there really is no need to tie every technically interesting scientific discovery to the end of the world. Believe it or not, some of us like science for science's own sake.
It's standard for writing non-fiction to tie your subject to something of wider importance. It's certainly done in scientific papers. Even people who like science for science's sake are interested in what the big picture may be. Very often, the big picture is totally different from the one that was expected, but it's still interesting.
He wasn't stereotyping. Stereotyping would be saying that all republicans are crazy extremists. He's not saying every republican is crazy, he's saying the crazies are leading it, and the sane ones aren't stopping it.
Global warming denial, irresponsible tax breaks, partisan obstructionism, preventing homosexual marriage, going after contraceptives, etc it's good that most republicans aren't into all those things. However, if they tolerate the crazies and allow them to dictate what the party does, then yes, they are partly to blame.
Seriously Republicans, I know the pickings were slim, but couldn't you have done better than Romney?
Yes, they could have gone with Paul or Huntsman, but they were told neither of them had any chance of winning.
They also could have done worse than Romney though, remember everyone else who ran for the republican nomination? Santorum. Perry. Cain. Bachmann. I mean, on net neutrality, maybe some of them would have been better. For instance, maybe Cain would have accidentally been in favor of net neutrality. The issue is more complex than geography, he might have vetoed a bill he meant to sign or vice versa, it could have been net neutrality.
Getting fewer guns doesn't mean the wars will cease - these guys kill, maim and rape with spears and knives -- it just takes much longer.
That seems a bit simplistic. I don't think it's a question of "Will they be armed or not," I think it's a question of "How powerful will their weapons be?" A warlord with an army of guys armed with knives can cause trouble, but not as much trouble as a warlord with anti-aircraft guns. And obviously, the higher powered weapons are more expensive.
Of course, I don't think minerals are the biggest factor as far as that goes, I think the US government deciding someone is going to be our ally in the war on whoever or whatever we're at war with is the bigger factor there.
The number of mutations which are purely deleterious is much, much higher than the number of mutations which could conceivably grant some type of advantage in a cataclysm. Sickle-cell anemia might help if there was an outbreak of a disease like malaria... that's about the only example I can think of.
I was listening to a talk from a neurobiologist who was studying a rare mutation that caused lissencephaly. The function of the gene had previously been unknown. He pointed out that with 6 or 7 billion people on earth, every gene that isn't absolutely critical for life, there are people out there with mutations in those genes. We have a long ways to go before designer babies are a possibility, and a longer way to go before that much genetic diversity is lost, and I think that any catastrophe, we're more likely to survive it with a technological solution rather than relying on our genes.
Only a simpleton ignores context and insists that because two actors did the same thing, they are morally equivalent. Well, simpletons and people who realize that teaching children not to fight is more important than justice in which kid started it.
The context as I understand it is that Apple sued Google first in an attempt to get rid of a competitor without making a superior product. There are probably more android consumers than there are shareholders of apple: thus it's evil.
If google is trying to get apple's product banned merely to force a resolution as they say and not to play unfair for the market, then that makes for better competition, and is not evil. Android has been making inroads against iOS with fair competition, so I don't really see google suddenly deciding to sue to topple apple: they're already doing that by making better tablets and phones.
I've heard it mentioned here before that touchscreens were really held back from blossoming in the 80s and 90s due to patents. In any event, people don't change, nor do corporations. There were corporations that were just as greedy as apple is now. I'd guess, again based on what I hear here on slashdot, that it's because the patent office got lazier, not because corporations used to be more selfless.
I paid $10 to watch the games. To a VPN provider who had servers in the UK, so I watched it on BBC. Beforehand, yeah, I would have paid $10 for access. After seeing how the BBC covered the games though, and hearing how NBC covered them, I don't think I would give NBC money for their chattering over future olympic games.
Considering all the other news outlets in the US pretty much just parrot what the white house/dems put forth...fox just balances them out by going a bit further right....
You can't individually decide to stop paying taxes to government programs, but you can vote to do so or shut them down. The same is not true of businesses.
If you can't convince other voters to shut down a given government program, then either canning it is not a good idea, or your fellow voters are stupid.
Either way, AC was accurately pointing out an impossible standard that is often used to argue against programs that people oppose for reasons unrelated to efficiency. There was no strawman brought up.
Indeed. Local control only works when there is local scrutiny of the local government, which we generally do not have, and when people bother to vote, which they're even worse about than the presidential election.
No you won't. They claim they own rights to the ISOLATED gene. Not the gene in your genome. In their opinion, that makes it different from patenting something natural. The Brca genes in your genome have introns, these are spliced out, and they're in a much larger chromosome. Your cells work with it in that form, medical tests for cancer diagnostics cannot (I think, I'm not a doctor.) The logic does not extend to your own genes, assuming you came about them naturally rather than genetic engineering, in which case I think you have different concerns other than paying royalties. Like maybe avoiding the men in black...
