Good point. Seawater is remarkably close to blood plasma chemistry, however... it's chemical composition is: 85.8% Oxygen, 10.8% Hydrogen, 1.9% Chlorine, 1.1% sodium, >.13% of a few others... and only.0028% Carbon. Still not us.
Chemistry and biochemistry are simply much more complex than throwing the right proportions of elements into a pot; and it often doesn't matter what concentrations of what are even in the pot. A great example, vanadium in Ascidia gemmata can reach 10 million times the concentration in it's environment http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1384612 (seawater).
DNA is chemical in origin and so goes, different chemical compositions of different planets would give rise to vastly different DNA compositions resulting in life nothing like our own.
No.
You're suggesting that we are a product solely of availability of resources. While that is true only in the widest possible understanding, a simple review of compositions shows it doesn't hold for what you're suggesting.
The chemical composition of the human body: 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen, 1.4% Calcium, 1.1% Phosphorous...then less than.25% of a whole bunch of others. What you're suggesting would mean that because we know that, we can say that the environment we live in has the same percentages...which it doesn't.
The composition of the air: 78% Nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen,.9% argon, >.04 of everything else (rounded). Clearly we're not that. Our planetary surface composition: 46.6% Oxygen, 27.7% Silicon, 8.1% Aluminum, 5% Iron...and on down the line; again, clearly not us. The chemistry of life isn't near as simple as you're suggesting.
Our DNA is the way it is because that is the simplest, most stable way those molecules could form that produced the end result they did. We know that because we exist. It didn't have to be intelligently directed, as other posters elude to, no more than a lightning bolt has to be intelligently designed to form ozone molecules.
Don't give our DNA the short shrift either. We have organisms here on this planet that can survive in the hard vacuum and radiation of space for extended durations, all the way to organisms that use copper, or even vanadium, instead of iron to carry oxygen in their blood. Their DNA is the same chemical composition and structure as ours is.
However, on the overall question...the reason those aliens look surprisingly like humans is: cost of special effects, and tantrums by actors who are asked to wear incredibly uncomfortable alien suits for long periods.
What i'm saying is, you and your pal are entirely discounting EVERYTHING that NASA has done. Without everything THE GOVERNMENT has done since WWII in research and development towards aeronautics and space exploration, Elon Musk certainly would not have funded all of that on his own to get to where he is now. Lets not forget the bigger picture: had NASA not existed, with all that GOVERNMENT research and taxpayer money, Elon Musk might never have been who he is at all, given what the NASA programs contributed to solid state electronics, miniaturization, computers, communications, material science, and all sorts of other stuff.
This is a very common problem in the US... people are too egotistical to think that the reason they are where they are is that they've stood on the shoulders of this country to get there (to co-opt a compelling meme). We are who we are, our nation is what our nation is, BECAUSE previous generations have invested in the future to make this country better for the next generations (up until now.. now we have a bunch of asshats doing nothing but bleeding the country's future dry because they don't want to live up to the responsibility of investing in someone elses future).
...and what you're saying is that first transatlantic flight is the end all be all, and received no benefit from the fact someone else not only figured out how to get to the water, build an aircraft, and learned how to fly.
In this case, private business did what it does best: exploiting the knowledge gained from government investing in research.
The current lifetime projected budget cost for just the F-35 program is equivalent to about 75 years of NASA funding. The other part of that, of course, is that they recalculate the lifetime cost of the F-35 about every 12-18 months... and it keeps skyrocketing every time they do.
...and yet they didn't plan it, engineer it, build it, or pay for it.... you're giving them a lot of credit for being nothing more than a taxi service.
Actually, he didn't say that... you incorrectly inferred that from what he said.
The people here who got measles didn't get vaccinated, the fact they're religious nutcases is an added on description of them. Their mindset, however, did play into their choice not to get vaccinated. Religious people (those who go for the whole church/organization thing, especially mega-churches) tend to be higher on the "willing to believe any dumb shit thing they're told" chart. Their innate gullibility led them to listen to another mental midget, and they didn't vaccinate because they felt that the opinion of a total fucking idiot, without any medical knowledge, was as good as a doctors.
If they had any conviction, they'd refuse medical treatment and die.
Perhaps you need to read what's there. I just came from that article, and the first line of the second paragraph.. the first link in the article, says:
The Democratic-leaning polling firm, which provided its results to Talking Points Memo....
At that point, you have access to the poll answers in question, the entire poll, as well as links to the shorter one of those as a download from Scribd. At what point did you decide to change the definition of "linked in the article" to "disappear?" It didn't really take much "luck" finding it, just a basic understanding of English and the ability to read.
