Skylab was never really meant to be a long-term satellite. It spent 2,249 and only 171 of those were spent occupied. In comparison, the ISS has been in orbit for 5288 days, 4575 of them occupied. So I'd say ISS is over twice as kickass, and over 25 times as habitable as skylab.
Electrodes of any kind implanted directly into the brain are an insanely high risk for infection. That's why we do it to chimps instead of people. Nobody wants meningitis, but I'd rather a chimp get sacrificed in the name of science than condemn a human to the same fate, even though chimps are essentially the same as us.
Brain implanted electrodes also can't really be removed, so once they're in, they're there forever. Or at least until they're metabolized and worn down beyond use. They also have a high risk for acute immune reactions, which cause the brain to swell up rapidly, causing terrible problems similar to coma complications, and cerebral hemorrhage.
Direct brain implanted electrodes are absolutely Not ready for prime time.
So let's keep working on them, and experimenting, and looking for alternatives. I'm a strong believer that eventually we'll have nano-tech that can cross the blood brain barrier, appear invisible to the immune system, set up shop in our brains, figure them out, and open up an API of some kind for us, so we'll be able to store our own personal memories and life feed directly to silicon, or receive memories, training, and data directly from the silicon (or whatever we're using) via these nanites that have worked their way into the brain. This is quite futuristic, but I feel it's an endgame to nano-tech. We'll eventually be able to use it to maintain the health of our bodies, and use it as storage space and up-links to others in our brain.
I'd be disgusted if it weren't so damn perfect for this case. It allows for a lot of pincer strength, proprioception, a relatively high level of dexterity (it does much better blind than any cybernetic prosthesis), and has a biological feedback that's exactly the same as the regular forearm tissue, since that's what it is.
The only real drawbacks are that it has no thumb equivalent since it's a single-jointed pincer, and that once the operation is complete and healed it looks gross.
A major advantage is that it doesn't preclude the use of prosthetics in the future. It preserves a lot of nerves, and could possibly be linked up with a prosthetic forearm and hand kit in coming years, reducing strength requirements for these prosthesis since there won't be need for a prosthetic elbow, nor the need to probe around an inert stump. I'd bet that an actively used pincer could be much more quickly integrated to use a cybernetic controller than an inert stump, since the user keeps the pincer's motor and proprioceptive feedback nerves active all the time.
FTL was already resolved within the first run of the show. Cubert pointed out that nothing can go faster than light, the professor replied "that's why scientists increased the speed of light". Also, it would seem that ships run on Alcubier warp drives (at least the planet express ship seems to, in that the engines don't move the ship, but instead move the universe around the ship.)
I think the main problem is that I'm not a dieticianI always stick ingredients in three categories. For instance 1. Thermodynamic gradient powered metabolism. 2 membranes (separation from the environment of some kind). And 3 inheritance (dna and genetics). These are all features necessary to qualify as living.
Powerbars actually do have some nutritive value, with reasonable vitamin content. You wouldn't be able to survive on them alone though. They're mostly fat and sugar, but also have good fiber. They're closer to food than Doritos by a longshot, but they're still not really food, just nutritive product.
Mountain Dew (pepsico) has, per 20oz: 290 kcal, 100mg sodium, 77g sugar, and negligible vitamins and minerals
Gatorade Orange (also pepsico) has, per 20oz: 130 kcal, 270mg sodium (electrolytes it's what plants crave!), 34g sugar, 75mg potassium (biologically and chemically very similar to sodium), and negligible vitamins and minerals.
Doritos (Frito/Lay) has, per 1 oz: 140 kcal (70 from fat), 8g fat (1g saturated fat), 210mg sodium, 16g carbs (1g from fiber, 0g from sugar), 2g protein, and trace Vitamin A, B, and Thiamin
PowerBar Performance Energy Chocolate (Nestle) has, per bar: 240 kcal (30 from fat), 3g fat (1g saturated fat), 200mg sodium, 45g carbs (3g from fiber, 25g from sugar), 8g protein, 70%dv Vitamin C, 25%dv Calcium Iron and B6, 15%dv Thiamin, 10%dv Riboflavin.