It's absurd in enough other ways that we don't need to be making up things. The patents in question are stifling research and cures in cancer, Myriad is unethical, they're not just parasites, they're parasites that are specifically targeting sick people and attempts to cure cancer. It would be fitting if every member of the executive board had a family member get sick and die of cancer. They're evil, but they're not "Make people pay for the genes they're born with evil."
Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism. Here, it's constant changing topographical map... flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples 10,000 years wide. So tell me... how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline? By a shopping mall?"
(I think that's the movie quote, not from the comic book, sorry, I'll turn in my nerd card now)
Well, that makes sense. The Jupiter moons, any idea if those would those receive enough light to make a rover feasible?
Mars is cool, but the fact that we've only seen Neptune and (jokes aside) Uranus up close once, and have barely seen Pluto... I'm far more curious about them, that's the only reason I'd want us to move on.
Serious question, why does it seem that Mars is the only planet we're interested in? According to this wiki page, there have been numerous flybys, probes, and landings on mars, as well as two rovers. There have also been explorations of venus, though no rovers due to the heat, just two soviet landers. There have been flybys of Jupiter and explorations of jovian moons.
Saturn though, there have only been four flybys. Neptune and Uranus were only observed up close by Voyager 2. And there is a flyby planned for Pluto.
Why isn't there more interest in the further planets? Is it simply that it will take longer? Seems like the sheer number of explorations of Mars would make some of the further targets more interesting.
How about a simpler mission first: get from one side of Delhi to the other without hours in traffic.
Simpler? To get something to Mars, you have to push it really hard. To get roads rerouted or mass transit systems to get set up in a sprawling metropolis, you need to get many people to agree to it, and overcome some people who will really want to oppose it for a multitude of reasons.
Call me cynical, but I think government types realize the value of technology and research far more than your average citizen. Many voters seem to like NASA, but they don't get as excited as they do about the prospect of tax cuts, even ones that don't apply to them.
It's okay, we've all said stupid stuff online before and regretted it. I really wish slashdot had an option to moderate your own posts down to "-2: redacted".
Or I wish I just stopped putting my foot in my mouth. That might be better.
Slashdot Mirror
there really is no need to tie every technically interesting scientific discovery to the end of the world. Believe it or not, some of us like science for science's own sake.
It's standard for writing non-fiction to tie your subject to something of wider importance. It's certainly done in scientific papers. Even people who like science for science's sake are interested in what the big picture may be. Very often, the big picture is totally different from the one that was expected, but it's still interesting.
Obama being re-elected would be the key for the REAL push for SOPA like controls. Remember the party Hollywood loves best.
The one that introduced it AKA Lamar Smith (R)?
He wasn't stereotyping. Stereotyping would be saying that all republicans are crazy extremists. He's not saying every republican is crazy, he's saying the crazies are leading it, and the sane ones aren't stopping it.
Global warming denial, irresponsible tax breaks, partisan obstructionism, preventing homosexual marriage, going after contraceptives, etc it's good that most republicans aren't into all those things. However, if they tolerate the crazies and allow them to dictate what the party does, then yes, they are partly to blame.
Seriously Republicans, I know the pickings were slim, but couldn't you have done better than Romney?
Yes, they could have gone with Paul or Huntsman, but they were told neither of them had any chance of winning.
They also could have done worse than Romney though, remember everyone else who ran for the republican nomination? Santorum. Perry. Cain. Bachmann. I mean, on net neutrality, maybe some of them would have been better. For instance, maybe Cain would have accidentally been in favor of net neutrality. The issue is more complex than geography, he might have vetoed a bill he meant to sign or vice versa, it could have been net neutrality.
Did you vote for anyone in the primaries that DID know what net neutrality meant?
Except that Sweden isn't doing the right thing either.
Getting fewer guns doesn't mean the wars will cease - these guys kill, maim and rape with spears and knives -- it just takes much longer.
That seems a bit simplistic. I don't think it's a question of "Will they be armed or not," I think it's a question of "How powerful will their weapons be?" A warlord with an army of guys armed with knives can cause trouble, but not as much trouble as a warlord with anti-aircraft guns. And obviously, the higher powered weapons are more expensive.
Of course, I don't think minerals are the biggest factor as far as that goes, I think the US government deciding someone is going to be our ally in the war on whoever or whatever we're at war with is the bigger factor there.
Then... who would buy the actual game? I think you're extrapolating way too far there.
The number of mutations which are purely deleterious is much, much higher than the number of mutations which could conceivably grant some type of advantage in a cataclysm. Sickle-cell anemia might help if there was an outbreak of a disease like malaria... that's about the only example I can think of.
I was listening to a talk from a neurobiologist who was studying a rare mutation that caused lissencephaly. The function of the gene had previously been unknown. He pointed out that with 6 or 7 billion people on earth, every gene that isn't absolutely critical for life, there are people out there with mutations in those genes. We have a long ways to go before designer babies are a possibility, and a longer way to go before that much genetic diversity is lost, and I think that any catastrophe, we're more likely to survive it with a technological solution rather than relying on our genes.
Only a simpleton ignores context and insists that because two actors did the same thing, they are morally equivalent. Well, simpletons and people who realize that teaching children not to fight is more important than justice in which kid started it.
