I'm right there with you, but don't hold your breath. It's appropriate that he's going to be doing this show. He's precisely this generation's equivalent of Sagan: a scientist who did good work in his field early on but who has since coasted on a public image as the Voice Of Science, with his most mundane statements breathlessly repeated as though they were great wisdom. [shrug] I guess it's better for people to choose a scientist to worship than an actor, musician, athlete, politician, or preacher, but it's still kind of irritating to watch.
As much as I hate the idea of expropriating land from private owners, if you want to really preserve these sorts of things you've got to remove them from private ownership and recompense the land owner either with money or a swap of some new land of equal value.
Or just accept that land ownership comes with certain restrictions. For example, if I want an addition to my house, I can't just build whatever I want; I need to get permits and ensure that the construction complies with building codes. Saying "no, you cannot knock down this ancient structure which was built millennia ago on what now happens to be your land" strikes me as a reasonable counterpart to that.
Also snips in gene control regions can effect phenotype. But for the junk DNA, the tens of millions of random junk snips you and I have different, they just don't seem to have any effect whatsoever. If the code sequences in the junk matter, the effect on the individual seems to be very slight.
Except for, you know, all the SNPs in noncoding regions which come up as significant in practically every GWAS ever.
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists'
Indeed; people who don't care one way or another are people who don't care one way or another, and people who don't care one way or another don't generally bother posting. People who post endless screeching copypasta rants denying overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, are best described as denialists.
and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
All of these are important things. So is global warming. See, it's actually possible for many things to be important at the same time. Welcome to reality--take a look around, and be warned that some of it may be a little confusing, but it's in your interest to try to figure it out.
RTFA, and try to understand that what appears to be your assumption, that scientific articles are commodities like movies or groceries, is not supported by history.
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
So how, exactly, do you think Iraq and Afghanistan don't fit into this? The entire period of our involvement in those two countries has certainly involved "open, armed and prolonged conflict," and note the word "parties" at the end of that definition--it doesn't have to be nation-states. Any time you have two or more large bodies of armed people trying to kill each other, you have a war. You can call it "peacekeeping" or anything else you like, but that doesn't change what it is.
WE called it war, but blah blah blah bunch of 101st Fighting Keyboarder macho chest-thumping
Why don't you go up to some of my friends who came back from Iraq or Afghanistan missing pieces of themselves and tell them they weren't in a war. I dare you.
Why yes, I do! But I'm not going to give you the URL. Finding it on your own will be the first test of whether you're ready to break free from the educated stupid ONEist snotbrain propaganda machine.
If competitive carriers like CenturyLink had access to facilities that THE PUBLIC PAID FOR that now belong to Verizon et. al....
In Denver (and most of the interior West) CenturyLink is the incumbent carrier, since they bought out Qwest a couple of years ago. Amazingly, having a "competitive carrier" has not led to upgrades in our service.
Oh, get out of here with your socialist nonsense. Government should be run exactly like a business. Granted, a business that tries to reduce revenue to the lowest possible level and has a board of directors that constantly talks about how terrible business is and how business never does anything which can possibly increase revenue in the future... but other than that, exactly like a business. Yeah.
Didn't you read GPP's post? Competition! Free market! Invisible hand! Everything will be better if we get the government out of the way and let the network of innovative job-creating entrepeneurs optimize the educational testing paradigm for maximal stakeholder impact!
Is figuring out what constitutes a gene for something really the Herculean effort (deserving of patent protection) it used to be?
As AC pointed out, "Herculean effort" is not necessarily deserving of patent protection. That being said, yes, figuring out what constitutes "the gene for X" (which for the vast majority of diseases is actually more like "the N genes and assorted epigenetic modifications for X," where N is some fairly large number) is still in most cases a task which would challenge even a demigod. Since those of us working in the fields aren't demigods, we have to rely on a whole lot of skull sweat and processor cycles. It still doesn't mean we should get to patent what we discover through this process, for the simple reason that they are discoveries rather than inventions.
If A and B happen together just through merely good/bad luck (or because the researcher "carefully" cherry-picked his sample...), then it's just correlation.
No, then it's just an artifact of the data. Correlation is a property of a multivariate distribution, which it may or may not be possible to infer accurately depending on sample size.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm right there with you, but don't hold your breath. It's appropriate that he's going to be doing this show. He's precisely this generation's equivalent of Sagan: a scientist who did good work in his field early on but who has since coasted on a public image as the Voice Of Science, with his most mundane statements breathlessly repeated as though they were great wisdom. [shrug] I guess it's better for people to choose a scientist to worship than an actor, musician, athlete, politician, or preacher, but it's still kind of irritating to watch.
As much as I hate the idea of expropriating land from private owners, if you want to really preserve these sorts of things you've got to remove them from private ownership and recompense the land owner either with money or a swap of some new land of equal value.
