Also the side-issue that, even if we assume teenagers don't have sex - adults do. Adults divorce and re-marry, have affairs etc. It's not like all the promiscuous sex in the world is only happening amongst teenagers, and it's certainly not like all the adultery in the world is only amongst some small core of adulterers etc.
Probably more to the point: before the condom was affordable, reliable or convenient people still went out of their way to fabricate unreliable, expensive and inconvenient condoms so they could have sex...rather then just not have sex at all.
How do you get to this point without knowing what a vaccine is or how it work? Christ, go look up on the first vaccine for smallpox. It was cowpox.
Or did you feel you were thoroughly informed to speculate on the method of action of this vaccine now that you read something about what one specific vaccine contains, without any apparent further information on how vaccines work at all?
And in fact, exactly what I myself advocate: it's as you say, as close to "one size fits all" as we're likely to get, since the worst-case scenario is essentially the current model of teaching (though with vastly reduced class sizes one would imagine).
It's almost like the individual productivity of mankind and it's diversity of specializations lends itself to parallel problem solving, rather then working sequentially in order of importance.
In terms of geoengineering, there is the obvious that will go wrong. For starters, all these schemes are schemes to alter the planet so it copes better with high CO2 levels.
Since the planet has coped perfectly well with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels considerably higher than present it would be rather a suprise if were to have any problems. If there is actually anything to be concerned about it's that carbon dioxide levels very close to the level where photosynthesis ceases.
"The planet" is a nebulous term. Which planet are you talking about? "The planet" survived perfectly well when another planetoid smashed a huge chunk out of it and gave it a tidally locked moon.
"The planet" also survived a massive meteor impact which created a permanent moving firestorm from superheated air and the Coriolis effect, and then a global dimming phase which wiped out the dominant life-forms and much of the planet life on the planet.
"The planet" will survive a lot of things. Human beings may not.
Where do you get the idea that modern agriculture is implicitely dependent on the explicit combustion of fossil fuels?
Every combustion process in farming could be replaced with an electrically driven one (or biodiesal for things like tractors). Same for the heat and pressure requirements of the production of ammonium nitrate fertilizers, their feedstock requirements. Hell, we don't even need to stop drilling for oil (cheap plastics hoy) we just need to stop burning them.
What's so implausible about it? You wouldn't need a giant structure, you could use an active structure. A system of hydrogen balloons (since helium shouldn't really be used this way, and it's not full of people anyway) could actively cycle up to 20km, release their water (or burn off their hydrogen) and then having lost their lifting gas cycle back down to the base.
Energy intensive to produce all the hydrogen maybe, but nuclear/solar/wind/whatever would let you work around that.
If you were injecting something which had a short half-life in the upper atmosphere, then why would it blow up? The process would essentially be active - it would need power to continue - and thus could be halted reasonably rapidly. Climate change's issues come from rapid alteration of the Earth's climate, but we're still talking timespans of 100's of years. If you have a process which can be varied over a much shorter timespan, then it would be much safer.
Between CO2 emissions reduction and geo-engineering, I'd pick geo-engineering just because it's more likely to get done. Of course the real problem is, as always, that it's not *just* CO2 in the atmosphere that's a problem (hi there ocean acidification).
Although with reading comprehesion, a thorough digital curriculum project would be capable of building up an enormous database of problems and their solutions from across the globe for people to try.
The ideals behind the Khan Academy are more or less the direction computer-augmented education needs to go - the real problem is still that governments and voters have no patience for long-term planning or expensive development and restructuring and retraining. So instead we get "computers" thrown at education with no plan on how to use them.
The same goes for all other attendant issues such as actually funding school districts sensibly, or attacking root socioeconomic issues in areas which erode educational outcomes (poverty, crime, corruption).
Of course, I happily back trying to build better technology and software, because I've much less confidence we can do any of those other things.
I'm surprised space solar power doesn't get pushed more heavily, though I'll give you 1 guess as to why: no one in coal, oil or gas would want to hear about it.
I mean, a 100 ton launch payload sounds very much like the amounts one might want to launch to put collectors into geostationary (or I guess maybe even Earth-Sun Lagrangian) orbits. The technology to beam power around with microwaves was pretty much ready to go in the 80's, and it's completely safe even at ground level - antennas can be built over farmland with low microwave intensity at ground level.
