Second, Lamarck is widely respected in France as the father of evolution, and that's exactly what he was.
It's rather telling that he is only really considered the father of evolution in france, his home country. He did contribute very important points that Darwin built on, but it's hard to say that he's the father of evolution when did not get natural selection or the origin of variation correct.
Vilified is overstating it though. The theory was incomplete, but it is diminished only by the magnitude of Darwin's work. Had the typical incremental process of scientific theories happened (instead of Darwin laying so much out by himself) Lamark could easily have been the giant in the field.
I'm not sure how far these epigenetic changes were observed to last though, but there is the implication that these could be acquired traits which are heritable.
That's not really proving my wild guess wrong unless you're not telling me something about the other 95%. If rotting material only contributes to something like 0.5% of the CO2 in the atmosphere, then our activities still outweigh the effect of rotting, and we'd again be worrying about a non-issue. On the other hand, if you're telling me that that whole 95% comes from respiration, or even 10%, then that makes more sense.
Double star alcoholics anonymous? No, plenty of ninjas work there. Their motto is one day at a time, and if you slip up once we kill you. 100% success rate, their members do NOT drink again, although a surprising number are found dead in bars with two ninja stars in their faces.
Learn to read. The law students are defending Jaul Tennenbaum. NOT the piratebay. It is there in plain english. Granted that might be hard for an american to read but still.
Apparently not as hard as capitalization, or spelling "Joel" correctly;-)
Then they are going to be prosecuted themselves for practicing law without a license.
Practicing law? No, you misunderstand, they're PHYSICALLY defending him from the RIAA. The RIAA decided legal proceedings weren't giving them the results they'd like (IE beheading people who are "stealing music" and putting those heads on a pike) so they started hiring ninjas.
Life forms, just like humans, eat whatever, break down the hydrocarbons and exhaust it as H2O and CO2.
So if the idea is to prevent the release of CO2, the prevention of rotting is a good thing.
About how much CO2 is released by, er, rotting as opposed to power plant emmissions and cars? Obviously not possible to answer precisely, but I would guess the amount of CO2 released by rot would be negligible compared to burning fossil fuels. Not that I know anything about either subject, but it seems like we might be worrying about wiping our feet before going to put out the fire that is destroying our house.
I'm curious as to what situations people are in where they need access to NIH funded research papers but don't have access. I'd imagine it's worst for people who work in private industry, where they might be the only person who works there that wants a license to a set of journals, and maybe the licensing is more expensive to for-profit institutions?
Is that the major population that this directly affects, is it mostly people who work in academia but aren't provided institutional subscriptions? Is it mostly people who oppose this on principle but themselves do not need access to the content? Not to say that something simply being funded by your tax dollars doesn't give you the right to care about an issue, I think greed should be rooted out at all levels even if it's pretty far removed from your day-to-day. I'm just wondering where specifically the passion in some of the above posts is coming from. My university pays the subscription fees to the journals I need, so I ignorantly never thought about it much.
Instead, release your work (if you're willing) under an open license that does not allow for commercial exploitation, like a CC with non-commercial. When it shows up on the exorbitant charge-sites, sue their asses. And make sure to hit them with the clauses in copyright that allow for up to 35K per infringing copy.
I don't know, maybe that's realistic in some fields, but it certainly isn't sensible in all fields. Name brand recognition of publications has an unfortunate importance in at least a few fields. I know several people who judge research articles based on the name of the publication. "Oh, that study was only published in european journal of biophysics, don't take it seriously." Or "I haven't read any of his papers, but he got published recently in Nature, so he must be pretty good."
Unfortunately, some people have very good reasons to have to publish in those charge-sites, it's not very fair to assume that all else was equal and he made a poor decision with nothing to gain. Had he been a stickler about licensing, he may have been ensuring his work would not be taken seriously, or wouldn't be able to get much of a job after that.
As others have pointed out, this is hopefully changing sooner rather than later, but it's not something right now that could be solved simply by researchers themselves.