ACA - ~418,779 words
Tax Code - ~3.4 million words
If you're defending someone suggesting that ~418,000 is larger than ~3.6 million, i'd suggest you should refrain from calling anyone else stupid, or suggest they lack brainpower... and then you might try going through 2nd grade again.
Yeh. That was added to give an example of what size it actually is, as opposed to the mental midgets above still trying to defend the claim it's larger than the US Tax code.
My response to that lie was just that... a response to that point.
..but now, like many uneducated fucking morons, some total fucking dipshit wants to change the point to show how I was wrong when i was simply pointing out facts. Guess what, Entrope... you're a fucking idiot.
The poster i responded to said the quoted line, which is incorrect. What it is is a stupid fucking talking point by mental fucking midgets who's only capacity is to lie like worthless pieces of shit to try to make their point. They then have other fucking morons, like you and drainbramage, to come in and try to point out that even though THEY LIED, that they're still somehow correct, and everyone who disagrees (ie... anyone who can actually read) is wrong.
(its longer than the IRS code)
That is a lie.
You can act like a total fucking moron by trying to manipulate what was said, but it's still a lie..... and you're still a fucking moron for trying to.
There’s a Politico story making the rounds that says that members of Congress are engaged in secret, sensitive negotiations to exempt themselves and their staffs from Obamacare.
Well, they were secret, anyway.
The story has blown up on Twitter. “Unbelievable,” tweetsTPM’s Brian Beutler. “Flat out incredible,” says Politico’s Ben White. “Obamacare for thee, but not for me,” snarks Ben Domenech. “Two thumbs way, way down,” says Richard Roeper. (Okay, I made the last one up).
If this sounds unbelievable, it’s because it is. There’s no effort to “exempt” Congress from Obamacare. No matter how this shakes out, Congress will have to follow the law, just like everyone else does.
Based on conversations I’ve had with a number of the staffs involved in these talks, the actual issue here is far less interesting, and far less explosive, than an exemption. Rather, a Republican amendment meant to embarrass Democrats and a too-clever-by-half Democratic response has possibly created a problem in which the federal government can’t make its normal contribution to the insurance premiums of congressional staffers.
Maybe.
See? This is getting boring already.
Here’s how it happened: Back during the Affordable Care Act negotiations, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed an amendment forcing all members of Congress and all of their staffs to enter the exchanges. The purpose of the amendment was to embarrass the Democrats. But in a bit of jujitsu of which they were inordinately proud, Democrats instead embraced the amendment and added it to the law. Here’s the relevant text:
The only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
(Snip)
But no one is discussing “exempting” congressional staffers from Obamacare. They’re discussing creating some method through which the federal government can keep making its current contribution to the health insurance of congressional staffers.
“Even if OPM rules against us,” one staffer said, “it’s inaccurate to imply that any talks are aimed at exempting federal employees from routine mandates of ACA since any talks are about resolving the unique bind that the Grassley amendment puts federal employees in.”
This isn’t, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. It’s an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.
All you really need to know about Obamacare is: republicans lie, republicans lie, republicans lie.
I was curious to know how the length of the Affordable Care Act compared with other major pieces of legislation. Take, for example, the Wisconsin state budget (officially known as Act 32) signed into law last July by Gov. Scott Walker. The PDF of the budget, as approved, is 532 pages long. I cut and pasted the text into my word processor, and learned the budget ran to 409,629 words (give or take -- the figure includes some page headers and other extraneous verbiage). How long is the Affordable Care Act? By my count, it’s 418,779 words (again, that’s approximate).
In other words (pardon the pun), a law refashioning one of the major sectors of the U.S. economy is only slightly longer than a law setting the two-year budget for one of the 50 states.
The complete Internal Revenue Code is more than 24 megabytes in length, and contains more than 3.4 million words; printed 60 lines to the page, it would fill more than 7500 letter-size pages.
Part of The Big Lie strategy is repeating a lie over and over again till it's common enough people start to believe it. Don't fall for that type of dishonest stupidity.
Exactly. It's someone telling their assistant to get a NMR done.
It's become a sad day here in the US where there's a faction of people so against science, that they try to manufacture issues like this. I don't care that some people want to remain stupid... it's there choice, but they should at least have enough brain cells left to understand if they want to stay stupid, their opinion doesn't mean shit because it's based on stupidity.
...they went to publish it, realized they didn't have a supporting NMR, so he told his assistant to make one up.
