How many people will not read books because they saw the films and think they know what they were about, desite the films being sanitised, pro-corporatist and watered-down?
Probably no more than would not read the book if they saw the movie and really did get to see more or less everything that was in the book.
By the way, your insinuation that science fiction isn't "pro-corporatist" (whatever the fuck that means) is misleading. Sci-fi authors - at least most of the ones I've read - aren't usually pushing any socialist agenda; on the contrary, they tend to be distrustful of any large power or form of authority, which often includes corporations but always is directed at governments. Let's take a look at some recent science-fiction adaptations:
Minority Report: Okay, this one was just anti-government.
Paycheck: The bad guy is a CEO whose company will destroy the world. (Exactly the opposite of the PKD story, by the way.)
I, Robot: The corporation isn't really the bad guy, but it is ruthless and thoughtless and almost gets us killed, and the CEO is a prick.
I'm not sure you have much of a case. Blatant product placement does not make a movie pro-corporatist when the rest of the movie is strongly anti-corporate. You just sound upset that we don't see more movie adaptations set in some imaginary socialist utopia. (It would be difficult, since most sci-fi writers weren't that naive.)
On the subject of political mangling, the worst was "Starship Troopers", where Verhoeven was so fixated on Heinlein's militarism that he turned the characters into fascists, missing not only the entire point of the book but also the libertarian philosophy that runs through most of Heinlein's work.
What the story certainly does not have is any examination of a dystopian future, the way the story poster claimed. The entire story is just a gimmick, not very deep at all.
the wording of your response implied that a state-run health system is impossible unless you are prepared to give up civil, political, and economic freedom.
Well, Freidrich Hayek claimed exactly this, and I'm inclined to agree with him - although the argument is based on the potential for good intentions leading us astray, rather than any inherent totalitarianism involved in socialized medicine. However, this wasn't my point at all. I'm only pointing out that you can't pick and choose which parts of communist regimes to admire and/or emulate. The horrors of communism don't negate the potential value of universal healthcare, but universal healthcare does not excuse mass murder, and the original post I replied to was essentially doing just that.
What it comes down to is bureaucratic inefficiences in a state-run system versus profit taking in a private system.
Sure, but that's the discussion we should be having, not "why can't we be more like Cuba?" Any social welfare system must be kept consistent with our liberal democratic values, values which statist regimes do not share.
Basically, I'm simply fed up with the persistent whitewashing of the history of Communism. I'd prefer we not move towards a more socialist system, but if we do I'd like to be sure we're being cautious about it, and not rushing headlong into tyrrany.
It's not one or the other. A country can manage free healthcare under a democracy.
Two points in response:
1) The parent poster was talking about Soviet Russia. Holding the USSR up as an example of why we should have socialized medicine is a worthless comparison. If you want to argue that we should adopt some form of national health insurance, invoking a totalitarian society isn't a good way to go about it.
2) Stop calling it "free" healthcare - you (or other people) are still paying for it. At least be honest about the costs. If we decide that a 50% income tax is a fair exchange for national health insurance, so be it, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking it's free. (Or if you prefer a raise-taxes-on-the-rich-to-pay-our-medical-costs system, call it what it really is - it's still not "free".)
How many people here [in the U.S.] would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for the illusion of safety?
Well, I wouldn't, and I won't be voting for Bush. But we're still many orders of magnitude away from anything approaching what the Soviet bloc nations inflicted on their own citizens. Besides, anyone with a reasonable familiarity with US history (and this appears to exclude most Americans and virtually all Europeans) would recognize that past slips towards authoritarianism have both been considerably more dangerous, but we nevertheless survived with our liberties ultimately stronger than before. This isn't an argument in favor of complacency, merely against hysteria.
I realize that the USA hasn't always lived up to its lofty principles, either at home or abroad, but that hardly makes Communism any less repulsive.
For those of you who make fun of the Soviet system wen you probably wheren't even born then, this is a lesson: Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.
