Agreed. And what do they mean by "Nobel-Prize level achievement"? As if it was some sort of Level-Up where after accumulating enough Experience Points, you glow and gain new powers. Scientific research is not how it is portrayed in movies and games. There are no research points, increasing the number of researchers or pouring money into it won't necessarily do anything. There are elements of chance, good fortune and serendipity. The discovery of antibiotics came to mind when Alexander Fleming noticed that some old cultures contaminated with the Penicillium fungus appears to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Would a machine be able to make this discovery? There are historical forces, political factors, even the personalities of the researchers themselves. Machines can do all the tedious work, collect data and do analyses on them. But it still takes the human mind to make sense of the data and infer meanings and applications from them, sometimes far from the original project objectives.
why does the USPTO official seal have a bald eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch while appearing to ready itself to poop on the American Gladiator shield? I mean, these sort of imagery should be more appropriate for say the Airborne corps or the Airforce, not some deskbound attorneys who can't rotate their faxes 180 degrees. And why is the bald eagle's head awkwardly turned so that it looks like it is trying to bite fleas from under its wings? A visit to Wikipedia shed no light on this matter. Anyone here who is versed in heraldy and could explain this strange seal?
I went to a Malaysian Public Boarding High School. The environment there was closer to a military boot camp than Hogwarts, complete with barbed wire fences, guards and wardens. The eldest students there, called "seniors" lord over everyone else ("juniors"). You're pretty much at their beck and call and any perceived slights usually results in a beating. You dare not tell the teachers as it would probably get you more beatings from them as you are "tarnishing the school's reputation by making a complaint" and then even more beatings by the seniors when they found out you squawked. You also dare not tell your parents since you will let them down if you leave the boarding school. One of the tasks I had to do as a junior was to wash a whole dorm of senior's uniform, all 18 of them, once a week. There were no washing machines and you have to manually wash, dry and iron them. After a few times of doing this, I decided to strike back. After washing their uniforms, I carefully rubbed them on the communal toilet floor, in such a way as not to stain them. I then dried the uniforms and lightly ironed them. After a few weeks of this, many of the seniors developed very itchy fungal skin infections. To my great satisfaction, they never did found out what I did. From then on, I learned that revenge is truly best served cold. Seeing your tormentors in discomfort and none the wiser is much sweeter than fighting back physically.
Talking out of my ass here but I gather that the 3 second delay is to prevent accidental shut-off of the engine due to bumping into the button etc. The solution is to do away with the 3 second delay and have a hinged transparent plastic cover over the ignition button, ala those found on fighter jet joysticks. To press the button, you have to manually lift the plastic cover, preventing accidental presses. Simple solution for an unnecessary problem.
Someone above ranted about the overuse of the word "paradigm-shift" and I couldn't agree more. However, in this case, I think the use is warranted. Woese himself caused a paradigm-shift when he discovered that the 16S and 18S ribosomal gene is highly conserved in all known organism, meaning that organisms that have similar 16S or 18S sequences are more closely related to each other and vice versa. The previous paradigm, and if you were old enough to remember learning in school was based largely on the morphological and to a certain extent, biochemical properties of the organisms. The current model used in life-sciences are tree-like where "more evolved" species branch off from "less evolved" species and if you trace back this tree, you get to the root of life, where the hypothetical Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)is. This new paradigm proposed by Woese drastically change this neat picture into a cloud-like diagram, with organisms having multiple links with other organisms. No longer can you say organism x2 has a direct lineage to organism x1 since horizontal gene transfers have clouded the relationships with a big impact on the study of evolution. This also has a big impact on computational biology and I am sure, this is more in line with the speciality of the Slashdot crowd. More complex algorithms and computational power have to be utilised to visualize this 3D relationship. As an aside, to those who are virulently defending Darwin, please stop and reconsider what you are doing. I'm not saying that you shouldn't but amidst calls to boycott the New Scientist by Dawkins himself, don't fall into the same behaviour that you tarred the intelligent design crowd.
