Between church, Cub/Boy Scouts (our city has one cub scout pack made up of exclusively homeschoolers, and one boy scout troop that is about 50/50), Awanas, and volunteering at a church-based public service ministry, my kids get plenty of social interaction
So between religion, a religion based organization, another religion based organization, and volunteering for religion, your kids are well prepared to handle the real world? Seriously, get your kids some secular experiences and let them make up their own minds. They'll be much better people for it.
Being forced into interaction with other children that pick on you is more likely to lead to potential social awkwardness than being able to choose the extracurriculars (and thus the peer groups) you like.
I dunno where I read it, but "It takes 20 years for a person to go from liberal to conservative without changing a single opinion." As young, liberal people are added to the world, and old conservative people die off the political landscape changes. This is called progress, and the old conservatives are always on the wrong side of it.
Debt is the present. If we don't take care of that, we will stagnate and disappear much more quickly. This is good, pay down debt first then invest.
Though, for all the talk of fiscal responsibility I don't see anyone mentioning that the US's military budget is about the same as the rest of the worlds military budgets combined. And 9 times that of China's. It would make sense to cut that first.
125 people, that's 62.5 couples. With 16,500 condoms, that's 264 condoms per couple per year. 264/365*7~= 3x per week. That's about right, maybe a little on the low side. Certainly not indicative of any captivity induced orgies.
How is Mars / The moon more exciting/pleasant than Antarctica? Can we really expect people to want to populate the Moon or Mars without a large financial/spiritual/political motivation?
You're right, Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did.
MTBF is calculated by taking a pool of equipment, running it for a short time, and finding out how many fail. You then assume that the failure rate is constant, and extrapolate that.
So lets apply this to humans. Infant mortality in the US is something like 50 deaths out of 1000 in the first year. That gives you a 5% chance of dying per year. It's easier to use this as a 95% chance of survival. Using the multiplication rule, the chances of survival dip below 50% after 14 years.
So yeah, it's pretty easy to exceed your MTBF by decades. And yeah, I'm pretty bored at work today.
The fact that people overreact to a perceived threat is not evidence that the threat is real. In my state, all pressurized gasses in cans are considered hazardous waste when used at a research institution. That means we can't even have reddi-whip at a department party without talking to EHS. Does this mean that reddi-whip isn't safe to use at home? Of course not.
You are over-blowing the risks. They are absolutely manageable. We have a lot more to worry about from people dumping paint-thinner down the drain than from DIY bio.
The original Xbox was a success? The Xbox sold about as much as the Gamecube, and about as fifth as many as the PS2. The gamecube made Nintendo a few hundred million dollars, while the Xbox lost microsoft a few billion dollars. The only success there is that it made Microsoft a legitimate name in console gaming, providing footing for the Xbox 360.
The only way to do at home what they claim to be doing is by using stuff from their academic research labs.
Not really. You can get E. coli that express recombinant enzymes and purify it yourself. And patents don't cover stuff for personal use, so you're clear there.
Besides the risks involved (those cell line are actually cancer cells and engineered bacteria are mutant germs
None of which have a chance to survive outside of carefully controlled laboratory conditions.
not to mention the radioactively labeled nucleic acid probes that might end up in the toilet
I doubt anyone's using radioactive probes at home, probably more fluorescence, chemiluminescence, etc.
Storing liquid nitrogen in your basement?
Not really a problem if you pony up for the right container.
Discarding ethidium-bromide and acrylamide gels?
There are non-toxic stains for agarose gels. Polymerized acrylamide is not that toxic either.
Biological experiments are different from software development, they need follow up and supervision through the end, which may take 2-4 days. Drosophilla flys can't be frozen like bacteria.
For people dedicated to the hobby, there's no reason they can't deal with that.
How do you discard biohazardous materials and mutagen/teratogen substances at home?
This is a valid concern. The best way is to find ways to perform experiments that don't require hazardous materials. There is a lot of biology that does require hazardous materials, but there's also a lot that doesn't.
I bet a PC with a custom cooling block and temperature monitoring software could be rigged into a thermal cycler for PCR. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but it would be good for a laugh.
I'm wondering how they get their hands on the raw materials. A freezer full of restriction enzymes is expensive. Do they grow up RE expressing cultures and purify it all themselves? What about stuff like dNTPs, agarose? That's some expensive stuff too.
I loved the original - I met a guy playing it in an apartment I rented in Amsterdam's red light district after Expedia failed to book my hotel - thought "wow, someone made an awesome looking 40k game!"
You were stranded in Amsterdam's red light district, and the best thing you could find to do was play video games?
Slashdot Mirror
You can't raise a kid to change the world by keeping blinders on them.
Between church, Cub/Boy Scouts (our city has one cub scout pack made up of exclusively homeschoolers, and one boy scout troop that is about 50/50), Awanas, and volunteering at a church-based public service ministry, my kids get plenty of social interaction
So between religion, a religion based organization, another religion based organization, and volunteering for religion, your kids are well prepared to handle the real world? Seriously, get your kids some secular experiences and let them make up their own minds. They'll be much better people for it.
