Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think(?) that anything other than radiation can break down dna.
Epigenetics are proving to be far more influenced by our environment than we thought. Here's one article that suggests BPA affects the epigenetics of mice.
As far as DNA goes, it's actually pretty easy to break down or otherwise make inoperable. Ionizing radiation does do it quickly, but normal cellular processes even damage it. Thousands of chemicals and proteins are mutagenic. Fortunately, your cells, skin, and clothing help protect the DNA, and there's a lot of active repair. Still, it seems that many (almost all?) cancers are caused initially damage to the DNA.
Many drugs probably have mutagenic properties and could damage your DNA. Having said that, it wouldn't make -specific changes- to the DNA in your -whole body- and thus would not fundamentally alter your DNA sequence. Maybe cocaine would cause breaks in your DNA at random places. There's a lot of DNA, the chances that it would break your DNA at a specific point in every single cell in your body... it's virtually impossible.
I'm just curious, what exactly did you mean by this comment?
Perhaps he meant that everything seems to be "socialist" today if you pay attention to people who seem to think socialism is another word for "evil." For instance, at this moment, someone is probably putting the finishing touches on a protest sign calling BP socialist, possibly while misspelling the word socialist.
Jon Stewart's "America" notes that Justice Potter Stewart said "I shall not today attempt further to define... [hard-core pornography];. But I know it when I see it..." Later, he settled on the more descriptive "That which gives me wood."*
So I guess we'd have to dig up Potter Stewart to decide if your definition is right or wrong.
I honestly believe if you asked a random sample of the population, they'd be agog at the revelation that the Sun emits radiation. (These people would also likely sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide.)
That would be intentionally misleading and would mean little. Lots of people would likely be astonished if you put it like "Scientists have discovered the sun is emitting harmful levels of RADIATION!!!" Were you to clarify that 1. That's not a -recent- finding and 2. UV is radiation, few would remain astonished.
Same thing with the dihydrogen monoxide. The point of that skit was, if anything, that you can deceive people into signing almost any petition, so you have to question the validity of petitions.
The point was not to demonstrate that people are tragically misinformed: not knowing that dihydrogen monoxide = H2O = water is trivial information for most people. They know what water is. Similarly, not knowing that UV = radiation is trivial to most people, they know that they can get sunburned and cancer from it.
To play ridiculous devil's advocate, you know when you are in sunlight and how bright it is. You don't know what your cell phone is spitting out, though since they don't appear to do anything to you, that information is trivial.
As far as warning about the sun, well that would at least be consistent for California. Warnings on everything about how they could cause cancer and birth defects. LAX has to warn you not to jump out on the tarmac and drink the jet fuel, because it can cause cancer. That the city doesn't -currently- warn you about UV causing cancer is a loophole some lawyer is probably thinking about how to exploit right now.
You make good points that Sony does have more than I gave them credit for. I suppose that was a consequence of me not having a PS3 that they didn't come to mind sooner. But that was a mistaken tangent, you're right.
Anyway, back to my point, which is that MS has never really relied on making a huge number of it's own games, so "a tiny number of first party developers. Time for Microsoft to can the Xbox and get back to focusing on PC gaming," is absurd. They made another Halo, that's always been enough to keep them where they are.
But the number of in house or basically in house titles that actually would pull one towards one console or the other is very small. That was my point. Sure, you're only going to get "South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!" on the 360, but no one cares.
Why would that be any better for a controller than Kinect (formerly known as Natal)?
Precision, timing, and buttons. I can't imagine detecting where your arm is pointing being laser-pointer accurate, which you would like when making tricky portal shots. There's also latency with kinetic that wouldn't be good for puzzles like near the end of portal 1 (think, having to shoot a portal as you're flying through the air). And how would you shoot without a button? Stamp your foot?
Only 50 dollars for the only 1:1 absolute motion controller is pretty amazing.
That's an absurd way to put it: the wiimote is about that same price if not cheaper. And all 3 now have motion controls, specifying "This one has 'true' 1:1" is silly. After 4 years of motion controls with the wii, I still have yet to see anything worthwhile being done with it. I'm cynical as to whether or not "true 1:1" motion control is going to be any more relevant than "not really 1:1" motion control.
