How about represntation by lottery? "Sorry, sir, you "won" the lottery and have to go to Congress."
This idea occurred to me because I read somewhere that "average people on the street" do better on civics tests than average Congresspeople.
At least, if you have a lottery like I propose, then you get real population representation. You'll have single moms, welfare people, homeless, lots of middle class, and maybe just ONE OR TWO (in the Senate) rich bastards.
And *all* of them there as a duty, not as some sort of power trip.
You nailed it. We should be using the money in more cost-effective ways of saving lives.
One thing you missed, though. A person's WAGE is FAR LESS than his worth to society, or CEO's and other parasites wouldn't be so damn rich.
As a matter of fact, labor's slice of the wealth pie has gotten smaller while the absolute size of the pie has got bigger. Your average guy is probably worth $120k per year, it's just that he only sees $40k of it.
But even with that factor of 3, it's STILL too expensive to do this.
What you say is great if you're not one of the 90,000 who die per year. And you're right about the payback--antibiotics don't make money, which is why I advocate public support for the development of new ones. Payback is the issue that keeps drug companies from falling all over themselves to meet this need.
THEN, you carefully restrict how the new ones get used so they stay effective as long as possible.
The 500M development cost works out to $500 or so per life saved over 10 years. Maybe it's worth it???? Not to mention worldwide application, the cost gets a LOT LESS per life saved.
Please compare this with the benefits of our trillion dollar wars.
I hope you can see that we need NEW antibiotics (or bacteriophages or whatever) because as you've pointed out, we've destroyed the effectiveness of the EXISTING ones by ABUSING them.
How about we get new antibiotics, AND we don't abuse them? So things like drug-resistant tuberculosis aren't a death sentence?
Thank you, you've rebutted very effectively. We need new antibiotics, because the ones we have don't work anymore, AND we need to protect the new ones by not abusing them!
Actually, I don't care whether it's new antibiotics or phages or chemicals which disable bugs from being able to resist antibiotics, I do, however, want something that works, unlike antibiotics nowadays.
By FAR the biggest need for drugs we have is for new antibiotics.
I'd be willing to support, with my own money, antibiotic development efforts. I'd support use of public money for antibiotic development.
In the USA, some 90,000 people die every year due to antibiotic resistant infections and that number is growing every year. In 1992, that number was 13,000.
To put this in perspective, we get 30x the deaths every year from antibiotic resistance than was inflicted on us by the 9/11 attacks. Every year.
Where is our war on antibiotic resistant bugs? Where are the billions spent to combat this 30x greater (actually higher, because we don't have 9/11-scale attacks every year) threat to our lives?
However, there ARE legitimate purposes for hunting other than cowardly bloodlust, and if there are such reasons, why not hunt as efficiently as possible, and in the least risky way?
Food, for example--what's wrong with obtaining your meat yourself instead of being even more cowardly and just letting someone else do your animal slaughter for you? YOUR only risk for the meat you eat is that the industrial farmer will poison you with germs or toxins.
Another is control of animal populations--we wiped out most predators for our own safety because we find it inconvenient to have our kids, pets, or our livestock taken by, say, a mountain lion and eaten. Without these predators, certain herbivore populations grow out of control and become unhealthy for the environment. Why not hunt them down to thin the herds? Isn't a quick bullet more humane than slow starvation?
Personally, I'm thankful that there are hunters out there thinning the herds--I like the fact that the odds of me inadvertently slamming a deer through my windshield are being reduced.
You might have nailed it. If you remove the mass from the top of the Himalayas in the form of water, the reduced weight will cause the mountains to rebound upward from the pressure from underneath.
Effectively, missing water mass is replaced by mineral mass, in what might be an almost perfect balance.
The term for this is isostacy, there's a wikipedia article on it.
Our economy is increasingly winner-take-all. Entertainment: mass media raises a few stars as superstars, most of the profession starves. Once upon a time, local entertainment could provide a living. Now all those local entertainers have to compete with superstars on TV. They can't.
Big company management: with fewer, bigger, companies, very few people ever get a chance to be a CEO-type. A few winner superstars, and then everyone else.
Sports: same story as entertainment.
Bankers: apparently concentrated in Wall Street!
What used to be distributed markets supporting many are now global markets supporting a few superstars, opportunity for most has dried up.
This is big shift in our economy and society, and I don't think we've really adapted well. Unless we want a society of 99% losers and 1% superstars, we're going to have to do SOMETHING. We could do something about it ourselves: just shun mass entertainment and the superstars and support the locals instead. Don't buy in big-box stores. Try not to buy stuff from SuperCorps. But all that may not be enough, and we'll have a bald choice between Government income-levelling or serfdom for most.
