You went to both as a child? Go back as an adult and I guarantee you will change your mind. Stonehenge looks like it does because it has been rebuilt several times in the past 100 years - whether they actually are representative of how they stood thousands of years go is still subject to discussion.
Stonehenge has been excavated, in different areas and to different depths, several times in the last century, and yes, there was some re-erecting of stones in several of these excavation phases. However, the nature of the site is such that we can have high confidence that the stones which have been re-erected are very close to their original positions. Part of the reason for that confidence is that antiquarians as far back as the mid-15th century have been producing drawings and sketches of the structure. But most of the reason is that the stones are each set into pits excavated into the bedrock of the site. Soils on the downlands are typically under a meter thick, which is insufficient to provide adequate foundation for any substantial structure. So, to build (for example) a large hut you'd need to excavate a deep narrow hole in the ground to receive the bottom half-meter or so of your main posts, then slot the posts into the pit and wedge them into upright position with smaller stones. Exactly the same techniques, scaled up, were used on the stone circles (look at the mortise and tenon carpentry joints on the tops of the trilithons, for example). The archaeology of habitation sites and ritual sites throughout southern England is literally peppered with these holes in the ground. Since digging holes in the ground is hard work, and you want your post (or stone) to stay closely upright, you make the hole a close fit for the post/ stone with due allowance for how you're going to slot the stone in. When archaeologists come back to the site 'X' thousands of years later, they find all the old holes in the ground filled-in with soil and contrasting very clearly with the clean white Chalk. The Stonehenge site is absolutely littered with these holes, and many of them can be assigned with confidence to individual stones. If organic debris is found at the bottom of any particular hole (say, an antler-pick), it can (potentially) be carbon-dated, adding to the details of the site's chronology. (Wooden artefacts, say the shaft from a broken axe, might also be suitable for dendrochronological dating - tree-ring methods.) For particular holes we have good evidence of a latest possible date for their excavation (the date of the oldest material in the hole. Some holes may have retained their stones in position since antiquity, preventing their accurate dating.
The best thing about Avebury is that its not a stage managed tourist trap - you simply park your car and go wandering, you can even touch the stones if you wish and theres no entrance fee. The sheer size of the monument is fantastic.
I entirely agree ; I visited Stonehenge with my (Russian) wife a few weeks ago, which she was duly impressed by, while also being underwhelmed by the trampling hordes. Then we went over to Avebury to meet my parents for lunch in the pub there (well worthwhile, BTW) and spend the afternoon going around the stones. That was much more interesting. And as you say, getting up close and personal with the stones is much more interesting than being shepherded along a donkey track. At least we didn't have to pay for Stonehenge (NTS members) My father has been teaching a WEA course in megalithic archaeology for a decade or so, and a day trip to Avebury is a normal part of the curriculum.
Clive Sinclair hasn't made billions since then, I'm not sure if he even made millions, but Alan Sugar has made billions[3]
- Is Clive Sinclair thought of by the geekish community of the UK as "that man on the telly with the revolting attitude to his staff and apprentices?" - Is Clive Sinclair short of workspace, equipment, or food? - Is Alan sugar anything more than a self-inflated barrow-boy?
If the answer to all of the above questions is "No" (which I think are the correct answers), then Sinclair comes out a clear winner. Money isn't everything. In fact, once you get above a certain (personally-determined) amount, it's not even particularly important (Alan Sugar's barrow-boy like attitudes and shouting on TV suggests that he values that above making money ; Sinclair's reported taking up of poker at a serious level suggests that he's not particularly concerned about it either).
I insist on the the most effective automotive anti-theft device ever invented or marketed: the stick shift.
Only works for some people, in some countries.
Who needs a flashing red light when there is a third pedal and gear shift that scare the crap out of 90% of potential drivers of my car?
Why would having a third pedal and a gear shift lever scare people? I've never had to use the extra couple of gear levers on a LandCruiser (is that their name? the Toyota 4x4s), but why would their presence scare me? NOT having control of the gear selection mechanism is more scary than having control and positive feedback. In the 19 years which I've had a driving license and the 6 years in which I've owned one, I've seen approximately 3 cars with automatic transmissions, two of which were taxis. The one which I've had to drive was a works vehicle when I worked for an American company, which we kept mainly for when gear-shift-handicapped colleagues came into the country. It's more of a shift changing to driving on the other side of the road, and heavens knows that's trivial enough!