Old outdated hardware with a tiny number of first party developers. Time for Microsoft to can the Xbox and get back to focusing on PC gaming.
When has MS -ever- had a big number of first-party titles? Or Sony, for that matter?
Off the top of my head- Sony: God of War, Gran Turismo MS: Halo Nintendo: pretty much everything worth playing on the wii.
Speaking again of the wii... did I detect someone suggesting that hardware power made much of a difference this generation?
Exactly. Whenever I hear about chatroulette, there's a remark about how frequently you get someone playing with themselves. You can't convince me that anyone on chatroulette is unprepared to see a wang any more than you could convince me that people go into bars unaware that they sell alchohol there.
Disclaimer: having never been on chatroulette, I could be unaware of some other reason to go onto chatroulette.
It would be a silly scheme though considering that this is a safe Republican seat anyway.
It would indeed be a silly scheme, which is how you know it came from South Carolina politics.
Ok if we are going to be throwing conspiracy theories around, how do you know that this is not a scheme by the Democrats to create a scandal that they could blame on the Republicans?
That would be completely ineffective and stupid plan: without a smoking gun, there's no way this would overturn the coming election. Which, now that I think about it, kind of adds credibility to your conspiracy theory.
Which Mortal Kombat movie? The first one was awesome. They had a pretty skilled fight choreographer who clearly had some actual MA experience.
Actual fight choreographers do not a good movie make. Fun to watch, sure, but the dialogue was more cringe-inducing than the fighting. Terrible special effects too, though that could just be older CGI showing its age.
There are plenty of people who are into light to severe masochism out there, easily in the thousands.
It's a gateway really. You watch Uwe Boll movies, and maybe Street Fighter, and tell yourself "It's so bad, its funny!" Eventually though, the crappulence gets boring, you move to harder stuff, like the Mortal Kombat movie (not the new proof of concept one). Before you know it, you're living in a gutter, offering sexual favors for a copy of the Star Wars Holiday special.
I applaud Herr Boll for trying to clean up the streets and atone for his past actions.
First, we'll NEVER have all the scientific achievements we want, at least until we become gods. There will always be something over the horizon.
Yes, it was a roundabout way of illustrating that "we need fewer scientists" is a stupid idea and will be a stupid idea as long as any of us are alive.
If your society isn't willing to invest the money needed to fund all this research, then having more scientists sitting around with no laboratories to work in isn't going to help anything. You only need as many scientists as you're willing to support. We in the USA are not willing to support very many scientists, so we shouldn't be training many of them.
I'm painfully aware of that as a scientist. More scientists though will still make progress. Even if the amount of dollars stays constant, but the number of scientists increases, that's more competition, the proportion of great scientists to mediocre ones might stay the same, but the number of good scientists will still increase, and the money is going to be spent more efficiently.
More scientists also means we'd have an easier time getting money spent on more science instead of more wars, pork, and subsidies.
There is nothing bad about increasing the number of scientists out there. Slightly worse for those of us who are already scientists, but I'm still for it.
Not "Dodo eggs" it's "doo-doo." It's disgusting, but there are some things you can't train out of a chimp butler, and besides, the publishers who commit this highway robbery clearly have a few things wrong with them.
That is of course ignoring the professors who write the books for their courses and are happy to have new revisions every year to keep that part of their revenue in tact:)
In my experience, most of the professors who write the books for their courses realize that high cost of books increases the amount of students who don't buy the book, don't borrow the book from someone else, and consequently annoy them with stupid questions which are answered in the books and do poorly on the tests. Thus, they have an interest in keeping costs low, encouraging re-use of old books, or not teaching from the books.
An anatomy professor I know who lectures for a med school says there are some really great anatomy textbooks with great photographs out there, but the school has to go with Grays or other old illustrated textbooks because with Grays or others, no one will sue if the professor does things like this to distribute the materials for free. If the materials aren't free, on the other hand, the aspiring doctors just won't buy it. And everyone has an interest in doctors learning anatomy.
If our science students can't find jobs, the problem is a GLUT of science education.