I think the process for choosing reviewers is a lot less about respect than you think. You can get picked for a review by just having published a bit in the same field, by being named by someone else who is too busy to do the review himself, or because the editor knows you personally and he asks you to do the review as a favor.
Yes, picking leaders in the field is preferred, but they are often unavailable! Reviews take time.
Funny, as a moderator I do pretty much exactly the opposite of everything you said moderators do, with one exception:
I do NOT, generally, like to engage in "moderation fights" where I mod down what someone has modded up, or vice versa, except in really egregious cases of mis-moderation.
I rarely mod down.
I like to mod posts that haven't been modded already, to lift up interesting/deserving posts so that they can be seen.
I'm not a stickler on modding down off-topic posts, but I will in really egregious cases.
I would say 80% of my mods are used for "+1 interesting", another 15% are "+1 insightful", and all others are 5% or less.
Of course, my karma is also very high, and not mostly because of my own comments.
Sir, I disagree. I rather think that broad-spectrum flu vaccines are what we should be researching, instead of deliberately breeding deadly strains in inadequate containment facilities.
A broad-spectrum vaccine protects against ALL flu, not just this year's common mutations.
In fact, I have read that a broad-spectrum flu vaccine isn't too far out in the future.
The DRACO antiviral drug from MIT also seems like a good option.
Last, someone else has made the point that you can test contagiousness and deadliness independently. I.e., don't produce virii that are both, but only one or the other: only with BOTH characteristics is a virus world-threatening.
You can argue that precision drone strikes are immoral, but you can't call it terrorism as people commonly use the word.
"Terrorism" is an unfocused attack on people indirectly connected to the grievance. The goal is to instill fear of random mayhem in a populace. Precision drone strikes are more like assassination.
I just WISH "terrorists" would target more carefully. It'd be nice to see people who are at best indirectly responsible for whatever grievance (and who are often entirely innocent) left out of the fight.
Actually, if you read your article, it bears out my argument. They say only a very few of these guys survived in vacuum, in the hard radiation, for 10 days.
Without the hard radiation survival is much better, but any lifeform using natural means to go from one planet to another (as in a dust plume, etc.) would, more likely than not, have to survive in the hard radiation for **years**.
All that UV (and other) radiation exposure would end up splitting pretty much ANY organic molecule of any size, proteins, enzymes, DNA, RNA, ribosomes, fatty acid chains, etc. into little, lifeless, bits.
Interestingly, I think it is true that lots of lifeforms could survive the high radiation if they were not dormant and able to actively reproduce/self-repair. It's the combination of the hard radiation and the vacuum enforcing dormancy that really sterilizes everything.
Maybe if life were in the middle of a really big rock going from planet to planet, which would shield it from most radiation, and that really big rock somehow managed both to be launched and to land softly enough not to immolate its contents, THEN life could go planet to planet "naturally".
I don't know how to assess the odds of that vs. the spontaneous arisal of life, don't know if anyone does!
Given the hard radiation environment in space, I doubt even the toughest bacterial spore can survive a multi-year trip through space from one planet to another, let alone a millennial interstellar trip. And even if it does, it's likely to find the hard landing onto its new home lethal as well. It'll either burn up in the atmosphere it hits or be completely dissociated if it hits something hard.
I mean, look at what light, just light, does to even durable plastics and other polymers over the years, even with earth's atmosphere to shield it. DNA and RNA are more delicate, and the radiation environment is harsher.
I mean, we can kill virtually all bacteria just by boiling it in water....
The idea is to eat the mulberries produced. Not too many native plants produce anything edible. My policy is if I can't eat it, I don't want to use valuable water resources on it.
I have planted no less than 16 trees on my property in the 7 years I've lived there. I would plant more if only my wife and city regulations would let me (I'm banned from planting mulberry due to pollen concerns, for example.) No need to give up my house in order to have some reforestation!
I'm in favor of reducing carbon output by producing electricity with nuclear or other non-carbon-releasing options.
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How about represntation by lottery? "Sorry, sir, you "won" the lottery and have to go to Congress."
This idea occurred to me because I read somewhere that "average people on the street" do better on civics tests than average Congresspeople.
At least, if you have a lottery like I propose, then you get real population representation. You'll have single moms, welfare people, homeless, lots of middle class, and maybe just ONE OR TWO (in the Senate) rich bastards.
And *all* of them there as a duty, not as some sort of power trip.
--PM
You nailed it. We should be using the money in more cost-effective ways of saving lives.
One thing you missed, though. A person's WAGE is FAR LESS than his worth to society, or CEO's and other parasites wouldn't be so damn rich.
As a matter of fact, labor's slice of the wealth pie has gotten smaller while the absolute size of the pie has got bigger. Your average guy is probably worth $120k per year, it's just that he only sees $40k of it.
But even with that factor of 3, it's STILL too expensive to do this.