If your research is that valuable, don't take federal money.
This is pedantic, but I'd change that from valuable to profitable. My work is I hope is valuable and may one day provide the basic science behind curing paralysis and/or curing brain cancer. It will never lead to something I can patent and sell as it will only produce basic knowledge (unless you change the system to be even LESS open access and I could actually sell the findings, which would obviously be one of the worst ideas). Bottom line is that no one would fund it besides the government because it's not an investment that will be paid back in money, but it needs to be done in order to get those cures. And that's quite a bit of NIH funded research, valuable but not profitable.
I voted for the Dem's this time around, but they're just as bad. Lying on their taxes, getting free drivers/limos, getting million $$ speaking deals as payoffs, and then getting their payoff from special interests to vote against the public good. They just get their payoffs from different groups.
If you expect politicians not to be politicians, your expectations are wildly optimistic. The best you can hope for is that they're not worse than the previous year's politicians and somewhere in the mix you'll get some of what you want.
What occurred with the state of Utah had nothing to do with Nigeria at all. That is just tabloid journalism where they mention something catchy in the title to get people to read an article that might otherwise be uninteresting.
Because the average Salt Lake resident is FASCINATED by all things relating to Nigeria;-)
They will likely claim the court has no right to make medical decisions (already happened in this thread!)
I don't think the people who pointed out that the courts shouldn't be meddling in science weren't doing so to challenge the current ruling and convince people that vaccines do cause autism.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
It's arguably better than lawyers and politicians deciding it without an arbitrator.
I also shudder at the thought of Joe Sixpack deciding these things. Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
You appear to be making that judgment based solely on this example, which misses the larger picture. The ability of the electoral college to go against the public will is only one reason of many the founders created it. The electoral college is a compromise that was forged that allowed the less populous states to come to an accord with the more populous states, much like congress is divided into the house and senate, in one the votes are population proportional and in the other they are fixed per state.
I didn't miss that point, I learned that in grade school, I was just under the impression that we were specifically talking about faithless electors as a reason to keep the electoral system (to which I was pointing out that for better or worse it doesn't actually happen.)
I think the smaller states wouldn't revolt if the electoral college were done away with. The "compromise" argument doesn't work any more, people's political views relating to the federal government don't align along state lines anymore if they ever did. People in Seattle have political views much closer to people in New York than they do to people who live 20 miles from Seattle. Realigned political fault lines, together with national parties that run a national agenda rather than state interests, mean that the electoral college has a completely arbitrary effect that does not serve to balance differing state interests, it only serves to randomly over-represent some votes. As it happens, it overrepresents the red parts of our country. Which is great if you are conservative and also have an obsolete view of what democracy is (specifically that not all votes should be equal).
Any say at all? What states "say" these days is really is only a function of gerymandering. If there are more red districts in a state, they say "Yay republican national party." If there are more blue districts in a state they say "Yeah democratic national party." Residents of less populated states get to decide how their state is run, at a federal level there is no reason they should have any greater say than people who live in more populated states.
Anyone who wants to remove the electoral college should realize that by doing so, it is highly likely that this would force the federal government to set all the rules and further reduce the state's power.
The biggest difference between state and federal governments that I can see is fewer people pay attention to state governments, meaning there is more room for corruption and special interests to dominate public interest. Both are made up of the same caliber of politicians, but the state politicians have less public scrutiny.
That doesn't mean they will, what it means is they'll be criminally charged when they get home if they don't.
So knowing that, and that faithless electors have never seriously affected the outcome of the election... you really have to conclude that having electors at all is an idiotic thing to do. The wiki page on faithless electors tells me that the last time an elector was voted for someone else was 1988, in which an elector switched president and vice president. The system is a complete joke and serves absolutely no purpose.
Saying the civil war put an end to state rights is stupid; quite frankly, you're stupid if you think you have any clout at all against 300 million other Americans. Power should be local, not national.
