asses.
Ok, so the rover found that there were some funny-looking spherules in a crater on Mars. Maybe those spherules could be created if there had been water a long time ago... So it might be possible that a long time ago there might have been some puddles of water on Mars... This means that it might be possible that there is liquid water around on other planets outside of earth... Water is considered an important ingredient of life, although there is no reason to know that you couldn't have life without water, and even if water is needed, you need many, many more things to be just so for life to form besides a bit of water... Is it just me, or isn't this pretty damn underwhelming compared to the progress we've had in other sciences in the last decade? (human genome, internet, stem cells, etc.)
Why do I always get the feeling that the scientists who get to decide that "major" advances such as Mars water have a personal interest in generating PR for their field?
I agree that research in space is pretty neat and all and is worth doing, but couldn't we all agree that the discoveries recently at NASA have been pretty disappointing, even if they are valuable for some esoteric research fields?
...and how come when the whole "life on Mars" thing happened a few years back, the NASA researchers were all parading in front of TV cameras when they found some interesting "formations" on a mars rock found in a meteor, but then when those formation were found to be somewhat suspect, they were all mum about it... so all that the public saw about doubts of their hyped findings was a small article in the back of Scientific American? Are the NASA researchers really doing good science here?
...just to be clear, I'll gladly admit my ignorance- I hope someone can give some clear answers to my questions and can tell me if there is really something exciting enough about these spherules in some Mars crater...
---
Conrad Barski
Ah, our friends to the North appear to be wanting the straddle the proverbial fence: Abstentions: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Colombia, Jamaica, Peru, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Ukraine and Uruguay.
>>I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea (of the soul).
The reason that successful cloning sheds light on the idea of the soul is that the soul is supposedly the thing that makes us specially human - it (the soul) derives from the concept of the animus, or "spark of life". The church teaches that a soul can only be created by god, not humans. So, the successful cloning of a human, resulting in a living, thinking person, created by people by human ingenuity instead of the usual way - fscking - means that either people don't need a soul to live and think (which completely undermines the basis for positing a soul in the first place), or the lab techs whipped up a soul in the closet and didn't put it in the report (in which case a soul has been created by other than god, which opens up a whole other can of worms for the church to explain away... eg, whence consciousness, and whence animus)
>>If he had really disproven the soul or God (which is impossible to to the vague nature of their descriptions) then he should by all means spread this proof, but since he hasn't, then he should just STFU.
Ahem. He didn't mention god. And as far as it being impossible to disprove such things, it is equally impossible to PROVE them. =) Also, the reason for that is not that they are "vaguely defined", but instead, exactly because of their descriptions. When you posit something which has infinite capabilities and unknowable motives, anything can be explained as caprice.
The soul is a cultural construct. It has weight as long as people believe in it. When people stop believing, it's over.
As far as STFU goes, he has as much right to speak his mind as anyone else. Including you. Hey, here's an idea, how about YOU STFU? No? Then let him speak.
>>He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real.
I'm working hard to restrain myself from flaming you. Read it again without your blinders, grandma. He didn't say "I have concluded on the basis of my observations that the soul is not real". What he said was "the existence of a soul[...] frankly is pure imagination". He gave his frank opinion. There is a difference. If you don't know what science is then (redacted) yourself.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Really, what country is that between the Phillipines and Portugal.
Their argument isn't irrational as you claim, it's a matter of different values. They see the risk of encouraging pregnancy for the purpose of aborting as greater than the risk of patients not benefitin from stem cell research. You think the opposite.
I think it's a strawman argument built up as part of the carpet anti-abortion extravaganza, it's dishonest.
If they really believed that the trouble lays in the sale of made-to-order embryos, they would campaign against that. Not against research on all aborted embryos. This is just an obfuscated attack on abortion in general, and it stands in the way of scientific research that has tremendous potential.
You can't take the sky from me...
The Arch-conservatives aren't interested in reality. Only forcing their views on others, and suppressing any dissent or alternative views. They mod relevant though inconvenient facts down, they mod their own ranting opinions "informative/insightful", and their own hackneyed lies "interesting". When they can't make any bones, they ask for links and citations, and when provided they question the veracity of the source. The only source they'll accept is the Christian Science Monitor. Even now in the age of conservative media overload, they say the media has a liberal bias.
You republican SOB's are a bunch of backstabbing hypocrits and closet panzies. There are some righties who aren't assholes, but they're drowned out by the frothing nutcases who do all the talking and get all the soundbites.
Your party is a corrupt farce, your religion is a child's fantasy, and your politics are destroying America.
Ingest excrement and expire, you brain-dead parasites.
I submitted the the idea of the space scientists/adventurer to Time Magazine for its Man of the Year. This would note efforts of both the Rover/Cassini teams and Space Ship One. I cant think of a comparable political, international or cultural achievement. Perhaps they'll give to Karl Rove who managed to keep a shakey president in office when they announce it Sunday.
The New Meme reply:
In China, Cowboy Neal clones are always positive
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
How about: Scientists achive first sustainable fusion reaction (still 30 years away after 35 years) Solo round-the-world, nonstop, nonrefueled flight Scientists develop method for regrowing nerves Variety of some oil-seed crop developed with 50% more yeield per (hect)acre. New drug cures certain rare form of cancer. Autonomous vehicle takes DARPA challenge prize.