What the heck are you talking about? The US let loose 2 nukes on Japan, and the world didn't end. Any nuclear conflicts involving Israel or Iran or Pakistan or India and possibly China, would be local. It will be great destruction, but only for the involved nations. It no where approaches the predicted MAD scenario of the Cold War. Why the heck would Pakistan want to bomb the Hague when their sworn enemy lies next door? With their limited store of nukes, they won't so foolishly launch it on a quixotic mission to bomb Europe. I do agree however, that they are mistaken to move the clock backwards, not that it matters. The greatest threat to the survival of humanity is arguably the USA, not Iran, or China. When other countries, even Iran are inching towards more freedom, the people of USA is steadily falling into religious and political extremism. Militarism has taken hold and is seen as the solution to all problems. Paranoia and fear of foreigners have taken hold. Should the USA produce someone with Sarah Palin's looks but Cheney's evil brain, the end of world as we know it will soon follow.
What the hell are you talking about? People with religious beliefs are one of the original nerds. For example, there are many Muslims who have memorised the entire Quran, word for word and could recite to you any verse on command, the same way some nerds can memorise the entire script of Star Wars Episode IV. Medieval Christian monks can spend years on end, nerdily copying and decorating manuscripts by hand. The word "canon" came from the Catholic faith and has been adopted by geeky Wookiepedia, Memory Alpha writers and basically any long-running TV show fans. Most of those said TV shows, especially sci-fi ones, have elements of Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Hindu etc. myths. Don't conflate nerdism and technophilia exclusively with atheism.
I agree. As a non-American, and a Muslim at that, I am regularly surprised and somewhat amused at the reaction of the US every time an air port security breach happened. I mean, stop and take a step back to look at the whole picture. Here we have the most powerful nation on Earth, with enough nukes to glass every major city on the planet and with aircraft carriers whose jets out number most third world nation's air forces, being afraid of people getting lost or with their pants on fire. I think al-qaeda or whoever they really are, very quickly realized that they don't even have to try very hard to send the US into a fear-over reaction-panic infinite loop, hence the "pants on fire" "bomber" (I don't even think that this term applied to him). By provoking the US to attempt to cover every possibility, eventually all its resources will be stretched thin while at the same time, innocent people will get caught in the net, increasing the noise to signal ratio not to mention animosity towards the US. Go ahead and adopt stricter screening procedures all you want, especially from Israel, that shining beacon of democracy and equality. It will only add to one more reason why people won't want to go the US. History (China, Japan etc.) has shown what happens to countries when they turn turtle and shut their borders.
I'll join the Red Cross/St. John Ambulance when my doctor start providing free treatments.
I'll volunteer at the soup kitchen when restaurants start giving free food.
You hopefully get my point
Lawyers, doctors, builders, pilots, general people, regularly do volunteer work for the good of the public. The point of doing volunteer work is that by definition, you are not fully compensated for your time and effort but hopefully, it makes you feel good that you have made a difference.
I currently live in an inland city, hundreds of kilometers from the the nearest ocean. This is why I refuse to eat sushi at the restaurants here since the fish will not be very fresh. I am a microbiologist, so I don't even eat that much sushi anyway since I know what sort and how many bacteria will grow on uncooked fish. Regarding fake or poisonous fish, ask around first before you eat at any restaurant (not only for sushi). I am sure that bad reputation will spread very quickly. There are many websites and blogs that do restaurant reviews. Alternatively, you can make your own sushi as it is not very hard to do. If you can make a sandwich, you can definitely make sushi.
Manip has also proven something here. The hallmark of an educated person is someone who can ask the right questions, not only being good at answering them. Soulskill here asked a biased question, something a person who, if he/she is trained in the scientific method should not do. You can make your own conclusions.
If spies/criminals/terrorists/politicians are stupid enough to use plain language over the phone to plan their dastardly deeds, then they deserve to be put into prison.
Ok. I'm a microbiologist and I smell something off here. For the CO and CO2 to "create" an anaerobic condition, it will necessarily kill off most of the other aerobic microorganisms, not to mention other useful organisms such as worms etc. If you want to create an anaerobic environment, it is much easier to just flood the land with water. Furthermore, this is farmland that we are talking about and the soil would probably be somewhat porous due to ploughing. The CO2 would probably just escape back into the air. Most of the agriculturally-useful nitrogen fixers are symbiotically bound with the root nodules of legumes anyway. I suspect that this farmer subscribe to the plant "eating" belief where they think that photosynthetic plants "eat" nutrients (in this case, CO2) from the soil.