Your argument as to why power should reside with the states (hardly what I'd consider local by the way) seems to be "That's what convinced them to join the union 200 years ago" and "you're stupid if you think otherwise."
I personally have never seen evidence that state government is anything other than an amateur version of the federal government. Same types of people in both, except the ones at the state level aren't as good at spinning generally. Combine that with less public scrutiny and you have a recipe for government that is even worse than the federal government, in terms of budgeting, special interests, corruption, and just plain stupidity.
he post you're replying to is what you might call a joke, but for some reason you are taking it seriously.
Just because it got modded insightful (by someone else) doesn't mean I was being serious. And in fact I wasn't, I was making fun of urban sprawl, and playing along with the joke. I hate suburbs and the yuppie scum who live there.
Because after this tragic act of censorship, the people in the next elections, while having the opportunity to vote down the current government, most probably will not. Even if they do, they will most probably vote for another party that has most probably done something equally bad when they were government.
So put dogganos firmly in the category of "Everyone else is stupid so everything sucks and there's nothing we can do about it ever might as well eat worms and die" category. Do you have any suggestions, beyond realizing how stupid we all are?
my ISP (iinet) has repeatedly stated [slashdot.org] that it is only taking part in trial to demonstrate how badly it will fail, so I wouldn't be sending them any message they didn't already know
Apparently they don't already know that even flirting with this will lose them a lot of business, which is the message that I hope is sent to them. No buying this "No seriously guys, we're doing it IRONICALLY" crap The history lesson to ISPs and "christian groups" that should be written here is that censorship is radioactive, if you even give the IMPRESSION that you're okay with censorship you will go bankrupt.
Slashdot Mirror
Second, Lamarck is widely respected in France as the father of evolution, and that's exactly what he was.
It's rather telling that he is only really considered the father of evolution in france, his home country. He did contribute very important points that Darwin built on, but it's hard to say that he's the father of evolution when did not get natural selection or the origin of variation correct.
Vilified is overstating it though. The theory was incomplete, but it is diminished only by the magnitude of Darwin's work. Had the typical incremental process of scientific theories happened (instead of Darwin laying so much out by himself) Lamark could easily have been the giant in the field.
Not too long ago there was a study in which bisphenol A, a component of plastics, eaten by mice caused epigenetic changes in the next generation.
(http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/newscience/2007/2007-0730dolinoyetal.html)
I'm not sure how far these epigenetic changes were observed to last though, but there is the implication that these could be acquired traits which are heritable.
That's not really proving my wild guess wrong unless you're not telling me something about the other 95%. If rotting material only contributes to something like 0.5% of the CO2 in the atmosphere, then our activities still outweigh the effect of rotting, and we'd again be worrying about a non-issue. On the other hand, if you're telling me that that whole 95% comes from respiration, or even 10%, then that makes more sense.
Double star alcoholics anonymous? No, plenty of ninjas work there. Their motto is one day at a time, and if you slip up once we kill you. 100% success rate, their members do NOT drink again, although a surprising number are found dead in bars with two ninja stars in their faces.
Learn to read. The law students are defending Jaul Tennenbaum. NOT the piratebay. It is there in plain english. Granted that might be hard for an american to read but still.
Apparently not as hard as capitalization, or spelling "Joel" correctly ;-)
Then they are going to be prosecuted themselves for practicing law without a license.
Practicing law? No, you misunderstand, they're PHYSICALLY defending him from the RIAA. The RIAA decided legal proceedings weren't giving them the results they'd like (IE beheading people who are "stealing music" and putting those heads on a pike) so they started hiring ninjas.
Life forms, just like humans, eat whatever, break down the hydrocarbons and exhaust it as H2O and CO2.
So if the idea is to prevent the release of CO2, the prevention of rotting is a good thing.
About how much CO2 is released by, er, rotting as opposed to power plant emmissions and cars? Obviously not possible to answer precisely, but I would guess the amount of CO2 released by rot would be negligible compared to burning fossil fuels. Not that I know anything about either subject, but it seems like we might be worrying about wiping our feet before going to put out the fire that is destroying our house.