Here's the rub... what that means to the assistant is, run an NMR; what it means to all the people who don't have a the education to understand what it means, or even what an NMR is, is that they can try to paint science as bad. You cant "make up" an NMR in that way, although you could substitute some other chemical and run the analysis... but why bother? Any lab with an NMR could check your work simply by running the correct NMR; and, running the correct chemical will take exactly as long, and exactly the same amount of effort.
This is basically people who don't have enough education somehow seeing a conspiracy in nothing. I swear, the human race is fucking pathetic sometimes.
The bill then moved to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns; the conference committee then finished its work by the beginning of November. On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90–8, and by the House 362–57. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.
90-8 in the Senate, and 362-57 in the House are, indeed, veto-proof.
But here's something more telling: Republicans under Newt were doing anything and everything they could to torpedo ANYTHING Clinton wanted to do (It seems to be their only tactic for governing since 1994). You have a bill named: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; Phil Gramm (Republican-Texas) Jim Leach (Republican-Iowa), and Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (Republican-Virginia). Does ANYONE actually living during that time think that these three republicans would have given their name to a bill Clinton wanted, then the entire republican delegation vote overwhelmingly for it? Seriously? If you do.. you need to put down the crack pipe.
As for the poster below saying it didn't cause any problems:
During debate in the House of Representatives, Rep. John Dingell (Democrat of Michigan) argued that the bill would result in banks becoming "too big to fail." Dingell further argued that this would necessarily result in a bailout by the Federal Government.
This seems to be nothing more than a soft science trying to co-opt a hard sciences basis to gain some validity. Monogamy didn't evolve in a biological sense in humans for any reason... we're not monogamous. If we were, there would be no attraction to anyone other than our mate, period; not because we choose to be honorable and respect our mate, but because there would be no attraction... ever.. in any way.
This is some social scientist trying to explain a social quirk of a few of our societies, and has nothing to do with the Theory of Natural Selection, or real science.
Slashdot Mirror
Beware the Lectroids of the 8th dimension.
Good point. Seawater is remarkably close to blood plasma chemistry, however... it's chemical composition is: 85.8% Oxygen, 10.8% Hydrogen, 1.9% Chlorine, 1.1% sodium, >.13% of a few others... and only .0028% Carbon. Still not us.
Chemistry and biochemistry are simply much more complex than throwing the right proportions of elements into a pot; and it often doesn't matter what concentrations of what are even in the pot. A great example, vanadium in Ascidia gemmata can reach 10 million times the concentration in it's environment http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1384612 (seawater).
DNA is chemical in origin and so goes, different chemical compositions of different planets would give rise to vastly different DNA compositions resulting in life nothing like our own.
No.
.25% of a whole bunch of others. What you're suggesting would mean that because we know that, we can say that the environment we live in has the same percentages...which it doesn't.
.9% argon, >.04 of everything else (rounded). Clearly we're not that. Our planetary surface composition: 46.6% Oxygen, 27.7% Silicon, 8.1% Aluminum, 5% Iron...and on down the line; again, clearly not us. The chemistry of life isn't near as simple as you're suggesting.
You're suggesting that we are a product solely of availability of resources. While that is true only in the widest possible understanding, a simple review of compositions shows it doesn't hold for what you're suggesting.
The chemical composition of the human body: 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen, 1.4% Calcium, 1.1% Phosphorous...then less than
The composition of the air: 78% Nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen,
Our DNA is the way it is because that is the simplest, most stable way those molecules could form that produced the end result they did. We know that because we exist. It didn't have to be intelligently directed, as other posters elude to, no more than a lightning bolt has to be intelligently designed to form ozone molecules.
Don't give our DNA the short shrift either. We have organisms here on this planet that can survive in the hard vacuum and radiation of space for extended durations, all the way to organisms that use copper, or even vanadium, instead of iron to carry oxygen in their blood. Their DNA is the same chemical composition and structure as ours is.
However, on the overall question...the reason those aliens look surprisingly like humans is: cost of special effects, and tantrums by actors who are asked to wear incredibly uncomfortable alien suits for long periods.
My army of globular clusters with longbows will slay thy army of planetary nebula with long axes before they even get in range to attack!!!!
... and laughing
Mean, cruel nebula!!!
What i'm saying is, you and your pal are entirely discounting EVERYTHING that NASA has done. Without everything THE GOVERNMENT has done since WWII in research and development towards aeronautics and space exploration, Elon Musk certainly would not have funded all of that on his own to get to where he is now. Lets not forget the bigger picture: had NASA not existed, with all that GOVERNMENT research and taxpayer money, Elon Musk might never have been who he is at all, given what the NASA programs contributed to solid state electronics, miniaturization, computers, communications, material science, and all sorts of other stuff.