Quick question: how many people here would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for free health care? It's okay if you do, just be consistent about it. I suspect there aren't many who'd agree with this, though. Otherwise, you can't just point to Communist nations and say "well, if you ignore the mass murder and gulags, it really wasn't that bad. . . "
Actually, that was exactly what I meant - in addition to which, I simply don't trust Bush. Even in comparison to the usual big-government policies of the Dems, Bush seems obsessed with expanding the power and influence of government over my life.
So I view the choice between Bush and Kerry as the choice between the guy who'll probably kill me, and the guy who'll probably get me killed. And since the Libertarians are, rhetorically speaking, smoking weed out on the quad (particularly on this issue), and I don't really like them anyway, I'm voting for Kerry. If McCain had won four years ago, maybe my choices wouldn't suck so much.
Yeah, I'd imagine those who are responsible on making sure no new terror attacks happen, are a bit touchy on the subject.
I'd be a bit more sympathetic if I thought the Bush administration actually gave a crap about anything other than getting re-elected and cutting taxes. I really do care about the War On Terror, which is why I'm not voting for Bush. (Of course, I'd feel better if Kerry showed some sign of caring too, but at least I don't think he'll go out of his way to start yet another war just for the hell of it.) You don't have to be a whiny leftist to despise Bush; I'd like nothing better than seeing Al Qaeda blown to pieces, but the current administration didn't have the balls to finish the job.
I'm sure every sociology (and economics, political science, or psychology) department in the country would love to come up with this, but unfortunately normal human interactions are infinitely harder to simulate than modern battle tactics and military technology. Although our current administration makes it seem even more difficult than necessary.
But seriously, the point of all this high-tech military wankery is to figure out how to inflict very brief and intense moments of horrific violence with the objective of ending wars as quickly as possible. Which is much better for innocent civilians in the long run. To take a recent example, the Iraq war hasn't exactly been kind to the Iraqis themselves (aside from the obvious benefit of no more Saddam), but imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn't pounded the hell out of their army immediately and instead had to slowly chip away at their lines. (And I suspect that this would have been much worse for their army, too.)
Hooray for chain gangs, stripped uniforms, and wecams!
I'm curious - why do you think these punishments are fitting for, say, being caught smoking a joint?
Re:The problem is with *who* the cams are on...
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Judges Junk Jailcam
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This guy was recently profiled on "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!", specifically their episode about the War on Drugs. Apparently he used to station cops at the county border to do random stops and searches for contraband. Towards the end of the episode he snorts with derision at the suggestion that we should have freedom to choose our destinies, and declares that the government must enforce social norms. The existence of people like that is the best argument I've yet seen in favor of drug legalization.
This news just makes me wish there was another season of "Farscape" coming up. Or, hell, another season of ST:TNG.
Slightly off-topic, but people here seem to have loved "Firefly". I don't own a TV so I'm limited in what I can watch and I never saw any episodes, but could someone explain why they like it so much? If it sounds good, I'll download a few episodes and see for myself. The quest for non-crappy SF on TV is a slow one.
. . . is that the people leading the call for paper trails or even just paper ballots are either computing professionals or extremely technically literate. It's an interesting situation when technological "progress" is opposed by the elite rather than the traditional Luddites or the masses. Maybe we've all just read too much science fiction, but these machines sound like a solution even worse than the problem. I'd rather go through the Florida recount again than deal with the potentially catastrophic effects of the machines we use in CA.
I'm a little shocked, however, that more professed conservatives haven't spoken out against the new systems. To hear some of them tell it, the Democratic Party practically invented vote fraud, so you'd expect that they'd be much more suspicious of unverifiable, untrackable voting systems. But none of them seem to have anything to say on the matter - or have I not been looking in the right place?
Why don't you and those of your ilk just go away. If you have no sense of adventure fine, don't stop the people who want more than back yard barbaques and NASCAR.
I'm fine with adventure. However, people who want multi-billion-dollar adventure should pay for it themselves, instead of soaking taxpayers. The role of the federal government should not be to keep you entertained. Otherwise, we might as well just make NASCAR a federal agency.