--PM
Not really, there are drugs which won't kill bugs themselves, won't hurt them at all, but simply disable them from being able to resist antibiotics.
You could never give one of these WITHOUT an antibiotic partner and expect it to do anything.
It's just another step in the arms race, though.
--PM
What you say is great if you're not one of the 90,000 who die per year. And you're right about the payback--antibiotics don't make money, which is why I advocate public support for the development of new ones. Payback is the issue that keeps drug companies from falling all over themselves to meet this need.
THEN, you carefully restrict how the new ones get used so they stay effective as long as possible.
The 500M development cost works out to $500 or so per life saved over 10 years. Maybe it's worth it???? Not to mention worldwide application, the cost gets a LOT LESS per life saved.
Please compare this with the benefits of our trillion dollar wars.
Now, how about some new antibiotics, please?
--PM
I hope you can see that we need NEW antibiotics (or bacteriophages or whatever) because as you've pointed out, we've destroyed the effectiveness of the EXISTING ones by ABUSING them.
How about we get new antibiotics, AND we don't abuse them?
So things like drug-resistant tuberculosis aren't a death sentence?
--PM
We still need NEW antibiotics, because as you've pointed out, we've destroyed the effectiveness of the EXISTING ones by ABUSING them.
How about we get new antibiotics, AND we don't abuse them?
So things like drug-resistant tuberculosis aren't a death sentence?
--PM
Thank you, you've rebutted very effectively. We need new antibiotics, because the ones we have don't work anymore, AND we need to protect the new ones by not abusing them!
--PM
Right you are, sir, but still the problem remains that the current set of antibiotics has been largely defeated by our germ adversaries.
We need to do both, and make sure the new ones aren't defeated in the same way as the old ones.
In addition to what you said, really good sanitation in hospitals would cut the death rate down a great deal, too.
--PM
Actually, I don't care whether it's new antibiotics or phages or chemicals which disable bugs from being able to resist antibiotics, I do, however, want something that works, unlike antibiotics nowadays.
--PM
By FAR the biggest need for drugs we have is for new antibiotics.
I'd be willing to support, with my own money, antibiotic development efforts. I'd support use of public money for antibiotic development.
In the USA, some 90,000 people die every year due to antibiotic resistant infections and that number is growing every year. In 1992, that number was 13,000.
To put this in perspective, we get 30x the deaths every year from antibiotic resistance than was inflicted on us by the 9/11 attacks. Every year.
Where is our war on antibiotic resistant bugs? Where are the billions spent to combat this 30x greater (actually higher, because we don't have 9/11-scale attacks every year) threat to our lives?
Best,
--PeterM
I don't hunt.
However, there ARE legitimate purposes for hunting other than cowardly bloodlust, and if there are such reasons, why not hunt as efficiently as possible, and in the least risky way?
Food, for example--what's wrong with obtaining your meat yourself instead of being even more cowardly and just letting someone else do your animal slaughter for you? YOUR only risk for the meat you eat is that the industrial farmer will poison you with germs or toxins.
Another is control of animal populations--we wiped out most predators for our own safety because we find it inconvenient to have our kids, pets, or our livestock taken by, say, a mountain lion and eaten. Without these predators, certain herbivore populations grow out of control and become unhealthy for the environment. Why not hunt them down to thin the herds? Isn't a quick bullet more humane than slow starvation?
Personally, I'm thankful that there are hunters out there thinning the herds--I like the fact that the odds of me inadvertently slamming a deer through my windshield are being reduced.
--PM
Bring malware or false information on your electronics and turn the tables on the people getting your information?
Have the malware lie low and just phone home so you can gather information on their information gathering techniques?
How about loads of FAKE credit card identities that trigger "silent" fraud alerts that law enforcement can then trace back to the fraudsters?
Poison the well of exploitable information enough and you will "kill" all the bad guys!
--PM
You might have nailed it. If you remove the mass from the top of the Himalayas in the form of water, the reduced weight will cause the mountains to rebound upward from the pressure from underneath.
Effectively, missing water mass is replaced by mineral mass, in what might be an almost perfect balance.
The term for this is isostacy, there's a wikipedia article on it.
--PM
Tried eHarmony, total failure. Gave up, worked on getting a life instead, met someone before very long.
Married now.
--PM
Sir,
Our economy is increasingly winner-take-all.
Entertainment: mass media raises a few stars as superstars, most of the profession starves. Once upon a time, local entertainment could provide a living. Now all those local entertainers have to compete with superstars on TV. They can't.
Big company management: with fewer, bigger, companies, very few people ever get a chance to be a CEO-type. A few winner superstars, and then everyone else.
Sports: same story as entertainment.
Bankers: apparently concentrated in Wall Street!