By this definition, then the US Air Force of WWII was cowardly, especially the firebombing campaigns towards the end of the war in Germany and the nuclear bombs in Japan. When the crossbow was first widely introduced, the Pope tried to ban them because they were unchivalrous and cowardly. The people who attacked the Marines barracks in Beirut during the 80s and the American warship in Yemen were still branded as terrorists, despite attacking military targets. The attack on the Pentagon during 9/11 was also branded as a terrorist act. In Australia, a group of people were arrested as terrorists for planning to attack a military camp, also a valid military target. The truth is that, it is convenient for governments to label anyone they don't like as terrorists. I am not condoning attacks on civilians, whether by irregulars or by regular military.
Regarding these drones, as they become more prevalent, countermeasures will be devised, you can bet on it. There already exist jammers that can interfere with the drones guidance systems. I predict that ECM measures will be devised to block/mislead the telecommunication linkage of the drones with its controllers. I also predict that "interceptor" drones will be invented that will loiter over the defended target and intercept incoming attack drones. Barrage balloons that interfere with sensors and radar might also make a comeback.
Firstly, let us not beat about the bush. The reason the US and the EU is against Iran having nuclear capabilities is to protect Israel , or rather to ensure that the balance of power is ever so slightly, in favour of Israel. Currently, Israel has nuclear weapons and unlike Iran's case, the UN seems to acknowledge this with a wink and a nod. An Iran with nuclear weapons means that Israel will find itself in a Cold War situation of Mutually Assured Destruction which will effectively prevent it from invading surrounding nations as it pleases. I also suspect that any local nuclear war between Iran and Israel will lead to Jewish refugees streaming back into Europe, whose people have historically never been very good with the Jewish people. Any other reasons bandied by the Western propaganda machine are just lies and smokescreen.
Now that we got it out of the way, let us ponder the future. My gut feeling is that, Iran will eventually get nuclear capability, despite the US and Israel trying to stop them. Once they have it, there is nothing the US and Israel can do, except all out war which they could not afford. The Iranians are historically a very crafty and astute people and are masters of manipulating the UN bodies. They play for time which is what they have recently got. What this will mean is that many nations who are watching with interest will finally realise that the UN is toothless and proceed with their nuclear programs. The best case scenario is for all nuclear weapons to be scrapped but this is never going to happen. So, the second best scenario is to have all nations having nuclear weapons, to ensure Mutually Assured Destruction, on a whole new level. Once Iran succeeds, we will see an explosion of nuclear proliferation in the world. The major powers will of course would not like this erosion of their absolute power but like the introduction of gun powder, it is inevitable.
There is a reason for the high birthrate in developing countries, which is the high child mortality rate. Since parents depend on their children to help with working the farm, herd cattle etc. it makes sense to hedge their bets by producing more children, in case the current batch dies from disease or accidents. Overpopulation has been overblown as global problem. It is still a local problem but we probably won't see any of the dystopian overpopulation scenes narrated in sci-fi novels. Dispassionately speaking, as a country develops, the birth rate will fall and eventually the population will age. If the country gets stuck in the undeveloped stage, then migration, disease and wars will control the population. Note that I am speaking dispassionately here. I however support who ever had flippantly suggested people off themselves if they are so concerned about the effect of overpopulation.Especially if you're from industrialised countries where your so-called energy and carbon footprints will be enough to maintain a whole village in Africa.
Really. Please stop. There was a common word for it. It's called a bomb. If there is some sort of hidden triggering mechanism present, then it is a booby-trap. If the payload is large enough, then it is a landmine. I do believe that the US military started to call it IED for Orwellian-like doublespeak reasons.
Makes it look like the customers are protesting outsourcing, when in fact what pisses most people off is that the offshore phone monkeys are completely unintelligible. If you're handling calls from Mexican customers, your call center workers should be able to speak fluent Spanish, not bad Spanish like I speak.
I might be off-tangent here, but from my experience with overseas call centres operators, they speak perfect English. The only difference is that they sometimes don't speak with your same accent, though some companies are training their operators to speak with a specific accent. English is my second language, and I believe, like many people who speak more than one language, we have trained ourselves to listen to the words and not how they are said. From my observation, this is a big problem with monolingual English speakers. You have been so used to not paying attention and just picking up familiar sound patterns instead of words, that you have difficulty parsing a different accent. Not putting down anyone here, just saying that this is how we humans operate.
Instead of relying on national space agencies that are beholden to military and political whims, why not create an international space agency, just for peaceful and scientific space exploration. Countries, corporations and private individuals could donate money and expertise while any scientific findings or commercial technology developed will be released to public domain. Why, if you want to attract geeks, just name it as Starfleet. I don't see why the open source model could not be applied to space exploration.