It's not like I'm some raving libertarian either; I'd have no argument against increasing NASA's budget if it were all applied to actual science. Like, say, robotic probes. In fact, I love having the government spend money on science, because I get paid this way. I just don't like the government spending money on entertainment for geeks who aren't satisfied with backyard barbeques and NASCAR. Seriously, do you want a subsidy for LAN parties and Anime film festivals as well?
(I should point out that I'm far more offended by public subsidies for sports teams than I am by the manned space program - but at least the former is widely recognized to be an atrocious waste of money.)
Finally someone has the balls to stop crying about a few lost astronauts and get off their ass and get back to work.
Just wait until we're talking about a few lost space tourists, and see how much longer this craptacular scheme lasts. On the other hand, I guess if a group of plutocrats with something to prove decide they're willing to pay millions for a moon ride, the Russian taxpayers won't have quite so much of their money wasted on manned spaceflight.
Given the already insane rates of executive compensation in America, if we could rent out the ISS for corporate board meetings it might finally pay off. God knows the "science" projects never will.
Yeah, it's kinda sad how things just take longer when you don't have slave labor at your disposal. Oh well, at least after several decades our national economy isn't in the crapper.
Other experiments have included using the tweezers to pull a protein or DNA molecule apart and observe how it folds back up. This can be applied to study the kinetics of protein folding, and also elucidate the mechanisms of protein machinery such as chromatin organizing complexes.
There's actually quite a bit of work being done with single-molecule studies, and laser tweezers are just one of several methods. One paper I read involved watching a single DNA helicase unwind a fluorescently labelled DNA molecule: the researchers watched the end of the DNA helix fray open as the helicase moved down it.
The coolest of these experiments in my opinion, though, is this one and a number of followups. These are probably among the most awesome accomplishments in biology in the past decade.
Libertarians are usually reflexively anti-government; most seem to be pretty close to anarcho-capitalism. And the LP itself tends to be a party for gun nuts and pot smokers (not that I don't like firearms and drugs, mind you). The problem is that those of us who lean towards a libertarian viewpoint overall but don't share the LP's rabid viewpoint are left with nowhere to turn. Since we don't want to see the government gutted by a bunch of Ayn Rand groupies, we have to choose which of the major parties offends us less. In my case, it's the Democrats, because the Republicans are either insincere or simply pro-business, and are enslaved to the Religious Right anyway. So I'll grit my teeth and settle for the socialism of so-called liberals.
Personally, I don't even consider myself a libertarian. I'm a classical liberal, which means I like free trade, no corporate welfare, no central planning, relatively small govenrment, and a great degree of personal liberty. This doesn't mean I think we should have a minimalist federal government, only that I don't think government should try to do everything. (Anyone who doesn't understand this distinction should read "The Road to Serfdom.") The idea is to harness competition and the free market to improve human lives; it's an alternative to mercantilism or socialism.
Unfortunately, classical liberalism is almost dead; Clinton was one of the few politicians whose policies ever came close. It's obvious that Kerry/Edwards don't favor it either, but since Bush isn't really any better I guess I'll hold my nose and vote for Kerry.
Furthermore, one of the problems with Celera was that the scientists involved were more interested in science than making money. I did some work for one of the former higher-ups who's now back in academia, and while he did very well from his association with the company, he's an academic scientist at heart. There's a good book out called "The Genome War" that goes into this in considerable detail; the corporate masters of Celera were apparently furious that Venter et al. were releasing so much data.
The impression I got was that Celera was really formed because of huge egos and a conviction that their methods were better (which, in retrospect, they probably were), not because the scientists involved honestly thought this would be a great way to make money.
As far as Venter's current enterprises go, the guy may be a dickhead, but I wish him the best of luck - he's doing fantastic science and he's consistently innovative. There is no shortage of arrogance among academic biologists, and Venter is by no means the worst case.