Not to mention the obvious spin-off benefits - for example being able to power military bases remotely without fuel transportation costs. Or the development benefits - electrifying remote regions without having to put generators on the ground.
But good look actually funding that with coal interests around.
Don't kid yourself: it's almost entirely pharma, especially since the US government refuses to actually negotiate drug prices. Which in a market system is batshit crazy since it amounts to a massive handout to pharmaceutical companies.
Even if you think a large military is necessary, the incestuous relationship between the government and military contractors is *still* a colossal waste of money. It's not going to be broken by regulation (too much money already going around) so some nice hard cuts targeting "useless" things for modern American operations would be a great place to start. If it's bad, then raise the budget later when you need it - but there's enormous merit in keeping the purse-strings tight to promote efficiency.
There's a reason that despite the massive differences in funding Russian scientists produced some of the best designed weapons AND spacecraft in the world.
I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
Me neither. I'm seriously blown away that that's even happened. I mean life on Mars once upon a time maybe whatever - but Europa is potentially liquid oceans and volcanic vents - the likely origins of all life on Earth, found somewhere else in the solar system.
Well, they also have large indirect returns. The simple process of building data collection for the LHC has led to the development a huge amount of distributed data transfer and management technology, and a whole bunch of research into the limitations of TCP/IP over fiber with respect to sustaining maximum throughput rates. That's the data side alone. The possible, very long term products of that research are staggering.
In the same respect, this is also true of space exploration: the spin-off technologies from being forced to solve problems in unusual areas are immense, the social benefits to zeitgeist from a large, high impact scientific project are immense. I'm not saying you *have* to shoot people into space, but the way we plan and conduct robotic missions at the moment could certainly be far more long term then it is at present: a lot of infrastructure which could benefit eventual manned missions would also benefit from robotic missions (such as producing fuel on the surface of Mars - that could do things other then fly rockets, such as say, power long range gliders or a rover with jump jets to get out of craters).
The sad thing is, NASA knows this too. They've written reports detailing ideas exactly like this - about installing long term infrastructure on our nearby exploration targets. GPS and communication satellites above Mars to benefit future missions etc.
ZFS really comes into it's own when you can mount all your home directories as filesystems and use cheap snapshots for upto the minute backups for your user accounts.
That said, I will take another run at it sometime soon I suspect.
ZFS basically does everything I would want in a server file system (hell: any filesystem) and it's a crime that it hasn't been ported to Linux (and that OpenSolaris is sufficiently dead now that you can't run it on newer hardware at all).
We live in an age of 4-core CPUs being commodity items - ANY system can spare the cycles to ensure it's own data integrity since what else are you going to do with them? (alternately: if you need them, then why does that particular machine deal with having a hard disk anyway?)
Because it's the right thing to do? Because that's what real scientists do every day? Or did you not hear about the guys who claim they've detected neutrinos which travel faster than light?
How many harassing letters and phone calls have those guys received, btw? I don't expect you to have the exact number, but a rough figure would be nice.
Also because the Nobel prize (which you would be certain to get if you were right) pays $5 million USD and that's going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of free travel, research grants, book deals and all the other benefits of fame and status as a celebrity scientist will get you?
You would be able to tour as a paid-for speaker for the rest of your life - you'd be set.
The model is based on the evidence of hundreds of past experiments. Yes, it's possible that those experiments could have missed something, but you'll need your own pile of evidence that can stand toe-to-toe with all the evidence you're effectively dismissing to show it.
Put another way, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
See for example, the way the lab which may have observed faster then light neutrinos dealt with the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Also the side-issue that, even if we assume teenagers don't have sex - adults do. Adults divorce and re-marry, have affairs etc. It's not like all the promiscuous sex in the world is only happening amongst teenagers, and it's certainly not like all the adultery in the world is only amongst some small core of adulterers etc.
Probably more to the point: before the condom was affordable, reliable or convenient people still went out of their way to fabricate unreliable, expensive and inconvenient condoms so they could have sex...rather then just not have sex at all.
There's probably a lesson here.