Why do you want to know about my interested?
Sincerely,
Dr. Spaetso
Can you name any other such set of pulsars that have been discovered by man? No? Then it seems to me they are one of a kind.
yeah yeah.. I know I screwed up.
I had meant to put the link in the first post and rushed my typing.
Oh well.
I think that a scientific person would not discount what he/she doesn't know and then say 'amen, broth' to this lack of imagination.
I am always facinated by the zeolotry and intolerance of the Atheist. They close their minds and demand that everyone else have a closed mind too.
Open your mind
- China colonizes Mars.
...and the best:
- Mathematical proof that the number of new diseases that evolve each year is growing at an exponential rate.
- RFID chips implanted in the arm actually DO cause cancer.
- Asteroid on confirmed collision course with Earth.
They cloned human embryos and found some hobbit skeletons so obviously these two great we need to get these two groups together and make with the cloning of hobbit embryos!
I want a pet hobbit!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
And so now we are supposed to fund a colony on Mars?
NASA just wants to be funded. They will say anything to get their money.
Oh, well. That will all change when they get absorbed by the Albuequerqui based space MAFIA.
8 billion a year on microsattellite.
how many billion on BMDO?
It is all a waste of money.
But they have funding and health care and they live in the dessert.
Your comment "open your mind" means you wish for a reprieve from logical thought to the exclusion of illusory constructs made before even electricity was known formally? Your point is reminiscent of the very force holding back social progress in the US. There is a level at which it is permitted for a rational person to say: "That is irrational, inapplicable, and overtly detrimental so I should do all that I can to reduce its influence and power" (where it is an institution, nation, or other power). The elimination of regressive or detrimental ideology is integral to the advancement of the human species, after all the civilised world no longer drills holes into the skulls of epileptics to let out the "evil spirits," why should the modern world tolerate any remnants of regressive ideology?
It would be interesting to see lists like these for the past year, the year before and so on to summarize scientific advances over the years.
Anyone know a site for that?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm an atheist but I've come to this place in an open-minded way. I've read quite a bit on philosophy of religion, theology, and arguments for God. I would love for someone to present me with a logically sound argument for the existence of an omnipotent creator. It'd be very comforting to know of such a being. But I can't just believe because it'd be nice to do so. I need a kernel of evidence from which to start and I've yet to find it. The search goes on, but for now I'm one of those atheists.
There are many grad students and post-docs who will tell you of their years spent making a mouse knockout of the gene they are studying and it having no obvious effect (or being an uninformative embryonic lethal...).
Mammals have very good redundancy in their genomes and the effects of a knockout can be very subtle. It could be for example, that the knockout of that desert region could affect the stability of the genome which could manifest itself in higher mutation rates or lower fertility. That would be sufficient for it to be selected and maintained but would not be obvious from observing just a few individuals.
Density waves are physical phenomenon, music is a value judgement.
Consciousness is as slippery a concept as 'life'.
I think, therefore I am. I think.
> look
The Tribal Fire
You see the smoldering ashes of last night's supper fire. There are Hobbit tracks leading into the forest in several directions.
Exits: n, e, w
> sleep
You are interrupted by a GIANT RAT!
> flee
You flee head over heels, losing 20 experience points!
> sleep
You sleep a sleep that would put Rip van Winkle to shame.
You are interrupted by a Clone of Adolf Hitler!
> flee
You flee head over heels, losing 2000 experience points!
> sleep
You sleep a sleep that would put Rip van Winkle to shame.
You are interrupted by a Floating Brain's Stupefaction Field attack!
> quit
Thanks for playing Sands of Time!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
That's just a prohibition on FEDERAL funding. There are tons of other funding sources out there.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The Minehune are a little people who lived in Hawaii and were famous for building technical projects in a single night. Hmmm, not a long way across the Pacfic from Indonesia? We should do genetic studies of the bones and cross refernce to natives on Kauai, who haved claimed as recently as the 60's era census to be Minehune
a i/ fishpond.html
http://kalama.doe.hawaii.edu/~laakea/class/maik
http://www.spiritsouthseas.com/menehune.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menehune
First you must believe, then you will see.
- Medicines for the World's Poor. "Public-private partnerships" emerged as a force in 2004, according to Science magazine, affecting the way medicines are developed and delivered to emerging nations.
Sounds like applied science to me.Personally though if I were Science I wouldn't give SpaceShipOne a prize this year, since getting someone into space isn't technically by itself a new development in even applied science. I'd give it to them in a year or two-- once they manage to successfully begin operating their spaceliner business, since that IS going to be a dramatic change in how science is applied...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
> need a soul to live and think...or the lab techs whipped up a soul in the closet
OR that whatever imbues regular babies with souls has also imbued this one with a soul.
If it's some God who creates souls, then the method by which the physical body is created---whether beakers or booty calls---may well have no bearing on the resulting soulfullness of the child.