Actually, as an experimental and theoretical biophysicist-in-training who knows about proteins, I'd say the folding project is only marginally more useful than the prime number search. Most biology research projects, especially computational ones, has to be sold on the basis of potential benefits to human medicine. Such advertising does not actually mean that medical benefits exist.
While there's much to learn from studies of protein folding, there's very little medical importance to purely theoretical simulations. Since the delusion that we'll be able to replace laboratory research with really big computers is attractive to people who know nothing about biology, the impact of this type of research gets vastly overstated.
On the other hand, Folding@Home has already yielded far more interesting results (if not exactly "useful" outside of the world of biophysics) than SETI@Home probably ever will, so go for it.
You've totally missed the toungue-in-cheek element of my post; I wasn't really serious about that part. It's not like my chances would be all that much better if I made more money. My point was rather that a career as an academic is financially and socially unrewarding and can seriously fuck with your long-term happiness, so it's no surprise that people avoid it.
My issues aren't unique or the only perspective either; one of my female classmates just got married and is wondering how the hell she'll balance her career with her desire to have children.
Agreed, but over the last 200 years scientific research has expanded immensely as a career option, and the US has become a scientific superpower in addition to an economic/cultural/military superpower. This exponential growth in research fields, coupled with exponential growth in commercial engineering, is part of what's given us the incredible scientific and technical progress of the last two centuries.
The problem is that while engineering traditionally pays pretty well, basic research never has (except for the elite professors, a very small fraction of the people doing the actual work). But you can't have progress in engineering without basic research. On the flip side, a lot of basic research doesn't directly result in marketable products for decades (if ever), so it's not economical for companies to spend a lot of money on it. (Besides, why should they? Your tax dollars already fund basic research, because the government cares about getting science done, not bringing products to market - that's just an occasional side benefit.)
I'm entering the second year of my PhD in biology, and I spend more time than I'd prefer to worrying about this conflict. I love basic research, and I love seeing my name in print. I love the thrill of discovery, and while I'm happy to see my research used towards improving human lives, that's not my primary goal - I simply want to expand human knowledge. Unfortunately, I'd also like to own a car, and lots of books, and various musical instruments. I've been wanting a video projector for a while too.
I don't think I'd find industry as rewarding in a purely scientific sense. But the odds of me getting a faculty job are slim, and even if I did, I'd be 40 by the time I was settled in with tenure (assuming I get it), and I'd probably still be single and working nonstop. Alternately, I could spend the rest of my career as a glorified postdoc, doing terrific science with some of the best people in the world, but making very little money and relatively little fame. The easier course would be to simply skip all this, go into biotech, and work in anonymity doing drug development, but without ever having to deal about funding problems or paying the rent.
I know this sounds shallow and materialistic, but I live in the Bay Area, and since all the women here are shallow and materialistic, I figure I don't have much of a choice unless I want to remain single for the rest of my life. The only thing less sexy than being a geeky, underpaid, overworked 25-year-old scientist is being a geeky, underpaid, overworked, 40-year-old scientist.
Intergovernmental cooperation in regulating the Internet is a recipe for disaster. An effective set of world-wide anti-spam policies will simply be a precedent that the US Congress can point to when pushing even more invasive laws like the DMCA. Or, to be fair, the rest of the world can use it as a precedent for pushing their ridiculous censorship rules.
I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I just don't think we need a new set of laws to deal with every little annoyance, and I'd rather see the Internet be as unregulated as possible. Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers. If the Internet can't be self-regulating, it's ultimately doomed to failure or Balkanization.
I was waiting to order one until I could be sure it wasn't going to be immediately obsoleted. Now, however, I have to wait till September, and my lab needs a new computer now. This is seriously bad news for me - we don't need to spend twice as much on a G5 tower that'll only be used for email and word processing. And we'll buy a Windows machine over my dead body.
All software I need runs on windows... without the need for third party software to run it.
And all the software I need runs on Linux, without figuring out how to port it to Windows or installing third party software (e.g. Cygwin). That's because I use my computer for actual work, not video games and instant messaging.
The only time I ever need to use Windows is for giving presentations, because I haven't been able to get my laptop to play nice with video projectors.
