Ok so I posted most of this a bit earlier but it got buried and it applies equally well here:
I don't normally post here, but I'm sick of hearing reactionary arguments like this. While cervical cancer is devastating and I fully support making this vaccine available on the market, I for one would most certainly not have my daughter vaccinated until it has been in WIDE SPREAD USE for at least 5 or more years, and I FERVENTLY opposed making it mandatory because of the lobbying of a drug company.
The thing about drug companies is that they're a necessary evil: yes, they're in it for profit, but the products that they make a profit on save lives. Given that the company is Merck, infamous for selling medical technologies that they KNOW aren't safe (See Vioxx and Fosamax) all the while suppressing negative evidence against them, I don't think the benefit of a doubt you are giving them really applies here. In fact I may even wait longer just given who the company is.
So while some of you are happy to line your daughters up as consumer testers stage 1, I think I'm going to show a bit more caution and reserve with my most important and irreplaceable things.
Oh, and for the record I'm not particularly religious and I'm very much a political liberal - so yeah, the Christian wingnut thing most certainly doesn't apply.
I don't normally post here, but I'm sick of hearing this reactionary argument. While cervical cancer is devastating and I fully support making this vaccine available on the market, I for one would most certainly not have my daughter vaccinated until it has been in WIDE SPREAD USE for at least 5 or more years. And, given that this is a from Merck, one of the companies practically infamous for selling medical technologies that they KNOW aren't safe (See Vioxx and Fosamax) all the while suppressing negative evidence against them, I may well be inclined to wait even longer.
So while you're happy to line your daughters up as consumer testers stage 1, I think I'm going to show a bit more caution and reserve with the most important and irreplaceable thing in the world to me.
Oh, and for the record I'm not particularly religious and I'm very much a political liberal - so yeah, the Christian wingnut thing most certainly doesn't apply.
Posts like this miss the point. At least we can give him the benefit of a doubt about his stance on the energy issue: That is, he's not going to play the "I'ma good boy" game with oil companies. Also, yes, everyone who reads this site knows that corn isn't the best source for ethanol or biomass. There are, however, someothergood alternatives.
From the last link, you might find this particularly salient:
NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel [from algae] could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.
All of you guys are making light of this, but I've seriosly lost a lot of sleep over this since I read about it a few months back in popular science....
I mean, what if they are wrong? What if there is something they overlooked? ("Oh Hey! We forgot about how this force interacts with these molocules - ope, oh well, we're all screwed because we just had to know if we were right")
Its not about the advertising. It's about (logical extreme) everyone in the world having telecommunication access (read freedom to communicate) regardless of whether or not they have the means, financial or otherwise, to acquire it. This is simply Google's current running idea on how to accommodate that end goal.
Is this supposed to prove some point? Basically you are saying that you are an asshole, or that you endorse being an asshole, or something screwed up like that.
Can't you change the quantum state of one and have it instantly effect the other, and just watch the other one for the change? Plus, if you were to make a network like I said, of course you would physically take a particle from one machine to another and then have that machine use it to communicate with the first from there on. But if it doesn't work like that, like you say, then it's a moot point.
The linked article on quantum networking talks about having to transfer a quantum state to a photon in order to transfer it, but it also says
"...quantum entanglement, a spooky property that links particles however far apart they are...."
Why not just make quantum networks that transfer using the quantum state directly. It would be faster-than-light networking, like the Ansible in Ender's Game.
Not to plug Vista or anything, but there was a preview presentation of Vista at my university about a week ago and they also said Vista would run on anything XP will run on (or something to that effect) by scaling the features automatically to your hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't normally post here, but I'm sick of hearing reactionary arguments like this. While cervical cancer is devastating and I fully support making this vaccine available on the market, I for one would most certainly not have my daughter vaccinated until it has been in WIDE SPREAD USE for at least 5 or more years, and I FERVENTLY opposed making it mandatory because of the lobbying of a drug company.
The thing about drug companies is that they're a necessary evil: yes, they're in it for profit, but the products that they make a profit on save lives. Given that the company is Merck, infamous for selling medical technologies that they KNOW aren't safe (See Vioxx and Fosamax) all the while suppressing negative evidence against them, I don't think the benefit of a doubt you are giving them really applies here. In fact I may even wait longer just given who the company is.
So while some of you are happy to line your daughters up as consumer testers stage 1, I think I'm going to show a bit more caution and reserve with my most important and irreplaceable things.
Oh, and for the record I'm not particularly religious and I'm very much a political liberal - so yeah, the Christian wingnut thing most certainly doesn't apply.
I don't normally post here, but I'm sick of hearing this reactionary argument. While cervical cancer is devastating and I fully support making this vaccine available on the market, I for one would most certainly not have my daughter vaccinated until it has been in WIDE SPREAD USE for at least 5 or more years. And, given that this is a from Merck, one of the companies practically infamous for selling medical technologies that they KNOW aren't safe (See Vioxx and Fosamax) all the while suppressing negative evidence against them, I may well be inclined to wait even longer.
So while you're happy to line your daughters up as consumer testers stage 1, I think I'm going to show a bit more caution and reserve with the most important and irreplaceable thing in the world to me.
Oh, and for the record I'm not particularly religious and I'm very much a political liberal - so yeah, the Christian wingnut thing most certainly doesn't apply.
(w00t, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer reference! Loved that book...) That's the same thing I thought of when I first saw this.
Though this is only partially related to the whole ethanol discussion going on here, I thought everyone would find it interesting:
http://pesn.com/2005/08/02/9600142_IAUS_Solar/
(Be sure to check the part about methanol production)
All of you guys are making light of this, but I've seriosly lost a lot of sleep over this since I read about it a few months back in popular science....
I mean, what if they are wrong? What if there is something they overlooked? ("Oh Hey! We forgot about how this force interacts with these molocules - ope, oh well, we're all screwed because we just had to know if we were right")
Lamest SP episode ever.
Its not about the advertising. It's about (logical extreme) everyone in the world having telecommunication access (read freedom to communicate) regardless of whether or not they have the means, financial or otherwise, to acquire it. This is simply Google's current running idea on how to accommodate that end goal.
Evidence? I've never heard this idea before and I find your conclusions seriously lacking.
Is this supposed to prove some point? Basically you are saying that you are an asshole, or that you endorse being an asshole, or something screwed up like that.
Can't you change the quantum state of one and have it instantly effect the other, and just watch the other one for the change? Plus, if you were to make a network like I said, of course you would physically take a particle from one machine to another and then have that machine use it to communicate with the first from there on. But if it doesn't work like that, like you say, then it's a moot point.
The linked article on quantum networking talks about having to transfer a quantum state to a photon in order to transfer it, but it also says "...quantum entanglement, a spooky property that links particles however far apart they are...." Why not just make quantum networks that transfer using the quantum state directly. It would be faster-than-light networking, like the Ansible in Ender's Game.
What party is that exactly?
Indiana Jones Reference
Not to plug Vista or anything, but there was a preview presentation of Vista at my university about a week ago and they also said Vista would run on anything XP will run on (or something to that effect) by scaling the features automatically to your hardware.