It's worth noting that it is suspected the Soviets did not bother AT ALL to sterilize thier Mars probes. Also, Zond 2 which was intended to only flyby Mars actually crashed, it was certainly not sterilized.
You're forgetting something......the probe was never primarily designed to land! 99% of its data is supposed to be taken as it falls through the atmosphere to the surface. If it does survive landing then that's just an extra bonus.
What the parent post objects to, and I fully share his consternation, is the statement:
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
Did they credit the highly skilled medical DOCTORS that administered her treatment? Did they credit the countless SCIENTISTS who have spent years developing highly selective and complex molecules which inhibit viral reproduction and allowed thier daughter to live? Did they credit the NURSES who cared for thier daughter in the hospital? No, and none of these were even mentioned. So do I sneer at hope? No, I do however sneer at the shameful insult of crediting to supernatural powers that which should be credited to the people who actually did save someone's life.
I've used one of these as an alarm clock for the past 3 years. I've also used it as a (albiet crappy) flashlight during power outages. It's still using the double A batteries that came in the package. Amazing.
This brings up an interesting point dosent it? How can a clock accurate to one in 10^15 or one second in 30 billion years ever be truly useful to that accuracy? Wouldn't simply walking the thing down the hall to the next lab introduce unacceptable error in the clock due to the time dilation involved?
Re:is usually spiked
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Anhydrous ethanol used for industrial processes may be "spiked" (denatured) with methanol to discourage consumption but this is never the case with reagent grade "absolute" ethanol. When a chemist needs ethanol for an experiment and ONLY ethanol, that better be all that's in the bottle.
I'm afraid I must wholeheartedly dissent. Periodic appearances of maladaptive evolutionary mutations are just that, periodic, sporadic, freak, fleeting. They do not recur again and again and they do not occur across hundreds of species simultaneously and then persists for what must be millions of years.
your statement that:"As for why a counterproductive tendency would keep recurring, one possible explanation is that it has some hidden evolutionary benefit of which we are not aware, but this isn't scientifically sustainable." is simply bizzare. A tendency which keeps recurring because it has a "hidden evolutionary benefit" is perfectly productive and beneficial to the organism and "scientifically sustainable"! (see sicle cell anemia for a lesson on this) That the benefit was "hidden" is simply a failure of our feeble human imagination to immediately see why it was beneficial in the first place.
I took no offence. Though I'm afraid I still don't see your point. I read and re-read your post and it seems self-contradictory and well...a bit muddled.
My point is that if homosexual behvior did not confer a survival benefit of some kind, it would have died off long, long, LONG ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation now. But it didn't die off, it persists, and unless penguins have an elaborate advanced social structure with some weird hangups about perpetuating behaviors that are counterproductive to their own survival then the behavior MUST somehow confer a survival benefit! It is merely our job to figure out how.
Re:Better than a Volcano
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 1
And you drank it? wow. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do unless it was brand new. Distillation apparatus are notoriously difficult to completely clean and judging from the nightmarishly toxic things I've seen to go into them I would never EVER drink something that touched one.
"On an evolutionary scale, homosexuality appears to be an behavorial aberation that can only continue to survive if we use some artificial means to keep it going. When all is said and done, however, it's an evolutionary dead end,..."
Really? Interesting then how this "dead end" has perpetuated itself so sucessfuly in so many hundreds (and many, many more, most certainly) species isn't it? We may not fully understand the evolutionary benefit of homosexual behavior, but there is no doubt that one must exist for it to be so pervasive throughout the animal kingdom as it is. It is endlessly amusing to me how so many self-righteous, superstitious (read: religious) people insist upon deeming homosexuality "unnatural" when even the most superficial examination of the subject reveals it to be the exact opposite, perfectly natural. See, we don't get to define "natural", NATURE conveniently does that for us. (NB. "naturalness" says nothing about desirability in society. Rape and monogamous affection both occur in nature but they are obviously completely different in terms of benefit/harm to society)
" But if this is all they see, if they don't become aware of the tremendous potential in the emotional side of sex, then maybe they'll always be less satisfied than they would be if they realized they can trump the porn stars every time with just a modicum of tenderness."