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How many people will not read books because they saw the films and think they know what they were about, desite the films being sanitised, pro-corporatist and watered-down?
Probably no more than would not read the book if they saw the movie and really did get to see more or less everything that was in the book.
By the way, your insinuation that science fiction isn't "pro-corporatist" (whatever the fuck that means) is misleading. Sci-fi authors - at least most of the ones I've read - aren't usually pushing any socialist agenda; on the contrary, they tend to be distrustful of any large power or form of authority, which often includes corporations but always is directed at governments. Let's take a look at some recent science-fiction adaptations:
Minority Report: Okay, this one was just anti-government.
Paycheck: The bad guy is a CEO whose company will destroy the world. (Exactly the opposite of the PKD story, by the way.)
I, Robot: The corporation isn't really the bad guy, but it is ruthless and thoughtless and almost gets us killed, and the CEO is a prick.
I'm not sure you have much of a case. Blatant product placement does not make a movie pro-corporatist when the rest of the movie is strongly anti-corporate. You just sound upset that we don't see more movie adaptations set in some imaginary socialist utopia. (It would be difficult, since most sci-fi writers weren't that naive.)
On the subject of political mangling, the worst was "Starship Troopers", where Verhoeven was so fixated on Heinlein's militarism that he turned the characters into fascists, missing not only the entire point of the book but also the libertarian philosophy that runs through most of Heinlein's work.
What the story certainly does not have is any examination of a dystopian future, the way the story poster claimed. The entire story is just a gimmick, not very deep at all.
the wording of your response implied that a state-run health system is impossible unless you are prepared to give up civil, political, and economic freedom.
Well, Freidrich Hayek claimed exactly this, and I'm inclined to agree with him - although the argument is based on the potential for good intentions leading us astray, rather than any inherent totalitarianism involved in socialized medicine. However, this wasn't my point at all. I'm only pointing out that you can't pick and choose which parts of communist regimes to admire and/or emulate. The horrors of communism don't negate the potential value of universal healthcare, but universal healthcare does not excuse mass murder, and the original post I replied to was essentially doing just that.
What it comes down to is bureaucratic inefficiences in a state-run system versus profit taking in a private system.
Sure, but that's the discussion we should be having, not "why can't we be more like Cuba?" Any social welfare system must be kept consistent with our liberal democratic values, values which statist regimes do not share.
Basically, I'm simply fed up with the persistent whitewashing of the history of Communism. I'd prefer we not move towards a more socialist system, but if we do I'd like to be sure we're being cautious about it, and not rushing headlong into tyrrany.
It's not one or the other. A country can manage free healthcare under a democracy.
Two points in response:
1) The parent poster was talking about Soviet Russia. Holding the USSR up as an example of why we should have socialized medicine is a worthless comparison. If you want to argue that we should adopt some form of national health insurance, invoking a totalitarian society isn't a good way to go about it.
2) Stop calling it "free" healthcare - you (or other people) are still paying for it. At least be honest about the costs. If we decide that a 50% income tax is a fair exchange for national health insurance, so be it, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking it's free. (Or if you prefer a raise-taxes-on-the-rich-to-pay-our-medical-costs system, call it what it really is - it's still not "free".)
How many people here [in the U.S.] would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for the illusion of safety?
Well, I wouldn't, and I won't be voting for Bush. But we're still many orders of magnitude away from anything approaching what the Soviet bloc nations inflicted on their own citizens. Besides, anyone with a reasonable familiarity with US history (and this appears to exclude most Americans and virtually all Europeans) would recognize that past slips towards authoritarianism have both been considerably more dangerous, but we nevertheless survived with our liberties ultimately stronger than before. This isn't an argument in favor of complacency, merely against hysteria.
I realize that the USA hasn't always lived up to its lofty principles, either at home or abroad, but that hardly makes Communism any less repulsive.
For those of you who make fun of the Soviet system wen you probably wheren't even born then, this is a lesson: Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.