I'm no expert in this field but I think the link that you provided had underestimated the human brain by many orders of magnitude. The human brain is not a hard drive. I don't think there is even any counterpart to it in current computer technology (maybe quantum computing?), whatever that is, so the comparison is meaningless. The brain doesn't just "store" information like a hard drive. It analyses, modifies, categorises, correlates, extrapolates, fills in missing blanks, filters and blanks out others and many other things that we are just beginning to discover. For example, a human child will quickly grasp the concept of doors and doorknobs, without any "programming" (I've had toddlers so believe me on this). This is why I think A.I. enthusiasts will ultimately fail.
When you think about it, all future is dystopian. If you can somehow travel back in time and tell your Puritan founding fathers that porn could be accessed with literally a touch of a button, then they will probably freak out. The same way if you told a native nomadic tribesman that in the future, national borders will prevent him from roaming freely. My point here is that what may seem to be dystopian to us now will be the norm or even desired in the future. There is no way that we can reliably predict how people's mores and social psychology will mutate into.
I have mostly given up posting on Slashdot unless I have some horrible meme or puns to write (anon, of course). Yet I am compelled to respond to the poster above. Basically, what you are saying is this:
The majority of China's citizens or (insert country) supports Dictatorship or (insert political system).
Yet, the Western World thinks that their political system, which ironically is based on the rule of the majority, is superior to all other systems, in all circumstances and historical development.
Therefore, it for the Chinese people's own good, that they change to be more like the Western World
or an even more concise summary: West Good, Rest of the World Bad and (sometimes) West angry World not carbon-copies, West SMASH!
Those Eastern Europeans you talk about are now reverting (they never changed?) to authoritarian governments, their economies in tatters and some, in even worst state then they were during the Communist era. The Western World should start realizing that 'regime change' never works if imposed from outside and your high sounding ideals might not be practicable elsewhere. Let the Chinese, Iran, or whatever enemy du jour choose their own destiny. The West should instead demonstrate that it's political system is the best, that it is the one with the least corruption, abuses of power, respect for human rights (no torture or rape of female detainees, freedom of press and thought (no blackout of torture pictures) etc. If what you preach is true and good, and you practice it, in the end, people will gravitate towards you and become your followers.
Firstly, this thread seems to forget that there are many religions, not just Christianity. Each religion treats the coming of death differently. We Muslims are actually taught to be fearful of God and the coming of death. Being fearful of God and death is judged a positive trait.I have said before and I will say it again: you do not need a God to justify doing bad (and good) things in life. Atheists are as prone to having "insane behaviour" as religious people, or any human being. In fact, we say that those who don't believe in God are the ones who are narcissistic, in that by not believing in God, they elevate themselves to Godhood.
There are many verses in the Quran and hadiths that says every little action, good or bad that we do in this world, hidden or clearly seen, will be replayed and judged on Judgment Day and we are constantly reminded that death afflicts the young and healthy as equally as the old and sick. Muslims are taught to pray for an "easy" death, easy in the sense that the soul leaves the body without much suffering to the body. We fear death because we might not have asked people for forgiveness when we had the chance, or we had not carried out our duties and responsibilities to the best of our abilities, or we have taken more than we have given back. Yet we do not "hate" death because life and the whole Universe is an illusion, a game. We score points by doing good and lose points when we do bad things. The "real" life begins after death, one that is eternal and where we reap our rewards or receive our punishments. There are many verses in the Quran where non-believers and sinners on Judgment Day, will beg for another chance to return to this life and do better, but always the answer is it is too late.
Thus, it is a duty of a Muslim to live as long as possible, while doing as much good deeds as he can, to prepare for the inevitable. When a Muslim is on his death bed, his family and friends will attend to him, and whisper in his ear "there is no God but Allah" and asks him to repeat it so that it will be his last words. Quranic verses will be recited in his presence to calm him down and to face death with dignity. And when he dies, it is the duty of his children to regularly pray for him so that God forgives him.
So you obviously don't believe in God. I accept that. Then why do you belittle those who do? You choose to highlight evil religious people, yet you conveniently ignore those who serve the community and do good deeds. We Muslims are taught to praise and respect people who do good deeds, be they Muslims or not. If you don't believe in the Afterlife, does that invalidates the good deeds of those who do? Will you not benefit from the positive effects of good deeds done by the pious? Or are you ironically succumbing to the same dogmatic stance that you accuse believers of having?