That's one way of looking at it. The way I prefer to look at it is, we haven't come up with all the scientific achievements we want. When we cure cancer, aids, and the common cold, have flying cars, FTL travel, cloaking devices, gene therapy, teleportation, stopped global climate change, come up with cheap, clean power, AI, a way to neutralize all weapons of mass destruction, have solved world hunger via replicators, and have explained everything in physics, THAT would be the time to ease up on producing scientists. Maybe. Until then, I'd say we need more scientists, and they need jobs. In my opinion, we have more than enough coffeeshop employees, cell phone salespeople, CEOs, middle management, golf course employees, wall street bankers, politicians, yoga instructors, although I'm not going to suggest doing anything to discourage people going into those careers.
I'm not sure I understand your joke. Extension is associated with boners, how does that relate to putting cats in boxes with acid... oh god, you sick bastard.
Edit: "anti-science politicians have had far more pernicious effects in other areas, like stem cell research and education," was an overstatement. Continued dependence on coal rather than nuclear power has probably had worse real-world impacts than delays in stem cell funding and occasional lapses in teaching evolution. That's at least partially the fault of politicians.
"Anti-nuclear environmentalists"? Having them argue against a *fusion* project pretty much proves that these idiots are not qualified to remember to breathe, much less protect the environment.
Perhaps they just distrust anyone who promises something that sounds too good to be true. It's not the most open-minded or logical response (although I don't know how many environmentalists that described anyway) but after the promises of things like "clean coal" it's somewhat understandable. Maybe it's just general anti-science paranoia. Environmentalists are hardly the only group to have those. I'd say anti-science politicians have had far more pernicious effects in other areas, like stem cell research and education.
Also worth keeping in mind, the article associated with "anti nuclear environmentalists" is actually talking specifically about "Europe's left-wing Green politicians." They may just be trying to score points with their base, which that's a different, worse (in my book) type of crime than just being opposed to all things nuclear.
Slashdot Mirror
...and with that one analogy, you've killed my interest in the 3DS.
Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think(?) that anything other than radiation can break down dna.
Epigenetics are proving to be far more influenced by our environment than we thought. Here's one article that suggests BPA affects the epigenetics of mice.
As far as DNA goes, it's actually pretty easy to break down or otherwise make inoperable. Ionizing radiation does do it quickly, but normal cellular processes even damage it. Thousands of chemicals and proteins are mutagenic. Fortunately, your cells, skin, and clothing help protect the DNA, and there's a lot of active repair. Still, it seems that many (almost all?) cancers are caused initially damage to the DNA.
Many drugs probably have mutagenic properties and could damage your DNA. Having said that, it wouldn't make -specific changes- to the DNA in your -whole body- and thus would not fundamentally alter your DNA sequence. Maybe cocaine would cause breaks in your DNA at random places. There's a lot of DNA, the chances that it would break your DNA at a specific point in every single cell in your body... it's virtually impossible.
He's more coherent than a lot of younger meth or crack users out there.
And as TFA points out, this is after the government shut up a scientist saying there WAS going to be a quake.
Predict a quake before one happens and you're in trouble. Don't predict one before it happens and you're in trouble.
One of these days, we scientists need to drive politicians out of our country. And off the planet entirely.
I'm just curious, what exactly did you mean by this comment?
Perhaps he meant that everything seems to be "socialist" today if you pay attention to people who seem to think socialism is another word for "evil." For instance, at this moment, someone is probably putting the finishing touches on a protest sign calling BP socialist, possibly while misspelling the word socialist.
Jon Stewart's "America" notes that Justice Potter Stewart said "I shall not today attempt further to define... [hard-core pornography];. But I know it when I see it..." Later, he settled on the more descriptive "That which gives me wood."*
So I guess we'd have to dig up Potter Stewart to decide if your definition is right or wrong.
* pretty sure JS made that last part up though.
I honestly believe if you asked a random sample of the population, they'd be agog at the revelation that the Sun emits radiation. (These people would also likely sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide.)
That would be intentionally misleading and would mean little. Lots of people would likely be astonished if you put it like "Scientists have discovered the sun is emitting harmful levels of RADIATION!!!" Were you to clarify that 1. That's not a -recent- finding and 2. UV is radiation, few would remain astonished.
Same thing with the dihydrogen monoxide. The point of that skit was, if anything, that you can deceive people into signing almost any petition, so you have to question the validity of petitions.