I'm curious as to what situations people are in where they need access to NIH funded research papers but don't have access. I'd imagine it's worst for people who work in private industry, where they might be the only person who works there that wants a license to a set of journals, and maybe the licensing is more expensive to for-profit institutions?
Is that the major population that this directly affects, is it mostly people who work in academia but aren't provided institutional subscriptions? Is it mostly people who oppose this on principle but themselves do not need access to the content? Not to say that something simply being funded by your tax dollars doesn't give you the right to care about an issue, I think greed should be rooted out at all levels even if it's pretty far removed from your day-to-day. I'm just wondering where specifically the passion in some of the above posts is coming from. My university pays the subscription fees to the journals I need, so I ignorantly never thought about it much.
Instead, release your work (if you're willing) under an open license that does not allow for commercial exploitation, like a CC with non-commercial. When it shows up on the exorbitant charge-sites, sue their asses. And make sure to hit them with the clauses in copyright that allow for up to 35K per infringing copy.
I don't know, maybe that's realistic in some fields, but it certainly isn't sensible in all fields. Name brand recognition of publications has an unfortunate importance in at least a few fields. I know several people who judge research articles based on the name of the publication. "Oh, that study was only published in european journal of biophysics, don't take it seriously." Or "I haven't read any of his papers, but he got published recently in Nature, so he must be pretty good."
Unfortunately, some people have very good reasons to have to publish in those charge-sites, it's not very fair to assume that all else was equal and he made a poor decision with nothing to gain. Had he been a stickler about licensing, he may have been ensuring his work would not be taken seriously, or wouldn't be able to get much of a job after that.
As others have pointed out, this is hopefully changing sooner rather than later, but it's not something right now that could be solved simply by researchers themselves.
If your research is that valuable, don't take federal money.
This is pedantic, but I'd change that from valuable to profitable. My work is I hope is valuable and may one day provide the basic science behind curing paralysis and/or curing brain cancer. It will never lead to something I can patent and sell as it will only produce basic knowledge (unless you change the system to be even LESS open access and I could actually sell the findings, which would obviously be one of the worst ideas). Bottom line is that no one would fund it besides the government because it's not an investment that will be paid back in money, but it needs to be done in order to get those cures. And that's quite a bit of NIH funded research, valuable but not profitable.
I voted for the Dem's this time around, but they're just as bad. Lying on their taxes, getting free drivers/limos, getting million $$ speaking deals as payoffs, and then getting their payoff from special interests to vote against the public good. They just get their payoffs from different groups.
If you expect politicians not to be politicians, your expectations are wildly optimistic. The best you can hope for is that they're not worse than the previous year's politicians and somewhere in the mix you'll get some of what you want.
What occurred with the state of Utah had nothing to do with Nigeria at all. That is just tabloid journalism where they mention something catchy in the title to get people to read an article that might otherwise be uninteresting.
Because the average Salt Lake resident is FASCINATED by all things relating to Nigeria ;-)
Do the kids then get to say to the parents: "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did us" ?
Well, those first two words are pretty common in the teenage years anyway...
They will likely claim the court has no right to make medical decisions (already happened in this thread!)
I don't think the people who pointed out that the courts shouldn't be meddling in science weren't doing so to challenge the current ruling and convince people that vaccines do cause autism.
But we didn't know the courts were going to listen to reason rather than urban legends and charlatans.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
It's arguably better than lawyers and politicians deciding it without an arbitrator.
I also shudder at the thought of Joe Sixpack deciding these things. Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
You appear to be making that judgment based solely on this example, which misses the larger picture. The ability of the electoral college to go against the public will is only one reason of many the founders created it. The electoral college is a compromise that was forged that allowed the less populous states to come to an accord with the more populous states, much like congress is divided into the house and senate, in one the votes are population proportional and in the other they are fixed per state.