Meh. TV channels are getting obsolete anyway. Who watches a particular channel religiously nowadays anyway. Other than the news, I rarely watch TV. I get most of my entertainment from my DVD collection of movies and series. This has the advantage of no commercials and I could go back and forth between the seasons (Babylon 5 comes to mind).
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. And what do they mean by "Nobel-Prize level achievement"? As if it was some sort of Level-Up where after accumulating enough Experience Points, you glow and gain new powers. Scientific research is not how it is portrayed in movies and games. There are no research points, increasing the number of researchers or pouring money into it won't necessarily do anything. There are elements of chance, good fortune and serendipity. The discovery of antibiotics came to mind when Alexander Fleming noticed that some old cultures contaminated with the Penicillium fungus appears to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Would a machine be able to make this discovery? There are historical forces, political factors, even the personalities of the researchers themselves. Machines can do all the tedious work, collect data and do analyses on them. But it still takes the human mind to make sense of the data and infer meanings and applications from them, sometimes far from the original project objectives.
why does the USPTO official seal have a bald eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch while appearing to ready itself to poop on the American Gladiator shield? I mean, these sort of imagery should be more appropriate for say the Airborne corps or the Airforce, not some deskbound attorneys who can't rotate their faxes 180 degrees. And why is the bald eagle's head awkwardly turned so that it looks like it is trying to bite fleas from under its wings? A visit to Wikipedia shed no light on this matter. Anyone here who is versed in heraldy and could explain this strange seal?
I went to a Malaysian Public Boarding High School. The environment there was closer to a military boot camp than Hogwarts, complete with barbed wire fences, guards and wardens. The eldest students there, called "seniors" lord over everyone else ("juniors"). You're pretty much at their beck and call and any perceived slights usually results in a beating. You dare not tell the teachers as it would probably get you more beatings from them as you are "tarnishing the school's reputation by making a complaint" and then even more beatings by the seniors when they found out you squawked. You also dare not tell your parents since you will let them down if you leave the boarding school. One of the tasks I had to do as a junior was to wash a whole dorm of senior's uniform, all 18 of them, once a week. There were no washing machines and you have to manually wash, dry and iron them. After a few times of doing this, I decided to strike back. After washing their uniforms, I carefully rubbed them on the communal toilet floor, in such a way as not to stain them. I then dried the uniforms and lightly ironed them. After a few weeks of this, many of the seniors developed very itchy fungal skin infections. To my great satisfaction, they never did found out what I did. From then on, I learned that revenge is truly best served cold. Seeing your tormentors in discomfort and none the wiser is much sweeter than fighting back physically.
Talking out of my ass here but I gather that the 3 second delay is to prevent accidental shut-off of the engine due to bumping into the button etc. The solution is to do away with the 3 second delay and have a hinged transparent plastic cover over the ignition button, ala those found on fighter jet joysticks. To press the button, you have to manually lift the plastic cover, preventing accidental presses. Simple solution for an unnecessary problem.
Someone above ranted about the overuse of the word "paradigm-shift" and I couldn't agree more. However, in this case, I think the use is warranted. Woese himself caused a paradigm-shift when he discovered that the 16S and 18S ribosomal gene is highly conserved in all known organism, meaning that organisms that have similar 16S or 18S sequences are more closely related to each other and vice versa. The previous paradigm, and if you were old enough to remember learning in school was based largely on the morphological and to a certain extent, biochemical properties of the organisms. The current model used in life-sciences are tree-like where "more evolved" species branch off from "less evolved" species and if you trace back this tree, you get to the root of life, where the hypothetical Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)is. This new paradigm proposed by Woese drastically change this neat picture into a cloud-like diagram, with organisms having multiple links with other organisms. No longer can you say organism x2 has a direct lineage to organism x1 since horizontal gene transfers have clouded the relationships with a big impact on the study of evolution. This also has a big impact on computational biology and I am sure, this is more in line with the speciality of the Slashdot crowd. More complex algorithms and computational power have to be utilised to visualize this 3D relationship. As an aside, to those who are virulently defending Darwin, please stop and reconsider what you are doing. I'm not saying that you shouldn't but amidst calls to boycott the New Scientist by Dawkins himself, don't fall into the same behaviour that you tarred the intelligent design crowd.