I've always thought the "porn will make you desensitized to or unable to feel real love" mantra was purposterous. Only an absolute idiot or someone who is already completely emotionally disfunctional could have this actually happen by simply watching other people have sex. Love and affection are natural human emotions, not some delicate and fragile artificial constructs which are somehow shattered at a mere glimpse of non-procreative sex, for instance. Analogous to your reasoning, I think, would be that watching professional sports obsessively "or at an important time in someone's life"(whenever that is), causes harm by making the viewer think that all there is to sport is harsh ruthless competition for the biggest cash payoff and most signing bonuses, and because this is all they see they will now be incapable of playing sport for the sake of enjoyment and FUN....Pretty ridiculous eh?
pfft, this guy built a cyclotron IN HIGH SCHOOL by himself and used it to demonstrate "particle mass resonace" he won the ISEF (used to be westinghouse) with it. Oh and he also was a consultant on accelerator technology for the show "stephen hawkings universe" shown on bbc and pbs. Not cool enough for you. Well he also built a breeder reactor to win a scavenger hunt.
I think we're all in agreement here about the hilarious idiocy of aforementioned legislation. However as long as we're here I cannot allow this opportunity to discuss nerdly things go unexploited.
The cell phone LED market is really interesting. You basically have the problem of producing a lot of light very quickly with a very limited amount of power available and an even more limited volume of space to fit your electronics (no room for that big capacitor seen in conventional camera flash drive circuits) to drive the flash since cameras these days are tending ever more toward the positively lilliputian. Many cameras include a simple and cheap Cerium:YAG coated 5mm blue led which can be safely overdriven for a very short amount of time, producing a moderate burst of light. Luxeon, the maker of the current most powerful white LEDs recently entered the market with their much improved version of this method. Certain other companies are trying to miniaturize conventional xenon flash units for use in cell phones. Still other companies are eyeing different methods. The story is, interestingly, somewhat analogous to the development of cell phone electronics themselves, a maximization of efficiency in terms of converting power from the battery to the display, processor and transmitter. Except now it's a game of getting the most photons out of a flash using the fewest electrons to do it.
This company's "products" seem to be total vapor. They've been claiming their product is about to be shipped "real soon now" since like 1999. yeah...no one's holding their breath anymore.
I can partially understand your reticence to accept fusion as 'yet another' technology to deal with. However I would urge you to imagine the possibilities of what might be realized with the availability of such vast quantities of energy. I think it would truly push out civilization to the next level of technological advancement. Spaceflight, for instance, would be made common with such energy generation capacities. Everything we will do will boil down to the availability of information and energy, everything else can be derived from that. For example all forms of manufacturing and utilization of natural resources for that manufacturing can be scaled up to unimaginable levels with relatively little to no human physical labor involved if energy is available in sufficient quantity. And therefore, with unlimited energy supplies and manufacturing capability, massive global scale engineering projects will be possible as, eventually, will complete human technological mastery over our environment(note I definitely did NOT say "domination"). If we are to evolve beyond the current state of civilization we're at now, where we appear to be essentially locked in a paradox of harmful climate change induced by our ever (unavoidable) increasing use of energy, we must find a way to produce energy on a colossal scale without producing harmful effects to the environment on a similar scale. I am more and more convinced that the answer to this problem, aside from the tiny chance of discovering some fundamentally new physics, is energy produced by nucelar fusion .
I doubt this will be much of a problem anytime soon. The earth recieves something like 10^17 watts of power from the sun every second of the day(and night!:o). Current total (electric and all other forms) world energy consumption 17 terawatts or 17X10^12 watts. Even our best effort at wasteful voracious energy consumption is dwarfed by the amount of light and heat coming from the sun.
There is one "free" energy source. Thermonuclear fusion. Running fusion reactors for a hundred generations at full world energy capacity would lower the level of the oceans by 1mm. Again and again and again we come back to this in these conversations about future energy supplies. Fusion is the only realistic long term, clean and safe solution to the world's "constant on" high energy density and high power density needs. Yet even today we languish in pissing contests over where the first demonstration reactor will be built. Fusion is an extraordinarily difficult but ultimately solvable problem, and we will solve it. We have to solve it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth noting that it is suspected the Soviets did not bother AT ALL to sterilize thier Mars probes. Also, Zond 2 which was intended to only flyby Mars actually crashed, it was certainly not sterilized.
yes! and may even be capable of sub-10-minute initial startup times!