The friend who sold me my first car celebrated me getting my driving license by taking me into the woods on the back of his motor bike, getting off it and telling me, "that's the clutch ; you change gears up and down with that pedal ; that's the throttle ; you know how a transmission matches engine revs and power to driving wheel revs and power ; you now know how to drive anything from a 50cc motorbike to a 5000 horsepower drilling rig. Go!" And I went. Wobbly, uncertain, but under control. Until I found a peat bog.
Our second daughter had an unusual protein count AFP [wikipedia.org] in her amniotic fluid and the medical staff told us that she was very likely to have Down's syndrome.
Not being a pædiatrician, I'll take that as read : that an unusual AFP protein count is associated with an increased probability of the ftus having trisomy-21. It's a probabilistic thing, not a on/off measurement.
She did not develop Down's and she's in college now.
The foetus that developed into your daughter hasn't ever had trisomy-21. There may be some other abnormality that lead to the AFP oddity, but it obviously hasn't had any serious effects (yet). A human that's more developed than the first cellular division cannot develop trisomy-21 (actually, I don't think it can develop any later than reduction-division to form the gametes).
Considering the remarkable ability of Chinese vessels in the era before Christ we may have Chinese settlers in early South America.
I've listened in on the discussions over whether or not the Chinese "beat" Columbus to discovering the Americas, but not been terribly interested (if they got there, they didn't settle or stay, for whatever reason). However I've never heard any proposition that the Chinese were doing this 2 millennia ago. 600 years ago, yes, I've heard that, but not two millennia.
Please cite your sources supporting a date significantly before the year 1400 (on the Gregorian/ Julian calendar) for a Chinese trans-Pacific voyage.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the original article sounds worth a proper read. Which I'm going to do once I've scanned the commentary. My take on an alleged association between the Orcadians and north Siberians would be to look at the Vikings, who were certainly present in Orkney, and were operating in the "Mediæval climactic optimum" ; I wouldn't put a bit of North-Siberian seed-sowing past them.
Hrm, I think you replied to my original message where I specified this as a problem for future generations and the problem being malaria, but sorry if that was unclear.
Certainly wasn't clear - I'd just been looking at the leaves of the message tree, not at nodes deeper in/ further up.
I suspect that unless any of the sterile breeders or vaccination programs are effective, at some point humans will make this choice, though I'm not sure I'll be around to see it.
Wrong target - Siberian mosquitoes are a different genus (I think Culex, but IANA-entomologist) to the several species of tropical, malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles, I'm sure). Since there are several species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, each quite likely to have a number of local races (possibly distinct sub-species, not that this distinction is clearly defined) with significantly different behaviours (I'm fairly sure this has been proven for some of the populations being assessed for "sterile-flooding" control techniques, but IANA-entomologist), then the likelihood is that there is not going to be one technique which is going to be uniformly effective.
Past experience is that not being completely effective on the first attempt at extermination in-the-wild is only going to breed-in resistance in the populations (e.g. MRSA methicillin-resistant Staphyllococcus aureus, named because S.aureus has successively acquired resistance to penicillin-derived antibiotics [late 1940s], then methicillin [late 1950s], and more recently tetracycline and erythromycin, leaving vancomycin as the sole remaining option ; resistance to vancomycin has reached intermediate levels in some populations [late 1990s], signalling the end of this line of treatment). So, the message is to hit the bugs overwhelmingly hard, overwhelmingly fast, with multiple attacks simultaneously.
The mosquitoes are a problem where they come into contact with people ; but in afflicted countries (which could include the UK within the next decade or two) the same species exist "up country", affecting politically unimportant people (I am being heartlessly descriptive; I am not condoning this state of affairs). The reality of political behaviour in many "malaria belt" countries is that urban areas with politically important populations will receive the expenditure in a control or extermination programme, and the politically unimportant "up country" areas will get lesser-, minimal- or zero- expenditure. These areas will act as population reservoirs for the mosquitoes to persist in while the random mutations which will confer resistance to the chemicals or techniques firstly occur and secondarily are amplified in frequency in the population ; mosquitoes do not have the same ideas of social boundaries as humans and mix between areas. Resistance will occur with approximately the likelihood of the sun rising in the east tomorrow.