What the heck are you talking about? The US let loose 2 nukes on Japan, and the world didn't end. Any nuclear conflicts involving Israel or Iran or Pakistan or India and possibly China, would be local. It will be great destruction, but only for the involved nations. It no where approaches the predicted MAD scenario of the Cold War. Why the heck would Pakistan want to bomb the Hague when their sworn enemy lies next door? With their limited store of nukes, they won't so foolishly launch it on a quixotic mission to bomb Europe. I do agree however, that they are mistaken to move the clock backwards, not that it matters. The greatest threat to the survival of humanity is arguably the USA, not Iran, or China. When other countries, even Iran are inching towards more freedom, the people of USA is steadily falling into religious and political extremism. Militarism has taken hold and is seen as the solution to all problems. Paranoia and fear of foreigners have taken hold. Should the USA produce someone with Sarah Palin's looks but Cheney's evil brain, the end of world as we know it will soon follow.
What the hell are you talking about? People with religious beliefs are one of the original nerds. For example, there are many Muslims who have memorised the entire Quran, word for word and could recite to you any verse on command, the same way some nerds can memorise the entire script of Star Wars Episode IV. Medieval Christian monks can spend years on end, nerdily copying and decorating manuscripts by hand. The word "canon" came from the Catholic faith and has been adopted by geeky Wookiepedia, Memory Alpha writers and basically any long-running TV show fans. Most of those said TV shows, especially sci-fi ones, have elements of Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Hindu etc. myths. Don't conflate nerdism and technophilia exclusively with atheism.
I agree. As a non-American, and a Muslim at that, I am regularly surprised and somewhat amused at the reaction of the US every time an air port security breach happened. I mean, stop and take a step back to look at the whole picture. Here we have the most powerful nation on Earth, with enough nukes to glass every major city on the planet and with aircraft carriers whose jets out number most third world nation's air forces, being afraid of people getting lost or with their pants on fire. I think al-qaeda or whoever they really are, very quickly realized that they don't even have to try very hard to send the US into a fear-over reaction-panic infinite loop, hence the "pants on fire" "bomber" (I don't even think that this term applied to him). By provoking the US to attempt to cover every possibility, eventually all its resources will be stretched thin while at the same time, innocent people will get caught in the net, increasing the noise to signal ratio not to mention animosity towards the US. Go ahead and adopt stricter screening procedures all you want, especially from Israel, that shining beacon of democracy and equality. It will only add to one more reason why people won't want to go the US. History (China, Japan etc.) has shown what happens to countries when they turn turtle and shut their borders.
Lawyers, doctors, builders, pilots, general people, regularly do volunteer work for the good of the public. The point of doing volunteer work is that by definition, you are not fully compensated for your time and effort but hopefully, it makes you feel good that you have made a difference.
From the Strange Horizons website, oldie but still a goodie: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050606/hunter-1-a.shtml. It comes in 2 parts and there is a link to it at the end of the article. Also, while you're there, this is my favourite (off-topic) article: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml.
I currently live in an inland city, hundreds of kilometers from the the nearest ocean. This is why I refuse to eat sushi at the restaurants here since the fish will not be very fresh. I am a microbiologist, so I don't even eat that much sushi anyway since I know what sort and how many bacteria will grow on uncooked fish. Regarding fake or poisonous fish, ask around first before you eat at any restaurant (not only for sushi). I am sure that bad reputation will spread very quickly. There are many websites and blogs that do restaurant reviews. Alternatively, you can make your own sushi as it is not very hard to do. If you can make a sandwich, you can definitely make sushi.
Manip has also proven something here. The hallmark of an educated person is someone who can ask the right questions, not only being good at answering them. Soulskill here asked a biased question, something a person who, if he/she is trained in the scientific method should not do. You can make your own conclusions.
If spies/criminals/terrorists/politicians are stupid enough to use plain language over the phone to plan their dastardly deeds, then they deserve to be put into prison.
Ok. I'm a microbiologist and I smell something off here. For the CO and CO2 to "create" an anaerobic condition, it will necessarily kill off most of the other aerobic microorganisms, not to mention other useful organisms such as worms etc. If you want to create an anaerobic environment, it is much easier to just flood the land with water. Furthermore, this is farmland that we are talking about and the soil would probably be somewhat porous due to ploughing. The CO2 would probably just escape back into the air. Most of the agriculturally-useful nitrogen fixers are symbiotically bound with the root nodules of legumes anyway. I suspect that this farmer subscribe to the plant "eating" belief where they think that photosynthetic plants "eat" nutrients (in this case, CO2) from the soil.