What used to be distributed markets supporting many are now global markets supporting a few superstars, opportunity for most has dried up.
This is big shift in our economy and society, and I don't think we've really adapted well. Unless we want a society of 99% losers and 1% superstars, we're going to have to do SOMETHING. We could do something about it ourselves: just shun mass entertainment and the superstars and support the locals instead. Don't buy in big-box stores. Try not to buy stuff from SuperCorps. But all that may not be enough, and we'll have a bald choice between Government income-levelling or serfdom for most.
-PeterM
I think the process for choosing reviewers is a lot less about respect than you think. You can get picked for a review by just having published a bit in the same field, by being named by someone else who is too busy to do the review himself, or because the editor knows you personally and he asks you to do the review as a favor.
Yes, picking leaders in the field is preferred, but they are often unavailable! Reviews take time.
--PM
Funny, as a moderator I do pretty much exactly the opposite of everything you said moderators do, with one exception:
I do NOT, generally, like to engage in "moderation fights" where I mod down what someone has modded up, or vice versa, except in really egregious cases of mis-moderation.
I rarely mod down.
I like to mod posts that haven't been modded already, to lift up interesting/deserving posts so that they can be seen.
I'm not a stickler on modding down off-topic posts, but I will in really egregious cases.
I would say 80% of my mods are used for "+1 interesting", another 15% are "+1 insightful", and all others are 5% or less.
Of course, my karma is also very high, and not mostly because of my own comments.
--PM
Sir, I disagree. I rather think that broad-spectrum flu vaccines are what we should be researching, instead of deliberately breeding deadly strains in inadequate containment facilities.
A broad-spectrum vaccine protects against ALL flu, not just this year's common mutations.
In fact, I have read that a broad-spectrum flu vaccine isn't too far out in the future.
The DRACO antiviral drug from MIT also seems like a good option.
Last, someone else has made the point that you can test contagiousness and deadliness independently. I.e., don't produce virii that are both, but only one or the other: only with BOTH characteristics is a virus world-threatening.
--PM
Hello,
You can argue that precision drone strikes are immoral, but you can't call it terrorism as people commonly use the word.
"Terrorism" is an unfocused attack on people indirectly connected to the grievance. The goal is to instill fear of random mayhem in a populace. Precision drone strikes are more like assassination.
I just WISH "terrorists" would target more carefully. It'd be nice to see people who are at best indirectly responsible for whatever grievance (and who are often entirely innocent) left out of the fight.
--PM
And which do you think bacteria resemble more, plastics, or granite?
--PM
Actually, if you read your article, it bears out my argument. They say only a very few of these guys survived in vacuum, in the hard radiation, for 10 days.
Without the hard radiation survival is much better, but any lifeform using natural means to go from one planet to another (as in a dust plume, etc.) would, more likely than not, have to survive in the hard radiation for **years**.
All that UV (and other) radiation exposure would end up splitting pretty much ANY organic molecule of any size, proteins, enzymes, DNA, RNA, ribosomes, fatty acid chains, etc. into little, lifeless, bits.
Interestingly, I think it is true that lots of lifeforms could survive the high radiation if they were not dormant and able to actively reproduce/self-repair. It's the combination of the hard radiation and the vacuum enforcing dormancy that really sterilizes everything.
Maybe if life were in the middle of a really big rock going from planet to planet, which would shield it from most radiation, and that really big rock somehow managed both to be launched and to land softly enough not to immolate its contents, THEN life could go planet to planet "naturally".
I don't know how to assess the odds of that vs. the spontaneous arisal of life, don't know if anyone does!
--PM
Given the hard radiation environment in space, I doubt even the toughest bacterial spore can survive a multi-year trip through space from one planet to another, let alone a millennial interstellar trip. And even if it does, it's likely to find the hard landing onto its new home lethal as well. It'll either burn up in the atmosphere it hits or be completely dissociated if it hits something hard.
I mean, look at what light, just light, does to even durable plastics and other polymers over the years, even with earth's atmosphere to shield it. DNA and RNA are more delicate, and the radiation environment is harsher.
I mean, we can kill virtually all bacteria just by boiling it in water....
--PM
The idea is to eat the mulberries produced. Not too many native plants produce anything edible. My policy is if I can't eat it, I don't want to use valuable water resources on it.
--PM
I have planted no less than 16 trees on my property in the 7 years I've lived there. I would plant more if only my wife and city regulations would let me (I'm banned from planting mulberry due to pollen concerns, for example.) No need to give up my house in order to have some reforestation!
I'm in favor of reducing carbon output by producing electricity with nuclear or other non-carbon-releasing options.
--PM
And we're going to catch a significant fraction of it in plastic that we have to manufacture? Seriously?
How about we use something self-replicating instead, which does the same thing and produces useful by-products, like, say, trees?
--PM