This is a very common problem in the US... people are too egotistical to think that the reason they are where they are is that they've stood on the shoulders of this country to get there (to co-opt a compelling meme). We are who we are, our nation is what our nation is, BECAUSE previous generations have invested in the future to make this country better for the next generations (up until now.. now we have a bunch of asshats doing nothing but bleeding the country's future dry because they don't want to live up to the responsibility of investing in someone elses future).
Isn't the ISS in LEO?
In this case, private business did what it does best: exploiting the knowledge gained from government investing in research.
The current lifetime projected budget cost for just the F-35 program is equivalent to about 75 years of NASA funding. The other part of that, of course, is that they recalculate the lifetime cost of the F-35 about every 12-18 months... and it keeps skyrocketing every time they do.
...and yet they didn't plan it, engineer it, build it, or pay for it.... you're giving them a lot of credit for being nothing more than a taxi service.
Now i have.. that... damn song.. in.. my head....
I'm guessing our AC there is probably a bit younger than us... or at least me. I'd hate to lump you in the "older" group without your consent.
Is that like the Electric Moog Orchestra?
Actually, he didn't say that... you incorrectly inferred that from what he said.
The people here who got measles didn't get vaccinated, the fact they're religious nutcases is an added on description of them. Their mindset, however, did play into their choice not to get vaccinated. Religious people (those who go for the whole church/organization thing, especially mega-churches) tend to be higher on the "willing to believe any dumb shit thing they're told" chart. Their innate gullibility led them to listen to another mental midget, and they didn't vaccinate because they felt that the opinion of a total fucking idiot, without any medical knowledge, was as good as a doctors.
If they had any conviction, they'd refuse medical treatment and die.
.... I thought "tasting it" might come into play at some point....
The Democratic-leaning polling firm, which provided its results to Talking Points Memo....
If, as anyone looking for the poll should do, you clicked the link... you were taken here: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/poll-louisiana-gopers-unsure-if-katrina-response-was
At that point, you have access to the poll answers in question, the entire poll, as well as links to the shorter one of those as a download from Scribd. At what point did you decide to change the definition of "linked in the article" to "disappear?" It didn't really take much "luck" finding it, just a basic understanding of English and the ability to read.
ACA - ~418,779 words Tax Code - ~3.4 million words
If you're defending someone suggesting that ~418,000 is larger than ~3.6 million, i'd suggest you should refrain from calling anyone else stupid, or suggest they lack brainpower... and then you might try going through 2nd grade again.
Yeh. That was added to give an example of what size it actually is, as opposed to the mental midgets above still trying to defend the claim it's larger than the US Tax code.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/05/20110105arizona-second-patient-denied-coverage-dies.html
Republican death panels at work.
(its longer than the IRS code)
My response to that lie was just that... a response to that point.
..but now, like many uneducated fucking morons, some total fucking dipshit wants to change the point to show how I was wrong when i was simply pointing out facts. Guess what, Entrope... you're a fucking idiot.
The poster i responded to said the quoted line, which is incorrect. What it is is a stupid fucking talking point by mental fucking midgets who's only capacity is to lie like worthless pieces of shit to try to make their point. They then have other fucking morons, like you and drainbramage, to come in and try to point out that even though THEY LIED, that they're still somehow correct, and everyone who disagrees (ie... anyone who can actually read) is wrong.
(its longer than the IRS code)
That is a lie.
You can act like a total fucking moron by trying to manipulate what was said, but it's still a lie..... and you're still a fucking moron for trying to.
Ezra Klein of the Washington Post says THIS:
There’s a Politico story making the rounds that says that members of Congress are engaged in secret, sensitive negotiations to exempt themselves and their staffs from Obamacare.
Well, they were secret, anyway.
The story has blown up on Twitter. “Unbelievable,” tweetsTPM’s Brian Beutler. “Flat out incredible,” says Politico’s Ben White. “Obamacare for thee, but not for me,” snarks Ben Domenech. “Two thumbs way, way down,” says Richard Roeper. (Okay, I made the last one up).
If this sounds unbelievable, it’s because it is. There’s no effort to “exempt” Congress from Obamacare. No matter how this shakes out, Congress will have to follow the law, just like everyone else does.
Based on conversations I’ve had with a number of the staffs involved in these talks, the actual issue here is far less interesting, and far less explosive, than an exemption. Rather, a Republican amendment meant to embarrass Democrats and a too-clever-by-half Democratic response has possibly created a problem in which the federal government can’t make its normal contribution to the insurance premiums of congressional staffers.