Pending a pretty comprehensive change in human nature, I don't see an attempt at exterminating the relevant mosquitoes being successful. Going back to my earlier questions of whether an extermination attempt would be effective or efficient (or...), there are real questions over whether such an attempt would be effective and even more profound questions over whether it would be more efficient to change human behaviour by improving drainage, prevention of human-mosquito contact, and simple education. All of which would have beneficial side effects, even if the Anopheles mosquito extermination project fails. Of course, saying that would mark me (in some circles) as being a card-carrying Communist.
Sorry if I seem to be harping on about this, but as you can tell I have real doubts about the wisdom of attempting mosquito extermination, and I think that the more people who know about the hazards, the less likely it is to be attempted. (Or asked for.)
No seriously, that's the answer. All the answer that's necessary.
Why would that cause us to not want to eradicate them?
It doesn't address the question at all. To find the answer for that question, you need to look into your own morals. Or, if you've surrendered your moral judgement to someone else, ask them.
I chose to not pursue studies and technologies that would or could lead to extermination of mosquitoes (or any other organism), but that's a personal choice. I am not your guide, and nor is nature.
Considering that the Siberian mosquitoes (and the West Highland Midge, from which I suffer more often) transmit few common or major diseases to humans (or other animals), I can't think of anything that would push me to pursue such studies. Now, considering the Anopheles genus of mosquitoes (which transmit the Plasmodium genus of protists, and so lead to malaria in humans... well you can make a stronger case for annihilating those particular mosquitoes. (I'm not at all sure that such a project would be any of possible, effective, efficient, or desirable. But making sure to attack the correct target is an important starting point.)
We typically camped not too far from the road, and there is a lot of low marshy ground.
You've just described most of Russia east of the Urals >G< . Well, to a first approximation anyway. A few hundred miles north-south makes quite a difference between degree of woodland versus open swamp, but it's all pretty swampy.
Typical procedure when we stopped for the day was to wear rain gear and mosquito net head gear while setting up tents.
Those "net head" hats are a life-saver, aren't they?
Once tents were up, we climbed inside, smashed bugs that had gotten in and didn't get out until morning.
Standard Operating Practice in the Highlands too. Same problem, same solution.
More seriously - I threw away my music collection over a decade ago, and none of the audio shit that I hear coming from passing cars, out of night clubs etc give me any reason to expect that I'll increase the amount I listen to in the foreseeable future.
Trouble is, due to their own well-documented incompetence in security, they'd have a pretty good chance to claim they simply didn't know it was illegal.
Do TJX (whoever they are) have any divisions outside America, so that I know who to avoid?
Surely, 640 threads ought to be enough for anybody.
I have a slightly sickening image of Bill Gates as mill overseer, using his whip to drive the children back under the looms in some sort of dark, satanic mill. 640 threads at 20 threads/inch would give you about 32inch wide cloth, which is adequate for anyone I'm sure.
Will someone please take the expected jokes about "patching" or "darning" over the 640 thread limit?
This reminds me of a Memorial Day conversation: "Are mosquitoes any good at all?" That is, do they play some small important role in the ecosystem such that we'd miss them if they were gone?
They perform the most important function in the world (from the perspective of the genes inside a mosquito) : they produce baby mosquitos. No seriously, that's the answer. All the answer that's necessary.
That is a little more severe than I encountered when bicycling across Russia last summer.
Cycling is one thing. I'd be very worried about the attitude of the Russian drivers to cyclists. I don't think they'd be very friendly.
* Big biting flies, 2-3cm; could keep up with a 20km/hr cyclist. Got situated before biting, so if you were quick enough, could swat them away. Seemed to be gone if it was too cold.
That's probably the big car-chasing ones I met.
* Mosquitoes; did not keep up with a 20km/hr cyclist. Particularly active in morning and evening.