Being forced into interaction with other children that pick on you is more likely to lead to potential social awkwardness than being able to choose the extracurriculars (and thus the peer groups) you like.
Can counseling make a person not homosexual? Why would pedophilia be any different?
I think the target of the HAH-ha! is more likely the guy going to jail.
The latter is a subset of the former.
I dunno where I read it, but "It takes 20 years for a person to go from liberal to conservative without changing a single opinion." As young, liberal people are added to the world, and old conservative people die off the political landscape changes. This is called progress, and the old conservatives are always on the wrong side of it.
In light of your sig, I find your advocacy of a government big enough to "stabilize" the entire world most amusing.
Right, because colonialism *prevents* sectarian violence.
I'm just waiting for Apple to announce the new iPud. Is that an iPud in your pocket?
How is cutting the defense budget down to the levels other first world nations invest in their militaries "withdrawing from the world"?
Debt is the present. If we don't take care of that, we will stagnate and disappear much more quickly. This is good, pay down debt first then invest.
Though, for all the talk of fiscal responsibility I don't see anyone mentioning that the US's military budget is about the same as the rest of the worlds military budgets combined. And 9 times that of China's. It would make sense to cut that first.
This should be easy enough. Hipsters are liberal, hicks are conservative. Pretty easy to identify them from facial hair amongst other cues.
125 people, that's 62.5 couples. With 16,500 condoms, that's 264 condoms per couple per year. 264/365*7~= 3x per week. That's about right, maybe a little on the low side. Certainly not indicative of any captivity induced orgies.
How is Mars / The moon more exciting/pleasant than Antarctica? Can we really expect people to want to populate the Moon or Mars without a large financial/spiritual/political motivation?
You're right, Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did.
MTBF is calculated by taking a pool of equipment, running it for a short time, and finding out how many fail. You then assume that the failure rate is constant, and extrapolate that.
So lets apply this to humans. Infant mortality in the US is something like 50 deaths out of 1000 in the first year. That gives you a 5% chance of dying per year. It's easier to use this as a 95% chance of survival. Using the multiplication rule, the chances of survival dip below 50% after 14 years.
So yeah, it's pretty easy to exceed your MTBF by decades. And yeah, I'm pretty bored at work today.
The fact that people overreact to a perceived threat is not evidence that the threat is real. In my state, all pressurized gasses in cans are considered hazardous waste when used at a research institution. That means we can't even have reddi-whip at a department party without talking to EHS. Does this mean that reddi-whip isn't safe to use at home? Of course not.
You are over-blowing the risks. They are absolutely manageable. We have a lot more to worry about from people dumping paint-thinner down the drain than from DIY bio.
The original Xbox was a success? The Xbox sold about as much as the Gamecube, and about as fifth as many as the PS2. The gamecube made Nintendo a few hundred million dollars, while the Xbox lost microsoft a few billion dollars. The only success there is that it made Microsoft a legitimate name in console gaming, providing footing for the Xbox 360.
Make yourself an ~/.xinitrc or ~/.bashrc with the commands to start and stop services as you need.
The only way to do at home what they claim to be doing is by using stuff from their academic research labs.
Not really. You can get E. coli that express recombinant enzymes and purify it yourself. And patents don't cover stuff for personal use, so you're clear there.
Besides the risks involved (those cell line are actually cancer cells and engineered bacteria are mutant germs
None of which have a chance to survive outside of carefully controlled laboratory conditions.
not to mention the radioactively labeled nucleic acid probes that might end up in the toilet
I doubt anyone's using radioactive probes at home, probably more fluorescence, chemiluminescence, etc.
Storing liquid nitrogen in your basement?
Not really a problem if you pony up for the right container.
Discarding ethidium-bromide and acrylamide gels?
There are non-toxic stains for agarose gels. Polymerized acrylamide is not that toxic either.
Biological experiments are different from software development, they need follow up and supervision through the end, which may take 2-4 days. Drosophilla flys can't be frozen like bacteria.
For people dedicated to the hobby, there's no reason they can't deal with that.
How do you discard biohazardous materials and mutagen/teratogen substances at home?
This is a valid concern. The best way is to find ways to perform experiments that don't require hazardous materials. There is a lot of biology that does require hazardous materials, but there's also a lot that doesn't.
I like Chinese. They only come up to your knees. Yet they're wise and they're witty and ready to please.
I bet a PC with a custom cooling block and temperature monitoring software could be rigged into a thermal cycler for PCR. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but it would be good for a laugh.
I'm wondering how they get their hands on the raw materials. A freezer full of restriction enzymes is expensive. Do they grow up RE expressing cultures and purify it all themselves? What about stuff like dNTPs, agarose? That's some expensive stuff too.
"Put tab A into slot B" is really all you need to know anyway.
It's called user accounts. Or was this a joke?
I loved the original - I met a guy playing it in an apartment I rented in Amsterdam's red light district after Expedia failed to book my hotel - thought "wow, someone made an awesome looking 40k game!"
You were stranded in Amsterdam's red light district, and the best thing you could find to do was play video games?