How do you get to this point without knowing what a vaccine is or how it work? Christ, go look up on the first vaccine for smallpox. It was cowpox.
Or did you feel you were thoroughly informed to speculate on the method of action of this vaccine now that you read something about what one specific vaccine contains, without any apparent further information on how vaccines work at all?
What did you think a vaccine was before this?
Ah, much clearer.
And in fact, exactly what I myself advocate: it's as you say, as close to "one size fits all" as we're likely to get, since the worst-case scenario is essentially the current model of teaching (though with vastly reduced class sizes one would imagine).
It's almost like the individual productivity of mankind and it's diversity of specializations lends itself to parallel problem solving, rather then working sequentially in order of importance.
In terms of geoengineering, there is the obvious that will go wrong. For starters, all these schemes are schemes to alter the planet so it copes better with high CO2 levels.
Since the planet has coped perfectly well with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels considerably higher than present it would be rather a suprise if were to have any problems.
If there is actually anything to be concerned about it's that carbon dioxide levels very close to the level where photosynthesis ceases.
"The planet" is a nebulous term. Which planet are you talking about? "The planet" survived perfectly well when another planetoid smashed a huge chunk out of it and gave it a tidally locked moon.
"The planet" also survived a massive meteor impact which created a permanent moving firestorm from superheated air and the Coriolis effect, and then a global dimming phase which wiped out the dominant life-forms and much of the planet life on the planet.
"The planet" will survive a lot of things. Human beings may not.
Where do you get the idea that modern agriculture is implicitely dependent on the explicit combustion of fossil fuels?
Every combustion process in farming could be replaced with an electrically driven one (or biodiesal for things like tractors). Same for the heat and pressure requirements of the production of ammonium nitrate fertilizers, their feedstock requirements. Hell, we don't even need to stop drilling for oil (cheap plastics hoy) we just need to stop burning them.
What's so implausible about it? You wouldn't need a giant structure, you could use an active structure. A system of hydrogen balloons (since helium shouldn't really be used this way, and it's not full of people anyway) could actively cycle up to 20km, release their water (or burn off their hydrogen) and then having lost their lifting gas cycle back down to the base.
Energy intensive to produce all the hydrogen maybe, but nuclear/solar/wind/whatever would let you work around that.
I disagree with this point.
If you were injecting something which had a short half-life in the upper atmosphere, then why would it blow up? The process would essentially be active - it would need power to continue - and thus could be halted reasonably rapidly. Climate change's issues come from rapid alteration of the Earth's climate, but we're still talking timespans of 100's of years. If you have a process which can be varied over a much shorter timespan, then it would be much safer.
Between CO2 emissions reduction and geo-engineering, I'd pick geo-engineering just because it's more likely to get done. Of course the real problem is, as always, that it's not *just* CO2 in the atmosphere that's a problem (hi there ocean acidification).
I don't really follow what you're saying here.
It sounds like you're advocating trying to keep everyone learning at the same pace to prevent, what discipline problems?
Although with reading comprehesion, a thorough digital curriculum project would be capable of building up an enormous database of problems and their solutions from across the globe for people to try.
The ideals behind the Khan Academy are more or less the direction computer-augmented education needs to go - the real problem is still that governments and voters have no patience for long-term planning or expensive development and restructuring and retraining. So instead we get "computers" thrown at education with no plan on how to use them.
The same goes for all other attendant issues such as actually funding school districts sensibly, or attacking root socioeconomic issues in areas which erode educational outcomes (poverty, crime, corruption).
Of course, I happily back trying to build better technology and software, because I've much less confidence we can do any of those other things.
I don't blame them for wanting to run over the dude with a car.
This superhero dude doesn't seem to give a shit.
Uh what? You don't blame a bunch of guys for trying to kill someone?
What are they going to do, ignite Jupiter? Puh-leeze.
I'm surprised space solar power doesn't get pushed more heavily, though I'll give you 1 guess as to why: no one in coal, oil or gas would want to hear about it.
I mean, a 100 ton launch payload sounds very much like the amounts one might want to launch to put collectors into geostationary (or I guess maybe even Earth-Sun Lagrangian) orbits. The technology to beam power around with microwaves was pretty much ready to go in the 80's, and it's completely safe even at ground level - antennas can be built over farmland with low microwave intensity at ground level.