All over the place ; less worrying than the West Highland Midge (which has a well-earned reputation).
* Small biting flies; not a problem when traveling but a problem when camping.
("mosheke", approximately), if I remember my Russian. They're the ones that can bite through leather gloves. Yes, I can see them being a problem for camping, when you've got your head over the stove etc. Standing around trying to measure, sketch and log 30m of drilling core isn't fun either.
* Small non-biting flies; not a big problem
Not even too populous (contra the West Highland Midge, which bite some people but not me. Thankfully.)
Which parts of West Siberia were you in? I've spent 2 months working at Muravlenko, about 3 months (in installments) working and holidaying in (Noyabrsk), a couple of months at (Salym).
the working conditions in the Siberian summer. Think: mosquitos.
Mosquitoes ad nauseam.
Mosquitoes to the point of anaphylaxis (well, that was what the rig's medic was afraid of, which is why he evacuated me back to the base camp).
Mosquitoes that can maintain eye contact at a meter range (i.e you can see it's eyes at a meter range) through the window of the car, then launch an assault on this nice juicy mammal, only being stopped by the glass of the window.
Mosquitoes that can keep pace with you while driving at 40km/hr on a dirt road.
Mosquitoes that can bite you through a leather glove, 20 times in one evening's work. They choose the clipboard hand, because you can't swat with that and get your work done.
Don't get me wrong - Siberia is interesting, but don't forget the industrial strength insect repellent and the appropriate clothing. If you don't know what's appropriate, ask a bee keeper. And don't forget the vaccination against tick-borne encaphalitis (which includes Lyme disease, I believe), which takes several weeks to become effective.
Do you know why your inner ear has those three little bones that are so important to hearing? It has them because those were the jaw bones of reptiles, and they just happened to be in basically the right place that they were a few gamma-rays away from being detached.
So... reptiles can't hear?
That's not what the poster said, and nor is it what he (or standard evolutionary theory) meant.
It's an observational fact that most reptiles today (birds excepted) don't have terribly good hearing, and often augment their hearing by laying their skulls along the ground. The physics are analogous to the oft-seen techniques of placing your ear to a railway line to try to hear a train coming from some distance away, or putting a screwdriver to the valve gear of a pump as a crude stethoscope. So, it is thought that primitive reptiles, including the ancestors of mammals, dinosaurs (including birds), snakes, lizards, turtles and other modern reptiles, all listened to the outside world with their skulls laying on the ground. As jaw structures changed in some animals, this freed-up some lower-jaw bones to continue their hearing function separate from their tooth-support function. And that is how mammals ended up with what are (developmentally) jaw bones or gill arches in their ears.
But then again, since ears and pretty much every other skull bone not involved in the braincase are developmentally gill structures, is it any surprise to find jaw bones (gill structures) intimately associated with other gill structures.
(I'm sure you know much of this already, but letting the lies of creationists go unchallenged is one way of letting them continue to pollute the minds of otherwise intelligent people.)
from the economics-should-be-a-required-course dept.
Why?
Who, apart from the tiny proportion who want to set up their own businesses, needs to even know of the existence of courses in economics, let alone their contents?
Seriously - there seems to be this bizarre assumption on Slashdot that everyone wants the stress and shit that goes with being your own boss. Which, in a world where the indians outnumber the chiefs, is simply not going to happen.
They're using "infinity" to represent something that is so abundant that it's worthless. This is just economics terminology. A commodity that is "infinite" is like oxygen. Sure, there is actually a limited supply, but when is the last time you bought air (assuming you're not 80 years old with a respiratory disease)?
Poor example.
They're not charging for it YET but given half a chance, they would. And not just in the SF settings of MoonBase etc. Scuba divers have paid for air for decades (actually, they're paying for running the compressors, but the bill is there nonetheless) ; medical patients have paid for oxygen (not air, as you say) for almost as long as industry have paid for LOX and LN2, and that's probably in excess of a century ; but in the last couple of years people have started marketing "canned air" to the general public, largely on the back of hysteria about air pollution. So, someone is establishing a market price for such air, and I'd expect more people to get into the market. After all, we live in a world where people will buy bottled water to drink "because it's safer than tap water", and most of that bottled water is either taken direct from the tap water supply, or from springs which have lower quality than is allowed into the taps.