Quick question: how many people here would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for free health care? It's okay if you do, just be consistent about it. I suspect there aren't many who'd agree with this, though. Otherwise, you can't just point to Communist nations and say "well, if you ignore the mass murder and gulags, it really wasn't that bad. . . "
Actually, that was exactly what I meant - in addition to which, I simply don't trust Bush. Even in comparison to the usual big-government policies of the Dems, Bush seems obsessed with expanding the power and influence of government over my life.
So I view the choice between Bush and Kerry as the choice between the guy who'll probably kill me, and the guy who'll probably get me killed. And since the Libertarians are, rhetorically speaking, smoking weed out on the quad (particularly on this issue), and I don't really like them anyway, I'm voting for Kerry. If McCain had won four years ago, maybe my choices wouldn't suck so much.
Yeah, I'd imagine those who are responsible on making sure no new terror attacks happen, are a bit touchy on the subject.
I'd be a bit more sympathetic if I thought the Bush administration actually gave a crap about anything other than getting re-elected and cutting taxes. I really do care about the War On Terror, which is why I'm not voting for Bush. (Of course, I'd feel better if Kerry showed some sign of caring too, but at least I don't think he'll go out of his way to start yet another war just for the hell of it.) You don't have to be a whiny leftist to despise Bush; I'd like nothing better than seeing Al Qaeda blown to pieces, but the current administration didn't have the balls to finish the job.
I'm sure every sociology (and economics, political science, or psychology) department in the country would love to come up with this, but unfortunately normal human interactions are infinitely harder to simulate than modern battle tactics and military technology. Although our current administration makes it seem even more difficult than necessary.
But seriously, the point of all this high-tech military wankery is to figure out how to inflict very brief and intense moments of horrific violence with the objective of ending wars as quickly as possible. Which is much better for innocent civilians in the long run. To take a recent example, the Iraq war hasn't exactly been kind to the Iraqis themselves (aside from the obvious benefit of no more Saddam), but imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn't pounded the hell out of their army immediately and instead had to slowly chip away at their lines. (And I suspect that this would have been much worse for their army, too.)
Hooray for chain gangs, stripped uniforms, and wecams!
I'm curious - why do you think these punishments are fitting for, say, being caught smoking a joint?
This guy was recently profiled on "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!", specifically their episode about the War on Drugs. Apparently he used to station cops at the county border to do random stops and searches for contraband. Towards the end of the episode he snorts with derision at the suggestion that we should have freedom to choose our destinies, and declares that the government must enforce social norms. The existence of people like that is the best argument I've yet seen in favor of drug legalization.
This news just makes me wish there was another season of "Farscape" coming up. Or, hell, another season of ST:TNG.
Slightly off-topic, but people here seem to have loved "Firefly". I don't own a TV so I'm limited in what I can watch and I never saw any episodes, but could someone explain why they like it so much? If it sounds good, I'll download a few episodes and see for myself. The quest for non-crappy SF on TV is a slow one.
. . . is that the people leading the call for paper trails or even just paper ballots are either computing professionals or extremely technically literate. It's an interesting situation when technological "progress" is opposed by the elite rather than the traditional Luddites or the masses. Maybe we've all just read too much science fiction, but these machines sound like a solution even worse than the problem. I'd rather go through the Florida recount again than deal with the potentially catastrophic effects of the machines we use in CA.
I'm a little shocked, however, that more professed conservatives haven't spoken out against the new systems. To hear some of them tell it, the Democratic Party practically invented vote fraud, so you'd expect that they'd be much more suspicious of unverifiable, untrackable voting systems. But none of them seem to have anything to say on the matter - or have I not been looking in the right place?
Why don't you and those of your ilk just go away. If you have no sense of adventure fine, don't stop the people who want more than back yard barbaques and NASCAR.
I'm fine with adventure. However, people who want multi-billion-dollar adventure should pay for it themselves, instead of soaking taxpayers. The role of the federal government should not be to keep you entertained. Otherwise, we might as well just make NASCAR a federal agency.