By this definition, then the US Air Force of WWII was cowardly, especially the firebombing campaigns towards the end of the war in Germany and the nuclear bombs in Japan. When the crossbow was first widely introduced, the Pope tried to ban them because they were unchivalrous and cowardly. The people who attacked the Marines barracks in Beirut during the 80s and the American warship in Yemen were still branded as terrorists, despite attacking military targets. The attack on the Pentagon during 9/11 was also branded as a terrorist act. In Australia, a group of people were arrested as terrorists for planning to attack a military camp, also a valid military target. The truth is that, it is convenient for governments to label anyone they don't like as terrorists. I am not condoning attacks on civilians, whether by irregulars or by regular military. Regarding these drones, as they become more prevalent, countermeasures will be devised, you can bet on it. There already exist jammers that can interfere with the drones guidance systems. I predict that ECM measures will be devised to block/mislead the telecommunication linkage of the drones with its controllers. I also predict that "interceptor" drones will be invented that will loiter over the defended target and intercept incoming attack drones. Barrage balloons that interfere with sensors and radar might also make a comeback.
Firstly, let us not beat about the bush. The reason the US and the EU is against Iran having nuclear capabilities is to protect Israel , or rather to ensure that the balance of power is ever so slightly, in favour of Israel. Currently, Israel has nuclear weapons and unlike Iran's case, the UN seems to acknowledge this with a wink and a nod. An Iran with nuclear weapons means that Israel will find itself in a Cold War situation of Mutually Assured Destruction which will effectively prevent it from invading surrounding nations as it pleases. I also suspect that any local nuclear war between Iran and Israel will lead to Jewish refugees streaming back into Europe, whose people have historically never been very good with the Jewish people. Any other reasons bandied by the Western propaganda machine are just lies and smokescreen. Now that we got it out of the way, let us ponder the future. My gut feeling is that, Iran will eventually get nuclear capability, despite the US and Israel trying to stop them. Once they have it, there is nothing the US and Israel can do, except all out war which they could not afford. The Iranians are historically a very crafty and astute people and are masters of manipulating the UN bodies. They play for time which is what they have recently got. What this will mean is that many nations who are watching with interest will finally realise that the UN is toothless and proceed with their nuclear programs. The best case scenario is for all nuclear weapons to be scrapped but this is never going to happen. So, the second best scenario is to have all nations having nuclear weapons, to ensure Mutually Assured Destruction, on a whole new level. Once Iran succeeds, we will see an explosion of nuclear proliferation in the world. The major powers will of course would not like this erosion of their absolute power but like the introduction of gun powder, it is inevitable.
There is a reason for the high birthrate in developing countries, which is the high child mortality rate. Since parents depend on their children to help with working the farm, herd cattle etc. it makes sense to hedge their bets by producing more children, in case the current batch dies from disease or accidents. Overpopulation has been overblown as global problem. It is still a local problem but we probably won't see any of the dystopian overpopulation scenes narrated in sci-fi novels. Dispassionately speaking, as a country develops, the birth rate will fall and eventually the population will age. If the country gets stuck in the undeveloped stage, then migration, disease and wars will control the population. Note that I am speaking dispassionately here. I however support who ever had flippantly suggested people off themselves if they are so concerned about the effect of overpopulation .Especially if you're from industrialised countries where your so-called energy and carbon footprints will be enough to maintain a whole village in Africa.
Really. Please stop. There was a common word for it. It's called a bomb. If there is some sort of hidden triggering mechanism present, then it is a booby-trap. If the payload is large enough, then it is a landmine. I do believe that the US military started to call it IED for Orwellian-like doublespeak reasons.
Makes it look like the customers are protesting outsourcing, when in fact what pisses most people off is that the offshore phone monkeys are completely unintelligible. If you're handling calls from Mexican customers, your call center workers should be able to speak fluent Spanish, not bad Spanish like I speak.
I might be off-tangent here, but from my experience with overseas call centres operators, they speak perfect English. The only difference is that they sometimes don't speak with your same accent, though some companies are training their operators to speak with a specific accent. English is my second language, and I believe, like many people who speak more than one language, we have trained ourselves to listen to the words and not how they are said. From my observation, this is a big problem with monolingual English speakers. You have been so used to not paying attention and just picking up familiar sound patterns instead of words, that you have difficulty parsing a different accent. Not putting down anyone here, just saying that this is how we humans operate.