Besides that god also said to kill anyone caught working on the sabbath. Should that law also be implemented?
Certainly, and for all interpretations of "sabbath". Obviously, this would be quite an extensive project, so I'd suggest implementation in several stages - trying out the new law (and implementation details, production lines for handling the corpses, boxing lines for the Soylent, etc.) on a well-defined group which would include infringers and non-infringers. Then, after implementing on that relatively small group, a period of reflection and analysis of the results of the trial run. Finally, once the trial has been digested appropriately ('grokked' one could say), it would be time to proceed with full implementation.
So, who's appropriate as test group? How about the various preachers, imams, gurus, ministers (of religion ; for once I'm not talking about politicians), swamis and other related people (I use the term "people" as a physical description, not implying particular mental characteristics). Get them into the Soylent boxes, then let's see how good an idea this really is.
Well, if you are going to be pedantic nothing is really live because relativity precludes true simultaneity.
Does relativity preclude two events happening simultaneously? I'm not sure that it does. I'm pretty sure that it does preclude you from demonstrating that two events are simultaneous, and it probably precludes you from setting up two events that are simultaneous. But I don't think that it precludes two events which are otherwise unrelated from being simultaneous, as observed from some other specific location.
This "article" about the so-called misconceptions of wind-turbine bird-kills from a bunch of "sustainability enthusiasts" (their words) is about as worthless as it gets.
If it were done as a book, it would at least have the advantage of keeping a number of hand-sized sheets of paper in a convenient unit. Now, what could you use that for?
So, if I'm reading this correctly (and I'm quite possibly not), does this mean we can all expect to be sprayed before boarding a plane in the near future?
Not quite.
If this technique is deployed (a big "if"), then you can expect to be sprayed with a co-polymer solution of several quite active-sounding chemicals ; I don't think the article specified the solvent used ; the solution will then need to be dried off, obviously leaving a residue of the co-polymers some other monomers on your skin and goods. Finally you'll be exposed to (an unspecified level of an unspecified wavelength of ) ultraviolet light to show up any explosives you've been in contact with.
The drying step seems to have slipped past most other commentators. That could be a significant length of time added to the check-in time.
What wabout those washing powders which give that whiter-than-white look to clothes - they have chemicals which make clothes glow under UV light (a cool high-school experiment).
OBA - Optical Brightening Agent. There aren't that many compositions in use, and they have fairly distinctive spectral outputs. A suitable choice of UV source wavelength and appropriate filters for viewing the targets would allow quite adequate discrimination.
Of course, some retard will then end up replacing the specified UV lamp with one from the local disco equipment shop because it's cheaper, so the equipment will end up being ineffective. Such is life.
How about if someone just goes to the airport to see a friend off with the relevant residues on his hands and just touches door handles, taps, etc then goes back home without trying to board a plane.
There are plenty of sources of false positives. A number of years ago (I think about 2001, but I'm not sure if it was before or after 11/9), some friends of mine were going on a caving holiday in China. The party met up at the house of the person who lives closest to the airport the night before to do final packing etc, and they crashed out in the cellar before going to the airport next morning.
While going through security, one of the group's laptops (for processing survey data) got swabbed for explosives - and came up positive. At which point, other members of the group started getting swabbed and coming up positive.
What had happened was, the cellar in question was where the house-owner dumped his assorted caving shreddies and equipment after cleaning off the worst of the mud and slime. And the man in question was a keen "digger" who often (and perfectly legally) used commercial high explosives in his pursuit of new cave. So the cellar as a whole was fairly thoroughly contaminated with explosive residues.
In those distant days, the positive results didn't result in a 48-day interrogation without charge (the limit was 6 days for terrorism suspects, mostly animal-rights campaigners). Because by sheer chance the offending person happened to have his "bang licence" (a permit needed to actually go to an explosives supplier to buy explosives at retail) in with his passport, the coppers accepted their explanation and they made it onto their flight. Just.