The context as I understand it is that Apple sued Google first in an attempt to get rid of a competitor without making a superior product. There are probably more android consumers than there are shareholders of apple: thus it's evil.
If google is trying to get apple's product banned merely to force a resolution as they say and not to play unfair for the market, then that makes for better competition, and is not evil. Android has been making inroads against iOS with fair competition, so I don't really see google suddenly deciding to sue to topple apple: they're already doing that by making better tablets and phones.
I've heard it mentioned here before that touchscreens were really held back from blossoming in the 80s and 90s due to patents. In any event, people don't change, nor do corporations. There were corporations that were just as greedy as apple is now. I'd guess, again based on what I hear here on slashdot, that it's because the patent office got lazier, not because corporations used to be more selfless.
Good point. Had forgotten about that.
I paid $10 to watch the games. To a VPN provider who had servers in the UK, so I watched it on BBC. Beforehand, yeah, I would have paid $10 for access. After seeing how the BBC covered the games though, and hearing how NBC covered them, I don't think I would give NBC money for their chattering over future olympic games.
Considering all the other news outlets in the US pretty much just parrot what the white house/dems put forth...fox just balances them out by going a bit further right....
No, the other news outlets parrot whoever is in power. During the Bush administration, they were pro-Iraq war. Not as bad as Fox news, but the others still got the country to believe Bush's lies.
The media is only biased in favor of liberals in the sense that from time to time it questions the propaganda put out by the right.
You can't individually decide to stop paying taxes to government programs, but you can vote to do so or shut them down. The same is not true of businesses.
If you can't convince other voters to shut down a given government program, then either canning it is not a good idea, or your fellow voters are stupid.
Either way, AC was accurately pointing out an impossible standard that is often used to argue against programs that people oppose for reasons unrelated to efficiency. There was no strawman brought up.
Top-down control when taken to its logical conclusion also means having Congress order you to install thermostats
How is that a "logical conclusion?" Did you mean "taken to it's illogically extreme conclusion?"
Indeed. Local control only works when there is local scrutiny of the local government, which we generally do not have, and when people bother to vote, which they're even worse about than the presidential election.
No you won't. They claim they own rights to the ISOLATED gene. Not the gene in your genome. In their opinion, that makes it different from patenting something natural. The Brca genes in your genome have introns, these are spliced out, and they're in a much larger chromosome. Your cells work with it in that form, medical tests for cancer diagnostics cannot (I think, I'm not a doctor.) The logic does not extend to your own genes, assuming you came about them naturally rather than genetic engineering, in which case I think you have different concerns other than paying royalties. Like maybe avoiding the men in black...
It's absurd in enough other ways that we don't need to be making up things. The patents in question are stifling research and cures in cancer, Myriad is unethical, they're not just parasites, they're parasites that are specifically targeting sick people and attempts to cure cancer. It would be fitting if every member of the executive board had a family member get sick and die of cancer. They're evil, but they're not "Make people pay for the genes they're born with evil."
Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism. Here, it's constant changing topographical map... flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples 10,000 years wide. So tell me... how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline? By a shopping mall?"
(I think that's the movie quote, not from the comic book, sorry, I'll turn in my nerd card now)
Well, that makes sense. The Jupiter moons, any idea if those would those receive enough light to make a rover feasible?
Mars is cool, but the fact that we've only seen Neptune and (jokes aside) Uranus up close once, and have barely seen Pluto... I'm far more curious about them, that's the only reason I'd want us to move on.
Serious question, why does it seem that Mars is the only planet we're interested in? According to this wiki page, there have been numerous flybys, probes, and landings on mars, as well as two rovers. There have also been explorations of venus, though no rovers due to the heat, just two soviet landers. There have been flybys of Jupiter and explorations of jovian moons.
Saturn though, there have only been four flybys. Neptune and Uranus were only observed up close by Voyager 2. And there is a flyby planned for Pluto.
Why isn't there more interest in the further planets? Is it simply that it will take longer? Seems like the sheer number of explorations of Mars would make some of the further targets more interesting.
How about a simpler mission first: get from one side of Delhi to the other without hours in traffic.
Simpler? To get something to Mars, you have to push it really hard. To get roads rerouted or mass transit systems to get set up in a sprawling metropolis, you need to get many people to agree to it, and overcome some people who will really want to oppose it for a multitude of reasons.
Call me cynical, but I think government types realize the value of technology and research far more than your average citizen. Many voters seem to like NASA, but they don't get as excited as they do about the prospect of tax cuts, even ones that don't apply to them.
It's okay, we've all said stupid stuff online before and regretted it. I really wish slashdot had an option to moderate your own posts down to "-2: redacted".
Or I wish I just stopped putting my foot in my mouth. That might be better.
Is this not enough to warm the rotting cockles of Mr. T's decaying corporeal matter?
For anyone else who was confused, BA Baracus/Clubber Lane/ Mr. "I pity the fool" T is still alive. Pegasustonans was talking about Tesla here.