Instead of relying on national space agencies that are beholden to military and political whims, why not create an international space agency, just for peaceful and scientific space exploration. Countries, corporations and private individuals could donate money and expertise while any scientific findings or commercial technology developed will be released to public domain. Why, if you want to attract geeks, just name it as Starfleet. I don't see why the open source model could not be applied to space exploration.
I'm no expert in this field but I think the link that you provided had underestimated the human brain by many orders of magnitude. The human brain is not a hard drive. I don't think there is even any counterpart to it in current computer technology (maybe quantum computing?), whatever that is, so the comparison is meaningless. The brain doesn't just "store" information like a hard drive. It analyses, modifies, categorises, correlates, extrapolates, fills in missing blanks, filters and blanks out others and many other things that we are just beginning to discover. For example, a human child will quickly grasp the concept of doors and doorknobs, without any "programming" (I've had toddlers so believe me on this). This is why I think A.I. enthusiasts will ultimately fail.
When you think about it, all future is dystopian. If you can somehow travel back in time and tell your Puritan founding fathers that porn could be accessed with literally a touch of a button, then they will probably freak out. The same way if you told a native nomadic tribesman that in the future, national borders will prevent him from roaming freely. My point here is that what may seem to be dystopian to us now will be the norm or even desired in the future. There is no way that we can reliably predict how people's mores and social psychology will mutate into.
Those Eastern Europeans you talk about are now reverting (they never changed?) to authoritarian governments, their economies in tatters and some, in even worst state then they were during the Communist era. The Western World should start realizing that 'regime change' never works if imposed from outside and your high sounding ideals might not be practicable elsewhere. Let the Chinese, Iran, or whatever enemy du jour choose their own destiny. The West should instead demonstrate that it's political system is the best, that it is the one with the least corruption, abuses of power, respect for human rights (no torture or rape of female detainees, freedom of press and thought (no blackout of torture pictures) etc. If what you preach is true and good, and you practice it, in the end, people will gravitate towards you and become your followers.
Firstly, this thread seems to forget that there are many religions, not just Christianity. Each religion treats the coming of death differently. We Muslims are actually taught to be fearful of God and the coming of death. Being fearful of God and death is judged a positive trait.I have said before and I will say it again: you do not need a God to justify doing bad (and good) things in life. Atheists are as prone to having "insane behaviour" as religious people, or any human being. In fact, we say that those who don't believe in God are the ones who are narcissistic, in that by not believing in God, they elevate themselves to Godhood.
There are many verses in the Quran and hadiths that says every little action, good or bad that we do in this world, hidden or clearly seen, will be replayed and judged on Judgment Day and we are constantly reminded that death afflicts the young and healthy as equally as the old and sick. Muslims are taught to pray for an "easy" death, easy in the sense that the soul leaves the body without much suffering to the body. We fear death because we might not have asked people for forgiveness when we had the chance, or we had not carried out our duties and responsibilities to the best of our abilities, or we have taken more than we have given back. Yet we do not "hate" death because life and the whole Universe is an illusion, a game. We score points by doing good and lose points when we do bad things. The "real" life begins after death, one that is eternal and where we reap our rewards or receive our punishments. There are many verses in the Quran where non-believers and sinners on Judgment Day, will beg for another chance to return to this life and do better, but always the answer is it is too late.
Thus, it is a duty of a Muslim to live as long as possible, while doing as much good deeds as he can, to prepare for the inevitable. When a Muslim is on his death bed, his family and friends will attend to him, and whisper in his ear "there is no God but Allah" and asks him to repeat it so that it will be his last words. Quranic verses will be recited in his presence to calm him down and to face death with dignity. And when he dies, it is the duty of his children to regularly pray for him so that God forgives him.
So you obviously don't believe in God. I accept that. Then why do you belittle those who do? You choose to highlight evil religious people, yet you conveniently ignore those who serve the community and do good deeds. We Muslims are taught to praise and respect people who do good deeds, be they Muslims or not. If you don't believe in the Afterlife, does that invalidates the good deeds of those who do? Will you not benefit from the positive effects of good deeds done by the pious? Or are you ironically succumbing to the same dogmatic stance that you accuse believers of having?
Meh. TV channels are getting obsolete anyway. Who watches a particular channel religiously nowadays anyway. Other than the news, I rarely watch TV. I get most of my entertainment from my DVD collection of movies and series. This has the advantage of no commercials and I could go back and forth between the seasons (Babylon 5 comes to mind).