Ah, halcyon days. Gone, with no prospect of return. Troglodytes (in the UK) have a habit of using military-surplus ammunition boxes for carrying small, fragile or water-sensitive items around when up to the neck in glutinous mud and shit ; I bet that has potential for more true-but-not-important positives.
There's another significant issue with this technique, but I'll scan the rest of the comments before posting on it.
Slashdot Mirror
- Is Clive Sinclair thought of by the geekish community of the UK as "that man on the telly with the revolting attitude to his staff and apprentices?"
- Is Clive Sinclair short of workspace, equipment, or food?
- Is Alan sugar anything more than a self-inflated barrow-boy?
If the answer to all of the above questions is "No" (which I think are the correct answers), then Sinclair comes out a clear winner. Money isn't everything. In fact, once you get above a certain (personally-determined) amount, it's not even particularly important (Alan Sugar's barrow-boy like attitudes and shouting on TV suggests that he values that above making money ; Sinclair's reported taking up of poker at a serious level suggests that he's not particularly concerned about it either).
In the 19 years which I've had a driving license and the 6 years in which I've owned one, I've seen approximately 3 cars with automatic transmissions, two of which were taxis. The one which I've had to drive was a works vehicle when I worked for an American company, which we kept mainly for when gear-shift-handicapped colleagues came into the country.
It's more of a shift changing to driving on the other side of the road, and heavens knows that's trivial enough!
The friend who sold me my first car celebrated me getting my driving license by taking me into the woods on the back of his motor bike, getting off it and telling me, "that's the clutch ; you change gears up and down with that pedal ; that's the throttle ; you know how a transmission matches engine revs and power to driving wheel revs and power ; you now know how to drive anything from a 50cc motorbike to a 5000 horsepower drilling rig. Go!" And I went. Wobbly, uncertain, but under control. Until I found a peat bog.
Not being a pædiatrician, I'll take that as read : that an unusual AFP protein count is associated with an increased probability of the ftus having trisomy-21. It's a probabilistic thing, not a on/off measurement.The foetus that developed into your daughter hasn't ever had trisomy-21. There may be some other abnormality that lead to the AFP oddity, but it obviously hasn't had any serious effects (yet). A human that's more developed than the first cellular division cannot develop trisomy-21 (actually, I don't think it can develop any later than reduction-division to form the gametes).
I've listened in on the discussions over whether or not the Chinese "beat" Columbus to discovering the Americas, but not been terribly interested (if they got there, they didn't settle or stay, for whatever reason). However I've never heard any proposition that the Chinese were doing this 2 millennia ago. 600 years ago, yes, I've heard that, but not two millennia.
Please cite your sources supporting a date significantly before the year 1400 (on the Gregorian/ Julian calendar) for a Chinese trans-Pacific voyage.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the original article sounds worth a proper read. Which I'm going to do once I've scanned the commentary. My take on an alleged association between the Orcadians and north Siberians would be to look at the Vikings, who were certainly present in Orkney, and were operating in the "Mediæval climactic optimum" ; I wouldn't put a bit of North-Siberian seed-sowing past them.
Certainly wasn't clear - I'd just been looking at the leaves of the message tree, not at nodes deeper in/ further up.
Wrong target - Siberian mosquitoes are a different genus (I think Culex, but IANA-entomologist) to the several species of tropical, malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles, I'm sure). Since there are several species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, each quite likely to have a number of local races (possibly distinct sub-species, not that this distinction is clearly defined) with significantly different behaviours (I'm fairly sure this has been proven for some of the populations being assessed for "sterile-flooding" control techniques, but IANA-entomologist), then the likelihood is that there is not going to be one technique which is going to be uniformly effective.
Past experience is that not being completely effective on the first attempt at extermination in-the-wild is only going to breed-in resistance in the populations (e.g. MRSA methicillin-resistant Staphyllococcus aureus , named because S.aureus has successively acquired resistance to penicillin-derived antibiotics [late 1940s], then methicillin [late 1950s], and more recently tetracycline and erythromycin, leaving vancomycin as the sole remaining option ; resistance to vancomycin has reached intermediate levels in some populations [late 1990s], signalling the end of this line of treatment). So, the message is to hit the bugs overwhelmingly hard, overwhelmingly fast, with multiple attacks simultaneously.