The point was not to demonstrate that people are tragically misinformed: not knowing that dihydrogen monoxide = H2O = water is trivial information for most people. They know what water is. Similarly, not knowing that UV = radiation is trivial to most people, they know that they can get sunburned and cancer from it.
To play ridiculous devil's advocate, you know when you are in sunlight and how bright it is. You don't know what your cell phone is spitting out, though since they don't appear to do anything to you, that information is trivial.
As far as warning about the sun, well that would at least be consistent for California. Warnings on everything about how they could cause cancer and birth defects. LAX has to warn you not to jump out on the tarmac and drink the jet fuel, because it can cause cancer. That the city doesn't -currently- warn you about UV causing cancer is a loophole some lawyer is probably thinking about how to exploit right now.
You make good points that Sony does have more than I gave them credit for. I suppose that was a consequence of me not having a PS3 that they didn't come to mind sooner. But that was a mistaken tangent, you're right.
Anyway, back to my point, which is that MS has never really relied on making a huge number of it's own games, so "a tiny number of first party developers. Time for Microsoft to can the Xbox and get back to focusing on PC gaming," is absurd. They made another Halo, that's always been enough to keep them where they are.
But the number of in house or basically in house titles that actually would pull one towards one console or the other is very small. That was my point. Sure, you're only going to get "South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!" on the 360, but no one cares.
Why would that be any better for a controller than Kinect (formerly known as Natal)?
Precision, timing, and buttons. I can't imagine detecting where your arm is pointing being laser-pointer accurate, which you would like when making tricky portal shots. There's also latency with kinetic that wouldn't be good for puzzles like near the end of portal 1 (think, having to shoot a portal as you're flying through the air). And how would you shoot without a button? Stamp your foot?
Only 50 dollars for the only 1:1 absolute motion controller is pretty amazing.
That's an absurd way to put it: the wiimote is about that same price if not cheaper. And all 3 now have motion controls, specifying "This one has 'true' 1:1" is silly. After 4 years of motion controls with the wii, I still have yet to see anything worthwhile being done with it. I'm cynical as to whether or not "true 1:1" motion control is going to be any more relevant than "not really 1:1" motion control.
Old outdated hardware with a tiny number of first party developers. Time for Microsoft to can the Xbox and get back to focusing on PC gaming.
When has MS -ever- had a big number of first-party titles? Or Sony, for that matter?
Off the top of my head-
Sony: God of War, Gran Turismo
MS: Halo
Nintendo: pretty much everything worth playing on the wii.
Speaking again of the wii... did I detect someone suggesting that hardware power made much of a difference this generation?
Who gets to define neutral though?
If old media is any indication the answer is Rupert Murdoch, for reasons passing understanding.
I thought that was what Chatroulette was for.
Exactly. Whenever I hear about chatroulette, there's a remark about how frequently you get someone playing with themselves. You can't convince me that anyone on chatroulette is unprepared to see a wang any more than you could convince me that people go into bars unaware that they sell alchohol there.
Disclaimer: having never been on chatroulette, I could be unaware of some other reason to go onto chatroulette.
It would be a silly scheme though considering that this is a safe Republican seat anyway.
It would indeed be a silly scheme, which is how you know it came from South Carolina politics.
Ok if we are going to be throwing conspiracy theories around, how do you know that this is not a scheme by the Democrats to create a scandal that they could blame on the Republicans?
That would be completely ineffective and stupid plan: without a smoking gun, there's no way this would overturn the coming election. Which, now that I think about it, kind of adds credibility to your conspiracy theory.
Which Mortal Kombat movie? The first one was awesome. They had a pretty skilled fight choreographer who clearly had some actual MA experience.
Actual fight choreographers do not a good movie make. Fun to watch, sure, but the dialogue was more cringe-inducing than the fighting. Terrible special effects too, though that could just be older CGI showing its age.
There are plenty of people who are into light to severe masochism out there, easily in the thousands.
It's a gateway really. You watch Uwe Boll movies, and maybe Street Fighter, and tell yourself "It's so bad, its funny!" Eventually though, the crappulence gets boring, you move to harder stuff, like the Mortal Kombat movie (not the new proof of concept one). Before you know it, you're living in a gutter, offering sexual favors for a copy of the Star Wars Holiday special.