It's not like I'm some raving libertarian either; I'd have no argument against increasing NASA's budget if it were all applied to actual science. Like, say, robotic probes. In fact, I love having the government spend money on science, because I get paid this way. I just don't like the government spending money on entertainment for geeks who aren't satisfied with backyard barbeques and NASCAR. Seriously, do you want a subsidy for LAN parties and Anime film festivals as well?
(I should point out that I'm far more offended by public subsidies for sports teams than I am by the manned space program - but at least the former is widely recognized to be an atrocious waste of money.)
Finally someone has the balls to stop crying about a few lost astronauts and get off their ass and get back to work.
Just wait until we're talking about a few lost space tourists, and see how much longer this craptacular scheme lasts. On the other hand, I guess if a group of plutocrats with something to prove decide they're willing to pay millions for a moon ride, the Russian taxpayers won't have quite so much of their money wasted on manned spaceflight.
Given the already insane rates of executive compensation in America, if we could rent out the ISS for corporate board meetings it might finally pay off. God knows the "science" projects never will.
America did not win the space race.
Yeah, it's kinda sad how things just take longer when you don't have slave labor at your disposal. Oh well, at least after several decades our national economy isn't in the crapper.
Other experiments have included using the tweezers to pull a protein or DNA molecule apart and observe how it folds back up. This can be applied to study the kinetics of protein folding, and also elucidate the mechanisms of protein machinery such as chromatin organizing complexes.
There's actually quite a bit of work being done with single-molecule studies, and laser tweezers are just one of several methods. One paper I read involved watching a single DNA helicase unwind a fluorescently labelled DNA molecule: the researchers watched the end of the DNA helix fray open as the helicase moved down it.
The coolest of these experiments in my opinion, though, is this one and a number of followups. These are probably among the most awesome accomplishments in biology in the past decade.
Libertarians are usually reflexively anti-government; most seem to be pretty close to anarcho-capitalism. And the LP itself tends to be a party for gun nuts and pot smokers (not that I don't like firearms and drugs, mind you). The problem is that those of us who lean towards a libertarian viewpoint overall but don't share the LP's rabid viewpoint are left with nowhere to turn. Since we don't want to see the government gutted by a bunch of Ayn Rand groupies, we have to choose which of the major parties offends us less. In my case, it's the Democrats, because the Republicans are either insincere or simply pro-business, and are enslaved to the Religious Right anyway. So I'll grit my teeth and settle for the socialism of so-called liberals.
Personally, I don't even consider myself a libertarian. I'm a classical liberal, which means I like free trade, no corporate welfare, no central planning, relatively small govenrment, and a great degree of personal liberty. This doesn't mean I think we should have a minimalist federal government, only that I don't think government should try to do everything. (Anyone who doesn't understand this distinction should read "The Road to Serfdom.") The idea is to harness competition and the free market to improve human lives; it's an alternative to mercantilism or socialism.
Unfortunately, classical liberalism is almost dead; Clinton was one of the few politicians whose policies ever came close. It's obvious that Kerry/Edwards don't favor it either, but since Bush isn't really any better I guess I'll hold my nose and vote for Kerry.
Furthermore, one of the problems with Celera was that the scientists involved were more interested in science than making money. I did some work for one of the former higher-ups who's now back in academia, and while he did very well from his association with the company, he's an academic scientist at heart. There's a good book out called "The Genome War" that goes into this in considerable detail; the corporate masters of Celera were apparently furious that Venter et al. were releasing so much data.
The impression I got was that Celera was really formed because of huge egos and a conviction that their methods were better (which, in retrospect, they probably were), not because the scientists involved honestly thought this would be a great way to make money.
As far as Venter's current enterprises go, the guy may be a dickhead, but I wish him the best of luck - he's doing fantastic science and he's consistently innovative. There is no shortage of arrogance among academic biologists, and Venter is by no means the worst case.
Actually, as an experimental and theoretical biophysicist-in-training who knows about proteins, I'd say the folding project is only marginally more useful than the prime number search. Most biology research projects, especially computational ones, has to be sold on the basis of potential benefits to human medicine. Such advertising does not actually mean that medical benefits exist.