The mosquitoes are a problem where they come into contact with people ; but in afflicted countries (which could include the UK within the next decade or two) the same species exist "up country", affecting politically unimportant people (I am being heartlessly descriptive; I am not condoning this state of affairs). The reality of political behaviour in many "malaria belt" countries is that urban areas with politically important populations will receive the expenditure in a control or extermination programme, and the politically unimportant "up country" areas will get lesser-, minimal- or zero- expenditure. These areas will act as population reservoirs for the mosquitoes to persist in while the random mutations which will confer resistance to the chemicals or techniques firstly occur and secondarily are amplified in frequency in the population ; mosquitoes do not have the same ideas of social boundaries as humans and mix between areas. Resistance will occur with approximately the likelihood of the sun rising in the east tomorrow.
Pending a pretty comprehensive change in human nature, I don't see an attempt at exterminating the relevant mosquitoes being successful. Going back to my earlier questions of whether an extermination attempt would be effective or efficient (or ...), there are real questions over whether such an attempt would be effective and even more profound questions over whether it would be more efficient to change human behaviour by improving drainage, prevention of human-mosquito contact, and simple education. All of which would have beneficial side effects, even if the Anopheles mosquito extermination project fails. Of course, saying that would mark me (in some circles) as being a card-carrying Communist.
Sorry if I seem to be harping on about this, but as you can tell I have real doubts about the wisdom of attempting mosquito extermination, and I think that the more people who know about the hazards, the less likely it is to be attempted. (Or asked for.)
How are they going to get my data? I've no intention of insulting myself or the Olympic ideal by attending this drug-and-machinery festival.
I chose to not pursue studies and technologies that would or could lead to extermination of mosquitoes (or any other organism), but that's a personal choice. I am not your guide, and nor is nature.
Considering that the Siberian mosquitoes (and the West Highland Midge, from which I suffer more often) transmit few common or major diseases to humans (or other animals), I can't think of anything that would push me to pursue such studies. Now, considering the Anopheles genus of mosquitoes (which transmit the Plasmodium genus of protists, and so lead to malaria in humans ... well you can make a stronger case for annihilating those particular mosquitoes. (I'm not at all sure that such a project would be any of possible, effective, efficient, or desirable. But making sure to attack the correct target is an important starting point.)
You've just described most of Russia east of the Urals >G< . Well, to a first approximation anyway. A few hundred miles north-south makes quite a difference between degree of woodland versus open swamp, but it's all pretty swampy.Those "net head" hats are a life-saver, aren't they?Standard Operating Practice in the Highlands too. Same problem, same solution.
Next question?
More seriously - I threw away my music collection over a decade ago, and none of the audio shit that I hear coming from passing cars, out of night clubs etc give me any reason to expect that I'll increase the amount I listen to in the foreseeable future.
Will someone please take the expected jokes about "patching" or "darning" over the 640 thread limit?
No seriously, that's the answer. All the answer that's necessary.
Which parts of West Siberia were you in? I've spent 2 months working at Muravlenko, about 3 months (in installments) working and holidaying in (Noyabrsk), a couple of months at (Salym).
Mosquitoes to the point of anaphylaxis (well, that was what the rig's medic was afraid of, which is why he evacuated me back to the base camp).
Mosquitoes that can maintain eye contact at a meter range (i.e you can see it's eyes at a meter range) through the window of the car, then launch an assault on this nice juicy mammal, only being stopped by the glass of the window.
Mosquitoes that can keep pace with you while driving at 40km/hr on a dirt road.
Mosquitoes that can bite you through a leather glove, 20 times in one evening's work. They choose the clipboard hand, because you can't swat with that and get your work done.
Don't get me wrong - Siberia is interesting, but don't forget the industrial strength insect repellent and the appropriate clothing. If you don't know what's appropriate, ask a bee keeper. And don't forget the vaccination against tick-borne encaphalitis (which includes Lyme disease, I believe), which takes several weeks to become effective.