You're forgetting something......the probe was never primarily designed to land! 99% of its data is supposed to be taken as it falls through the atmosphere to the surface. If it does survive landing then that's just an extra bonus.
Let's also hope that what doomed the Beagle2 mission to Mars was NOT failure of the heat shield. Huygens uses a nearly identical design.
yawn, whatever....
What the parent post objects to, and I fully share his consternation, is the statement:
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
Did they credit the highly skilled medical DOCTORS that administered her treatment? Did they credit the countless SCIENTISTS who have spent years developing highly selective and complex molecules which inhibit viral reproduction and allowed thier daughter to live? Did they credit the NURSES who cared for thier daughter in the hospital? No, and none of these were even mentioned. So do I sneer at hope? No, I do however sneer at the shameful insult of crediting to supernatural powers that which should be credited to the people who actually did save someone's life.
"Which way would you go about it for maximum "WOW"."
You mean as in: "WOW! I knew he was nerdy, but...just... WOW!!"?
I've used one of these as an alarm clock for the past 3 years. I've also used it as a (albiet crappy) flashlight during power outages. It's still using the double A batteries that came in the package. Amazing.
This brings up an interesting point dosent it? How can a clock accurate to one in 10^15 or one second in 30 billion years ever be truly useful to that accuracy? Wouldn't simply walking the thing down the hall to the next lab introduce unacceptable error in the clock due to the time dilation involved?
I'm afraid I am at a loss to comprehend your logic.
oops. linky
Anhydrous ethanol used for industrial processes may be "spiked" (denatured) with methanol to discourage consumption but this is never the case with reagent grade "absolute" ethanol. When a chemist needs ethanol for an experiment and ONLY ethanol, that better be all that's in the bottle.
I'm afraid I must wholeheartedly dissent. Periodic appearances of maladaptive evolutionary mutations are just that, periodic, sporadic, freak, fleeting. They do not recur again and again and they do not occur across hundreds of species simultaneously and then persists for what must be millions of years.
your statement that:"As for why a counterproductive tendency would keep recurring, one possible explanation is that it has some hidden evolutionary benefit of which we are not aware, but this isn't scientifically sustainable."
is simply bizzare. A tendency which keeps recurring because it has a "hidden evolutionary benefit" is perfectly productive and beneficial to the organism and "scientifically sustainable"! (see sicle cell anemia for a lesson on this) That the benefit was "hidden" is simply a failure of our feeble human imagination to immediately see why it was beneficial in the first place.
I took no offence. Though I'm afraid I still don't see your point. I read and re-read your post and it seems self-contradictory and well...a bit muddled.
My point is that if homosexual behvior did not confer a survival benefit of some kind, it would have died off long, long, LONG ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation now. But it didn't die off, it persists, and unless penguins have an elaborate advanced social structure with some weird hangups about perpetuating behaviors that are counterproductive to their own survival then the behavior MUST somehow confer a survival benefit! It is merely our job to figure out how.
And you drank it? wow. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do unless it was brand new. Distillation apparatus are notoriously difficult to completely clean and judging from the nightmarishly toxic things I've seen to go into them I would never EVER drink something that touched one.
"On an evolutionary scale, homosexuality appears to be an behavorial aberation that can only continue to survive if we use some artificial means to keep it going. When all is said and done, however, it's an evolutionary dead end,..."
Really? Interesting then how this "dead end" has perpetuated itself so sucessfuly in so many hundreds (and many, many more, most certainly) species isn't it? We may not fully understand the evolutionary benefit of homosexual behavior, but there is no doubt that one must exist for it to be so pervasive throughout the animal kingdom as it is. It is endlessly amusing to me how so many self-righteous, superstitious (read: religious) people insist upon deeming homosexuality "unnatural" when even the most superficial examination of the subject reveals it to be the exact opposite, perfectly natural. See, we don't get to define "natural", NATURE conveniently does that for us. (NB. "naturalness" says nothing about desirability in society. Rape and monogamous affection both occur in nature but they are obviously completely different in terms of benefit/harm to society)
" But if this is all they see, if they don't become aware of the tremendous potential in the emotional side of sex, then maybe they'll always be less satisfied than they would be if they realized they can trump the porn stars every time with just a modicum of tenderness."