I applaud Herr Boll for trying to clean up the streets and atone for his past actions.
First, we'll NEVER have all the scientific achievements we want, at least until we become gods. There will always be something over the horizon.
Yes, it was a roundabout way of illustrating that "we need fewer scientists" is a stupid idea and will be a stupid idea as long as any of us are alive.
If your society isn't willing to invest the money needed to fund all this research, then having more scientists sitting around with no laboratories to work in isn't going to help anything. You only need as many scientists as you're willing to support. We in the USA are not willing to support very many scientists, so we shouldn't be training many of them.
I'm painfully aware of that as a scientist. More scientists though will still make progress. Even if the amount of dollars stays constant, but the number of scientists increases, that's more competition, the proportion of great scientists to mediocre ones might stay the same, but the number of good scientists will still increase, and the money is going to be spent more efficiently.
More scientists also means we'd have an easier time getting money spent on more science instead of more wars, pork, and subsidies.
There is nothing bad about increasing the number of scientists out there. Slightly worse for those of us who are already scientists, but I'm still for it.
Not "Dodo eggs" it's "doo-doo." It's disgusting, but there are some things you can't train out of a chimp butler, and besides, the publishers who commit this highway robbery clearly have a few things wrong with them.
That is of course ignoring the professors who write the books for their courses and are happy to have new revisions every year to keep that part of their revenue in tact :)
In my experience, most of the professors who write the books for their courses realize that high cost of books increases the amount of students who don't buy the book, don't borrow the book from someone else, and consequently annoy them with stupid questions which are answered in the books and do poorly on the tests. Thus, they have an interest in keeping costs low, encouraging re-use of old books, or not teaching from the books.
An anatomy professor I know who lectures for a med school says there are some really great anatomy textbooks with great photographs out there, but the school has to go with Grays or other old illustrated textbooks because with Grays or others, no one will sue if the professor does things like this to distribute the materials for free. If the materials aren't free, on the other hand, the aspiring doctors just won't buy it. And everyone has an interest in doctors learning anatomy.
If our science students can't find jobs, the problem is a GLUT of science education.
That's one way of looking at it. The way I prefer to look at it is, we haven't come up with all the scientific achievements we want. When we cure cancer, aids, and the common cold, have flying cars, FTL travel, cloaking devices, gene therapy, teleportation, stopped global climate change, come up with cheap, clean power, AI, a way to neutralize all weapons of mass destruction, have solved world hunger via replicators, and have explained everything in physics, THAT would be the time to ease up on producing scientists. Maybe. Until then, I'd say we need more scientists, and they need jobs. In my opinion, we have more than enough coffeeshop employees, cell phone salespeople, CEOs, middle management, golf course employees, wall street bankers, politicians, yoga instructors, although I'm not going to suggest doing anything to discourage people going into those careers.
I'm not sure I understand your joke. Extension is associated with boners, how does that relate to putting cats in boxes with acid... oh god, you sick bastard.
The problem is politicians who won't say, "go take economics 101 and come back with a revised sob-story".
To be fair, the politicians did cut education spending, so taking economics 101 is a no-go...
Edit: "anti-science politicians have had far more pernicious effects in other areas, like stem cell research and education," was an overstatement. Continued dependence on coal rather than nuclear power has probably had worse real-world impacts than delays in stem cell funding and occasional lapses in teaching evolution. That's at least partially the fault of politicians.
"Anti-nuclear environmentalists"? Having them argue against a *fusion* project pretty much proves that these idiots are not qualified to remember to breathe, much less protect the environment.
Perhaps they just distrust anyone who promises something that sounds too good to be true. It's not the most open-minded or logical response (although I don't know how many environmentalists that described anyway) but after the promises of things like "clean coal" it's somewhat understandable. Maybe it's just general anti-science paranoia. Environmentalists are hardly the only group to have those. I'd say anti-science politicians have had far more pernicious effects in other areas, like stem cell research and education.
Also worth keeping in mind, the article associated with "anti nuclear environmentalists" is actually talking specifically about "Europe's left-wing Green politicians." They may just be trying to score points with their base, which that's a different, worse (in my book) type of crime than just being opposed to all things nuclear.