Human cloning offers no evidence either way about the existence of souls, and claiming otherwise by knocking down a strawman argument does little to aid the cause of those of us advocating a reasoned and rational approach to viewing the world. Just because you're arguing against people who hold a belief you consider illogical doesn't mean you get to play fast-and-loose with logic yourself.
I prefer to think Rove would be tried at a war crimes tribunal,
along with the rest of the liars who are in power
in the US now.
In any case, maybe they will all have to face a higher justice some day,
and though I am not sure such justice exists, this thought alone is enough
to make me wish fervently that it does.
You know you need a new prescription when you read the last line of the summary as 'first discovered pubic hair'.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Bush twin teaching in public school.
Native American science at best.
And this is no joke!
What about the HIV Vaccine? Why isn't it>/b> up there?
END
before a certain porn distributer bought it and destroyed it.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
or no. All are examples of life need water, so we look for what we know. Of course, a strong radio signal would be better.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
you just have to die.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
I are assuming God wouldn't give a clone a soul. why? FYI, the majority of scientist DO believe in a God of some sort. You can not get evidence against that disproves Gods existance. You can get evidense that disproves religous view points of God. Belief in God is in know way a reflection on someones intellegence. I fail to see how mu beliefe in God hurts humanity or society in any way? Many people do charitable works because they feel a calling. Now, if you want to tlak about religions, thats another matter. People using God for the personal gain do hurt society. People who trust what anybody says without think about it for themselves has stopped using there intellect. Me, I love learning about science cause I find it interesting to see how things work. I believe in God. I also belive that are interpetations of the Bible are wrong. I believe the univers is Billions of years old, I believe there is other life in the universe somwhere.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
After finding a half eating apple, and an empty glass coffin, scientist conclude that they were dwarves, not Hobbits.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
nobody wants the leading selling beers in the world.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
For shame. Feynman would totally nuke these people's asses.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
Of course there were hobbits!
...no mention of the bearded sour cream in my fridge?
Is that sort of concept where Alien Ant Farm got their name?
First you must believe, then you will hallucinate.
You can take a look to Science's cover to check it out.
Your head a splode
Considering that every "therapeutic clone" means a dead human being.
For reference:
http://www.u-press.de/leseproben.html
I don't know if the reading sample is available in english, sorry.
You were originally replying to an anti-abortion apologist, though. And for issues like abortion, utilitarianism is really the only way to set policy. Where life begins will always be an arbitrary determination; I support the right to abortion because the alternative (back-alley abortions--though still abortions) causes even more suffering (in my opinion).
But you should have properly framed your response a bit more specifically. Making blanket statements about very, very personal words such as "justice" or "freedom" -- or especially "God" -- without giving more qualifiers will not win you arguments. In any context outside of a courtroom, justice is a subjective creature.
I know this is /. and I can't expect anything from anyone; I'm just telling you what would have been more convincing to me. After all, you do want to be persuasive, right? Otherwise your comments were just flamebait.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
The answer lies in the Trinity. Since the Father, Son, and Spirit of the BBC all share the same nature but each have distinct personalities, it is possible for one to create a webserver that the other couldn't crash.
A person under 16 can want sex AND state that they want sex.
n 6738">less likely</a> to know the full consequences of their actions especially long term consequences.
But they may be <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=d
The chances of at least one of them being hurt badly is quite high. AFAIK many people develop greater emotional _bonds_ when they have sex (even if they don't think they will). It's called making love after all. Life sure sucks if you end up being very attached to a bastard/bitch. Maybe for some, or after a while it's no longer making love, and it's just sex. But that sure doesn't seem like such a "plus" to me...
So I'd still say sex outside of marriage is wrong. And a marriage with at least one person being "underage" is often unwise. People are more likely to change dramatically during those ages...
If it's pretty certain that it's going to be one of those "lived happily ever after" cases, then OK... But like how often does that happen? AND can't you two just wait just a few more years? Oh you mean one of you wants "till death do us part" and the other wants "till the love runs out"? Uh huh... Good luck keeping the love topped up if only one party is committed to topping it up...
Specification of the meaning justice was used with (social-legal), as you suggest, would have made the post more persuasive, but it was also written to contain the ideas with writing of only a short time by assuming a specific context-breaks last only a short time.
However, the GP wrote "Apollo 11 stage 2", which I assumed to mean the second stage of the entire Apollo mission, i.e., the second stage of the Saturn V.
If he meant the "LM ascent stage", then he should have written the "LEM ascent stage", or "stage 2 of the LEM", etc.
BTW, the LEM was more commonly called the "LEM" (for "Lunar Excursion Module").
Even Neil Armstrong called it the LEM.
(Just before his "That's one small step" comment, he said "Stepping off the LEM now.")
Also, I know about the abandonment of the LEM upper stage after its redocking with the command module.
In fact, I know about the entire general Apollo mission process from liftoff to splashdown (not details like who flipped what switch when, but general things like what part was jettisoned when, what part docked with what part when, etc.).
I saw it all live on TV when I was a kid.
I had scrapbooks about the space program.
I still have models of the Saturn V, command/service modules, and the LEM somewhere in my basement.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The one time they were /.ed was in the afternoon of 11/09/2001.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.