It's an observational fact that most reptiles today (birds excepted) don't have terribly good hearing, and often augment their hearing by laying their skulls along the ground. The physics are analogous to the oft-seen techniques of placing your ear to a railway line to try to hear a train coming from some distance away, or putting a screwdriver to the valve gear of a pump as a crude stethoscope. So, it is thought that primitive reptiles, including the ancestors of mammals, dinosaurs (including birds), snakes, lizards, turtles and other modern reptiles, all listened to the outside world with their skulls laying on the ground. As jaw structures changed in some animals, this freed-up some lower-jaw bones to continue their hearing function separate from their tooth-support function. And that is how mammals ended up with what are (developmentally) jaw bones or gill arches in their ears.
But then again, since ears and pretty much every other skull bone not involved in the braincase are developmentally gill structures, is it any surprise to find jaw bones (gill structures) intimately associated with other gill structures.
(I'm sure you know much of this already, but letting the lies of creationists go unchallenged is one way of letting them continue to pollute the minds of otherwise intelligent people.)
Why?
Who, apart from the tiny proportion who want to set up their own businesses, needs to even know of the existence of courses in economics, let alone their contents?
Seriously - there seems to be this bizarre assumption on Slashdot that everyone wants the stress and shit that goes with being your own boss. Which, in a world where the indians outnumber the chiefs, is simply not going to happen.
Some people are in need of doses of reality.
They're not charging for it YET but given half a chance, they would. And not just in the SF settings of MoonBase etc. Scuba divers have paid for air for decades (actually, they're paying for running the compressors, but the bill is there nonetheless) ; medical patients have paid for oxygen (not air, as you say) for almost as long as industry have paid for LOX and LN2, and that's probably in excess of a century ; but in the last couple of years people have started marketing "canned air" to the general public, largely on the back of hysteria about air pollution. So, someone is establishing a market price for such air, and I'd expect more people to get into the market. After all, we live in a world where people will buy bottled water to drink "because it's safer than tap water", and most of that bottled water is either taken direct from the tap water supply, or from springs which have lower quality than is allowed into the taps.
So, who's appropriate as test group? How about the various preachers, imams, gurus, ministers (of religion ; for once I'm not talking about politicians), swamis and other related people (I use the term "people" as a physical description, not implying particular mental characteristics). Get them into the Soylent boxes, then let's see how good an idea this really is.
If this technique is deployed (a big "if"), then you can expect to be sprayed with a co-polymer solution of several quite active-sounding chemicals ; I don't think the article specified the solvent used ; the solution will then need to be dried off, obviously leaving a residue of the co-polymers some other monomers on your skin and goods. Finally you'll be exposed to (an unspecified level of an unspecified wavelength of ) ultraviolet light to show up any explosives you've been in contact with.
The drying step seems to have slipped past most other commentators. That could be a significant length of time added to the check-in time.
Of course, some retard will then end up replacing the specified UV lamp with one from the local disco equipment shop because it's cheaper, so the equipment will end up being ineffective. Such is life.
While going through security, one of the group's laptops (for processing survey data) got swabbed for explosives - and came up positive. At which point, other members of the group started getting swabbed and coming up positive.
What had happened was, the cellar in question was where the house-owner dumped his assorted caving shreddies and equipment after cleaning off the worst of the mud and slime. And the man in question was a keen "digger" who often (and perfectly legally) used commercial high explosives in his pursuit of new cave. So the cellar as a whole was fairly thoroughly contaminated with explosive residues.
In those distant days, the positive results didn't result in a 48-day interrogation without charge (the limit was 6 days for terrorism suspects, mostly animal-rights campaigners). Because by sheer chance the offending person happened to have his "bang licence" (a permit needed to actually go to an explosives supplier to buy explosives at retail) in with his passport, the coppers accepted their explanation and they made it onto their flight. Just.
Ah, halcyon days. Gone, with no prospect of return.
Troglodytes (in the UK) have a habit of using military-surplus ammunition boxes for carrying small, fragile or water-sensitive items around when up to the neck in glutinous mud and shit ; I bet that has potential for more true-but-not-important positives.
There's another significant issue with this technique, but I'll scan the rest of the comments before posting on it.