I didn't miss that point, I learned that in grade school, I was just under the impression that we were specifically talking about faithless electors as a reason to keep the electoral system (to which I was pointing out that for better or worse it doesn't actually happen.)
I think the smaller states wouldn't revolt if the electoral college were done away with. The "compromise" argument doesn't work any more, people's political views relating to the federal government don't align along state lines anymore if they ever did. People in Seattle have political views much closer to people in New York than they do to people who live 20 miles from Seattle. Realigned political fault lines, together with national parties that run a national agenda rather than state interests, mean that the electoral college has a completely arbitrary effect that does not serve to balance differing state interests, it only serves to randomly over-represent some votes. As it happens, it overrepresents the red parts of our country. Which is great if you are conservative and also have an obsolete view of what democracy is (specifically that not all votes should be equal).
Any say at all? What states "say" these days is really is only a function of gerymandering. If there are more red districts in a state, they say "Yay republican national party." If there are more blue districts in a state they say "Yeah democratic national party." Residents of less populated states get to decide how their state is run, at a federal level there is no reason they should have any greater say than people who live in more populated states.
Anyone who wants to remove the electoral college should realize that by doing so, it is highly likely that this would force the federal government to set all the rules and further reduce the state's power.
The biggest difference between state and federal governments that I can see is fewer people pay attention to state governments, meaning there is more room for corruption and special interests to dominate public interest. Both are made up of the same caliber of politicians, but the state politicians have less public scrutiny.
That doesn't mean they will, what it means is they'll be criminally charged when they get home if they don't.
So knowing that, and that faithless electors have never seriously affected the outcome of the election... you really have to conclude that having electors at all is an idiotic thing to do. The wiki page on faithless electors tells me that the last time an elector was voted for someone else was 1988, in which an elector switched president and vice president. The system is a complete joke and serves absolutely no purpose.
Saying the civil war put an end to state rights is stupid; quite frankly, you're stupid if you think you have any clout at all against 300 million other Americans. Power should be local, not national.
Your argument as to why power should reside with the states (hardly what I'd consider local by the way) seems to be "That's what convinced them to join the union 200 years ago" and "you're stupid if you think otherwise."
I personally have never seen evidence that state government is anything other than an amateur version of the federal government. Same types of people in both, except the ones at the state level aren't as good at spinning generally. Combine that with less public scrutiny and you have a recipe for government that is even worse than the federal government, in terms of budgeting, special interests, corruption, and just plain stupidity.
he post you're replying to is what you might call a joke, but for some reason you are taking it seriously.
Just because it got modded insightful (by someone else) doesn't mean I was being serious. And in fact I wasn't, I was making fun of urban sprawl, and playing along with the joke. I hate suburbs and the yuppie scum who live there.
Forcing your own will upon someone else is the very antithesis of Christianity.
No. The sentiment "Mind your own business" is not really a strong theme in Christianity at all.
Its people's fault. Plain and simple.
Because after this tragic act of censorship, the people in the next elections, while having the opportunity to vote down the current government, most probably will not. Even if they do, they will most probably vote for another party that has most probably done something equally bad when they were government.
So put dogganos firmly in the category of "Everyone else is stupid so everything sucks and there's nothing we can do about it ever might as well eat worms and die" category. Do you have any suggestions, beyond realizing how stupid we all are?
my ISP (iinet) has repeatedly stated [slashdot.org] that it is only taking part in trial to demonstrate how badly it will fail, so I wouldn't be sending them any message they didn't already know
Apparently they don't already know that even flirting with this will lose them a lot of business, which is the message that I hope is sent to them. No buying this "No seriously guys, we're doing it IRONICALLY" crap The history lesson to ISPs and "christian groups" that should be written here is that censorship is radioactive, if you even give the IMPRESSION that you're okay with censorship you will go bankrupt.
I guarantee that if this gains traction it will not stop at porn. Welcome back to the Middle Ages.
Censorship AND time travel?!? Is there anything a flux-capacitor CAN'T do?