Maybe.
See? This is getting boring already.
Here’s how it happened: Back during the Affordable Care Act negotiations, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed an amendment forcing all members of Congress and all of their staffs to enter the exchanges. The purpose of the amendment was to embarrass the Democrats. But in a bit of jujitsu of which they were inordinately proud, Democrats instead embraced the amendment and added it to the law. Here’s the relevant text:
The only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
(Snip)
But no one is discussing “exempting” congressional staffers from Obamacare. They’re discussing creating some method through which the federal government can keep making its current contribution to the health insurance of congressional staffers.
“Even if OPM rules against us,” one staffer said, “it’s inaccurate to imply that any talks are aimed at exempting federal employees from routine mandates of ACA since any talks are about resolving the unique bind that the Grassley amendment puts federal employees in.”
This isn’t, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. It’s an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.
All you really need to know about Obamacare is: republicans lie, republicans lie, republicans lie.
http://www.leadertelegram.com/blogs/tom_giffey/article_c9f1fa54-d041-11e1-9d01-0019bb2963f4.html
I was curious to know how the length of the Affordable Care Act compared with other major pieces of legislation. Take, for example, the Wisconsin state budget (officially known as Act 32) signed into law last July by Gov. Scott Walker. The PDF of the budget, as approved, is 532 pages long. I cut and pasted the text into my word processor, and learned the budget ran to 409,629 words (give or take -- the figure includes some page headers and other extraneous verbiage). How long is the Affordable Care Act? By my count, it’s 418,779 words (again, that’s approximate).
In other words (pardon the pun), a law refashioning one of the major sectors of the U.S. economy is only slightly longer than a law setting the two-year budget for one of the 50 states.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/uscode/26usc/
The complete Internal Revenue Code is more than 24 megabytes in length, and contains more than 3.4 million words; printed 60 lines to the page, it would fill more than 7500 letter-size pages.
Part of The Big Lie strategy is repeating a lie over and over again till it's common enough people start to believe it. Don't fall for that type of dishonest stupidity.
Exactly. It's someone telling their assistant to get a NMR done.
It's become a sad day here in the US where there's a faction of people so against science, that they try to manufacture issues like this. I don't care that some people want to remain stupid... it's there choice, but they should at least have enough brain cells left to understand if they want to stay stupid, their opinion doesn't mean shit because it's based on stupidity.
...they went to publish it, realized they didn't have a supporting NMR, so he told his assistant to make one up.
Here's the rub... what that means to the assistant is, run an NMR; what it means to all the people who don't have a the education to understand what it means, or even what an NMR is, is that they can try to paint science as bad. You cant "make up" an NMR in that way, although you could substitute some other chemical and run the analysis... but why bother? Any lab with an NMR could check your work simply by running the correct NMR; and, running the correct chemical will take exactly as long, and exactly the same amount of effort.
This is basically people who don't have enough education somehow seeing a conspiracy in nothing. I swear, the human race is fucking pathetic sometimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
The bill then moved to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns; the conference committee then finished its work by the beginning of November. On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90–8, and by the House 362–57. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.
90-8 in the Senate, and 362-57 in the House are, indeed, veto-proof.
But here's something more telling: Republicans under Newt were doing anything and everything they could to torpedo ANYTHING Clinton wanted to do (It seems to be their only tactic for governing since 1994). You have a bill named: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; Phil Gramm (Republican-Texas) Jim Leach (Republican-Iowa), and Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (Republican-Virginia). Does ANYONE actually living during that time think that these three republicans would have given their name to a bill Clinton wanted, then the entire republican delegation vote overwhelmingly for it? Seriously? If you do.. you need to put down the crack pipe.
As for the poster below saying it didn't cause any problems:
During debate in the House of Representatives, Rep. John Dingell (Democrat of Michigan) argued that the bill would result in banks becoming "too big to fail." Dingell further argued that this would necessarily result in a bailout by the Federal Government.
Geez... doesn't that sound familiar....
This seems to be nothing more than a soft science trying to co-opt a hard sciences basis to gain some validity. Monogamy didn't evolve in a biological sense in humans for any reason... we're not monogamous. If we were, there would be no attraction to anyone other than our mate, period; not because we choose to be honorable and respect our mate, but because there would be no attraction... ever.. in any way.
This is some social scientist trying to explain a social quirk of a few of our societies, and has nothing to do with the Theory of Natural Selection, or real science.