While there's much to learn from studies of protein folding, there's very little medical importance to purely theoretical simulations. Since the delusion that we'll be able to replace laboratory research with really big computers is attractive to people who know nothing about biology, the impact of this type of research gets vastly overstated.
On the other hand, Folding@Home has already yielded far more interesting results (if not exactly "useful" outside of the world of biophysics) than SETI@Home probably ever will, so go for it.
You've totally missed the toungue-in-cheek element of my post; I wasn't really serious about that part. It's not like my chances would be all that much better if I made more money. My point was rather that a career as an academic is financially and socially unrewarding and can seriously fuck with your long-term happiness, so it's no surprise that people avoid it.
My issues aren't unique or the only perspective either; one of my female classmates just got married and is wondering how the hell she'll balance her career with her desire to have children.
Agreed, but over the last 200 years scientific research has expanded immensely as a career option, and the US has become a scientific superpower in addition to an economic/cultural/military superpower. This exponential growth in research fields, coupled with exponential growth in commercial engineering, is part of what's given us the incredible scientific and technical progress of the last two centuries.
The problem is that while engineering traditionally pays pretty well, basic research never has (except for the elite professors, a very small fraction of the people doing the actual work). But you can't have progress in engineering without basic research. On the flip side, a lot of basic research doesn't directly result in marketable products for decades (if ever), so it's not economical for companies to spend a lot of money on it. (Besides, why should they? Your tax dollars already fund basic research, because the government cares about getting science done, not bringing products to market - that's just an occasional side benefit.)
I'm entering the second year of my PhD in biology, and I spend more time than I'd prefer to worrying about this conflict. I love basic research, and I love seeing my name in print. I love the thrill of discovery, and while I'm happy to see my research used towards improving human lives, that's not my primary goal - I simply want to expand human knowledge. Unfortunately, I'd also like to own a car, and lots of books, and various musical instruments. I've been wanting a video projector for a while too.
I don't think I'd find industry as rewarding in a purely scientific sense. But the odds of me getting a faculty job are slim, and even if I did, I'd be 40 by the time I was settled in with tenure (assuming I get it), and I'd probably still be single and working nonstop. Alternately, I could spend the rest of my career as a glorified postdoc, doing terrific science with some of the best people in the world, but making very little money and relatively little fame. The easier course would be to simply skip all this, go into biotech, and work in anonymity doing drug development, but without ever having to deal about funding problems or paying the rent.
I know this sounds shallow and materialistic, but I live in the Bay Area, and since all the women here are shallow and materialistic, I figure I don't have much of a choice unless I want to remain single for the rest of my life. The only thing less sexy than being a geeky, underpaid, overworked 25-year-old scientist is being a geeky, underpaid, overworked, 40-year-old scientist.
Intergovernmental cooperation in regulating the Internet is a recipe for disaster. An effective set of world-wide anti-spam policies will simply be a precedent that the US Congress can point to when pushing even more invasive laws like the DMCA. Or, to be fair, the rest of the world can use it as a precedent for pushing their ridiculous censorship rules.
I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I just don't think we need a new set of laws to deal with every little annoyance, and I'd rather see the Internet be as unregulated as possible. Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers. If the Internet can't be self-regulating, it's ultimately doomed to failure or Balkanization.
I was waiting to order one until I could be sure it wasn't going to be immediately obsoleted. Now, however, I have to wait till September, and my lab needs a new computer now. This is seriously bad news for me - we don't need to spend twice as much on a G5 tower that'll only be used for email and word processing. And we'll buy a Windows machine over my dead body.
All software I need runs on windows... without the need for third party software to run it.
And all the software I need runs on Linux, without figuring out how to port it to Windows or installing third party software (e.g. Cygwin). That's because I use my computer for actual work, not video games and instant messaging.
The only time I ever need to use Windows is for giving presentations, because I haven't been able to get my laptop to play nice with video projectors.