Or just accept that land ownership comes with certain restrictions. For example, if I want an addition to my house, I can't just build whatever I want; I need to get permits and ensure that the construction complies with building codes. Saying "no, you cannot knock down this ancient structure which was built millennia ago on what now happens to be your land" strikes me as a reasonable counterpart to that.
Also snips in gene control regions can effect phenotype. But for the junk DNA, the tens of millions of random junk snips you and I have different, they just don't seem to have any effect whatsoever. If the code sequences in the junk matter, the effect on the individual seems to be very slight.
Except for, you know, all the SNPs in noncoding regions which come up as significant in practically every GWAS ever.
Back in 1975 we were supposed to be freezing by now. Anyone remember that?
No, and neither do you, because it never happened.
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists'
Indeed; people who don't care one way or another are people who don't care one way or another, and people who don't care one way or another don't generally bother posting. People who post endless screeching copypasta rants denying overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, are best described as denialists.
and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
All of these are important things. So is global warming. See, it's actually possible for many things to be important at the same time. Welcome to reality--take a look around, and be warned that some of it may be a little confusing, but it's in your interest to try to figure it out.
RTFA, and try to understand that what appears to be your assumption, that scientific articles are commodities like movies or groceries, is not supported by history.
Volunteer? People give blood because they want to help someone who they usually envision as having a horrible illeness
You don't think heart disease is a horrible illness?
not because they want some rich, old guy to live longer than the norm.
Don't think "some rich, old guy." Think "your grandpa."
RDW wins the Comment Of The Month award.
Age-related cognitive decline is a reality. ...The facts of the situation do drive employers to ageism
It is not the fact of age-related cognitive decline which leads to ageism in the corporate world. Not even close.
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
So how, exactly, do you think Iraq and Afghanistan don't fit into this? The entire period of our involvement in those two countries has certainly involved "open, armed and prolonged conflict," and note the word "parties" at the end of that definition--it doesn't have to be nation-states. Any time you have two or more large bodies of armed people trying to kill each other, you have a war. You can call it "peacekeeping" or anything else you like, but that doesn't change what it is.
WE called it war, but blah blah blah bunch of 101st Fighting Keyboarder macho chest-thumping
Why don't you go up to some of my friends who came back from Iraq or Afghanistan missing pieces of themselves and tell them they weren't in a war. I dare you.
Whereas evolution has not been revised since it was proposed by Darwin.
I hereby nominate UnknowingFool for "most appropriate Slashdot user name of the year."
Why yes, I do! But I'm not going to give you the URL. Finding it on your own will be the first test of whether you're ready to break free from the educated stupid ONEist snotbrain propaganda machine.
Well, there are four sides to that question. It's going to take simultaneous 24-hour corner days to come up with an answer.
If competitive carriers like CenturyLink had access to facilities that THE PUBLIC PAID FOR that now belong to Verizon et. al. ...
In Denver (and most of the interior West) CenturyLink is the incumbent carrier, since they bought out Qwest a couple of years ago. Amazingly, having a "competitive carrier" has not led to upgrades in our service.
Because of, you know, "national security" and "terrorists".
Also because being under the public eye all the time might be intimidating to police officers.
Yes, I've heard that argument used.
Republicans voted 196-29 in favor, while Democrats voted 98-92 opposed. But just remember, kids, There's No Difference Between The Parties(tm).
The way the Democrats ran amuck
The USA in your head must be very interesting. Unfortunately, it bears little resemblance to the one in the real world. Try to focus, okay?
South Carolina passed a law ... Fuck the US Government.
So, planning on heading down to Ft. Sumter soon, are we?
Oh, get out of here with your socialist nonsense. Government should be run exactly like a business. Granted, a business that tries to reduce revenue to the lowest possible level and has a board of directors that constantly talks about how terrible business is and how business never does anything which can possibly increase revenue in the future ... but other than that, exactly like a business. Yeah.
Didn't you read GPP's post? Competition! Free market! Invisible hand! Everything will be better if we get the government out of the way and let the network of innovative job-creating entrepeneurs optimize the educational testing paradigm for maximal stakeholder impact!
Is figuring out what constitutes a gene for something really the Herculean effort (deserving of patent protection) it used to be?
As AC pointed out, "Herculean effort" is not necessarily deserving of patent protection. That being said, yes, figuring out what constitutes "the gene for X" (which for the vast majority of diseases is actually more like "the N genes and assorted epigenetic modifications for X," where N is some fairly large number) is still in most cases a task which would challenge even a demigod. Since those of us working in the fields aren't demigods, we have to rely on a whole lot of skull sweat and processor cycles. It still doesn't mean we should get to patent what we discover through this process, for the simple reason that they are discoveries rather than inventions.
It's only April, and I'm willing to give this "comment of the year."
... can we cram onto a single campus?"
"I don't know, but let's find out!"
If A and B happen together just through merely good/bad luck (or because the researcher "carefully" cherry-picked his sample...), then it's just correlation.
No, then it's just an artifact of the data. Correlation is a property of a multivariate distribution, which it may or may not be possible to infer accurately depending on sample size.