Not to mention the obvious spin-off benefits - for example being able to power military bases remotely without fuel transportation costs. Or the development benefits - electrifying remote regions without having to put generators on the ground.
But good look actually funding that with coal interests around.
Don't kid yourself: it's almost entirely pharma, especially since the US government refuses to actually negotiate drug prices. Which in a market system is batshit crazy since it amounts to a massive handout to pharmaceutical companies.
Even if you think a large military is necessary, the incestuous relationship between the government and military contractors is *still* a colossal waste of money. It's not going to be broken by regulation (too much money already going around) so some nice hard cuts targeting "useless" things for modern American operations would be a great place to start. If it's bad, then raise the budget later when you need it - but there's enormous merit in keeping the purse-strings tight to promote efficiency.
There's a reason that despite the massive differences in funding Russian scientists produced some of the best designed weapons AND spacecraft in the world.
I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
Me neither. I'm seriously blown away that that's even happened. I mean life on Mars once upon a time maybe whatever - but Europa is potentially liquid oceans and volcanic vents - the likely origins of all life on Earth, found somewhere else in the solar system.
Well, they also have large indirect returns. The simple process of building data collection for the LHC has led to the development a huge amount of distributed data transfer and management technology, and a whole bunch of research into the limitations of TCP/IP over fiber with respect to sustaining maximum throughput rates. That's the data side alone. The possible, very long term products of that research are staggering.
In the same respect, this is also true of space exploration: the spin-off technologies from being forced to solve problems in unusual areas are immense, the social benefits to zeitgeist from a large, high impact scientific project are immense. I'm not saying you *have* to shoot people into space, but the way we plan and conduct robotic missions at the moment could certainly be far more long term then it is at present: a lot of infrastructure which could benefit eventual manned missions would also benefit from robotic missions (such as producing fuel on the surface of Mars - that could do things other then fly rockets, such as say, power long range gliders or a rover with jump jets to get out of craters).
The sad thing is, NASA knows this too. They've written reports detailing ideas exactly like this - about installing long term infrastructure on our nearby exploration targets. GPS and communication satellites above Mars to benefit future missions etc.
I think you've pretty much set out to try and create two sides so you can put yourself safely in the middle and claim you're the one being reasonable.
So, bully for you?
The POSIX layer isn't stable yet.
ZFS really comes into it's own when you can mount all your home directories as filesystems and use cheap snapshots for upto the minute backups for your user accounts.
That said, I will take another run at it sometime soon I suspect.
ZFS basically does everything I would want in a server file system (hell: any filesystem) and it's a crime that it hasn't been ported to Linux (and that OpenSolaris is sufficiently dead now that you can't run it on newer hardware at all).
We live in an age of 4-core CPUs being commodity items - ANY system can spare the cycles to ensure it's own data integrity since what else are you going to do with them? (alternately: if you need them, then why does that particular machine deal with having a hard disk anyway?)
Isn't this what X509 was basically born to solve?
You want video from the drone, you transmit your public key to it, it verifies the signature against the master key and if it matches sends the data.
Why would you put yourself through that?
Because it's the right thing to do? Because that's what real scientists do every day? Or did you not hear about the guys who claim they've detected neutrinos which travel faster than light?
How many harassing letters and phone calls have those guys received, btw? I don't expect you to have the exact number, but a rough figure would be nice.
Also because the Nobel prize (which you would be certain to get if you were right) pays $5 million USD and that's going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of free travel, research grants, book deals and all the other benefits of fame and status as a celebrity scientist will get you?
You would be able to tour as a paid-for speaker for the rest of your life - you'd be set.
Not that I believe this guy, but beta-radiation is incredibly safe provided you don't eat any emitters of it. Same with alpha radiation.
Gamma radiation is the only thing we worry about, because it's just about impossible to shield.
The model *never* trumps evidence.
The model is based on the evidence of hundreds of past experiments. Yes, it's possible that those experiments could have missed something, but you'll need your own pile of evidence that can stand toe-to-toe with all the evidence you're effectively dismissing to show it.
Put another way, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
See for example, the way the lab which may have observed faster then light neutrinos dealt with the situation.