I've always thought the "porn will make you desensitized to or unable to feel real love" mantra was purposterous. Only an absolute idiot or someone who is already completely emotionally disfunctional could have this actually happen by simply watching other people have sex. Love and affection are natural human emotions, not some delicate and fragile artificial constructs which are somehow shattered at a mere glimpse of non-procreative sex, for instance. Analogous to your reasoning, I think, would be that watching professional sports obsessively "or at an important time in someone's life"(whenever that is), causes harm by making the viewer think that all there is to sport is harsh ruthless competition for the biggest cash payoff and most signing bonuses, and because this is all they see they will now be incapable of playing sport for the sake of enjoyment and FUN....Pretty ridiculous eh?
pfft, this guy built a cyclotron IN HIGH SCHOOL by himself and used it to demonstrate "particle mass resonace" he won the ISEF (used to be westinghouse) with it. Oh and he also was a consultant on accelerator technology for the show "stephen hawkings universe" shown on bbc and pbs. Not cool enough for you. Well he also built a breeder reactor to win a scavenger hunt.
yes, a magical red led, eternally incapable of being taped over!
I think we're all in agreement here about the hilarious idiocy of aforementioned legislation. However as long as we're here I cannot allow this opportunity to discuss nerdly things go unexploited.
The cell phone LED market is really interesting. You basically have the problem of producing a lot of light very quickly with a very limited amount of power available and an even more limited volume of space to fit your electronics (no room for that big capacitor seen in conventional camera flash drive circuits) to drive the flash since cameras these days are tending ever more toward the positively lilliputian. Many cameras include a simple and cheap Cerium:YAG coated 5mm blue led which can be safely overdriven for a very short amount of time, producing a moderate burst of light. Luxeon, the maker of the current most powerful white LEDs recently entered the market with their much improved version of this method. Certain other companies are trying to miniaturize conventional xenon flash units for use in cell phones. Still other companies are eyeing different methods. The story is, interestingly, somewhat analogous to the development of cell phone electronics themselves, a maximization of efficiency in terms of converting power from the battery to the display, processor and transmitter. Except now it's a game of getting the most photons out of a flash using the fewest electrons to do it.
This company's "products" seem to be total vapor. They've been claiming their product is about to be shipped "real soon now" since like 1999. yeah...no one's holding their breath anymore.
doubtful. the pilot still had a head after the incident.
I can partially understand your reticence to accept fusion as 'yet another' technology to deal with. However I would urge you to imagine the possibilities of what might be realized with the availability of such vast quantities of energy. I think it would truly push out civilization to the next level of technological advancement. Spaceflight, for instance, would be made common with such energy generation capacities. Everything we will do will boil down to the availability of information and energy, everything else can be derived from that. For example all forms of manufacturing and utilization of natural resources for that manufacturing can be scaled up to unimaginable levels with relatively little to no human physical labor involved if energy is available in sufficient quantity. And therefore, with unlimited energy supplies and manufacturing capability, massive global scale engineering projects will be possible as, eventually, will complete human technological mastery over our environment(note I definitely did NOT say "domination"). If we are to evolve beyond the current state of civilization we're at now, where we appear to be essentially locked in a paradox of harmful climate change induced by our ever (unavoidable) increasing use of energy, we must find a way to produce energy on a colossal scale without producing harmful effects to the environment on a similar scale. I am more and more convinced that the answer to this problem, aside from the tiny chance of discovering some fundamentally new physics, is energy produced by nucelar fusion .
I doubt this will be much of a problem anytime soon. The earth recieves something like 10^17 watts of power from the sun every second of the day(and night! :o). Current total (electric and all other forms) world energy consumption 17 terawatts or 17X10^12 watts. Even our best effort at wasteful voracious energy consumption is dwarfed by the amount of light and heat coming from the sun.
There is one "free" energy source. Thermonuclear fusion. Running fusion reactors for a hundred generations at full world energy capacity would lower the level of the oceans by 1mm. Again and again and again we come back to this in these conversations about future energy supplies. Fusion is the only realistic long term, clean and safe solution to the world's "constant on" high energy density and high power density needs. Yet even today we languish in pissing contests over where the first demonstration reactor will be built. Fusion is an extraordinarily difficult but ultimately solvable problem, and we will solve it. We have to solve it.