Gatorade and Mountain Dew only differ in sugar concentration. The difference in salt is relatively unimportant. There's a significant difference between powerbars and Doritos. #1 Doritos are much cheaper, #2 powerbars have nutritive value, while Doritoes are edible product and not really food.
If you ate as much by weight in power bars as people typically do in doritoes, you will be both overfed, and have a pretty bad time on the toilet.
But god saw that the programmer was lonely. And so he said, let there be internet porn, and such there was porn of every proclivity and vice and fascination, and he saw it was good. And he rested.
we are all matrilinearly decended from the same woman
WRONG!
We are matrilinearly descended from many women, all of whom shared very similar/identical mitochondrial DNA. Their ancestors most likely had distinct mitochondrial DNA from mitochondrial eve as well. It absolutely wasn't one woman. Your mtDNA is not nearly as variable as chromosomal DNA. One reason is because it's smaller (fewer basepairs) than chromosomal DNA, another reason is that it is transmitted without recombination, only from your mother, which means that it doesn't change as quickly as chromosomal DNA. There are many strains of mtDNA, but many people have identical/nearly identical mtDNA.
I agree that there's no way that it can detect bombs.
What I meant was, if there's a 50/50 chance of a positive result for a test, and someone does 10 tests, and ~5 results are positive, most people have a strong confirmation bias that lets them think that the ~5 negative results don't count as much as the ~5 positive, so they feel it was a success overall and that it really works when in reality it did no better than chance. People tend to rationalize away the failed trials with excuses like "being in the wrong mindset" or "there were guys with ammo within a 3 mile radius" or "the operator didn't have the right 'energy'". The list goes on.
I didn't mean to offer a validation at all. There's no high quality evidence that these devices work at finding anything, and there's so much bias, noise and poorly done tests that the guys selling this shit are obviously scammers.
They very well may have evidence that it works. Just low quality evidence that comes from poorly done and non-blinded tests. That's probably good enough for most people, since most people are scientifically illiterate and equate most science and technology with magic.
Most people are far too credulous, and will accept nonsense explanations for extraordinary claims as long as it sounds either vaguely "sciencey" or you tell them it must've been their god who did it.
The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia
These are ADE 651 Devices desinged to make tons of money off of gullible people, and it appears that their use has replaced physical vehicle searches in some cases, which is just abhorrently stupid and foolish.
It looks like the US military doesn't use these devices, but has bought a few to determine whether they're any good. So I've been pleasantly surprised to find the Army wasn't duped in this case
Michael Shermer noted that these devices are being sold to high schools for $900 a unit in his TED talk here
Unfortunately that was the reference I was thinking of, or at least the most prominent one, and it looks like it didn't make claims about military sales.
Make of it what you will, but I'm pretty sure I read about the US army buy the same kind of junk for preposterous amounts of money. I'll reply again if I find a source on that.
Yes. Because this isn't the first time this scam has been perpetrated on a military.
The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago. I just hope they were thrown out and never saw the field. A lot of soldiers can end up maimed and killed trusting this untested, poorly evaluated, pseudoscientific garbage.
I never thought of English as a rich language. All the good words that seem to enrich the language are mostly just acquired from other languages. And since our linguistic rules (both syntax and the separation of verbs, nouns and adjectives) is rather fluid, English speakers can be pretty lazy when it comes to stringing a sentence together.
Putting a corrupt politician in office because you feel we all owe it to his race
Oh puh-leeze. Both electable choices are corrupt, every time, without exception. What determines your vote depends on what type of corruption and to what degree you're more tolerant of. That isn't to say everyone is just as bad as everyone else, just that everyone is corrupt.
And our government is absolutely willing to believe whatever the entrenched industry tells it. No matter what evidence to the contrary they are presented.
It's the way faith-based governments work. Just have faith in the lobbies with the most money, and that money will be transferred to you.
it is about making things relatable to those that have little understanding of the topic.
What's ironic is that 15 million iPods is no more relatable than saying 960 Petabytes. What do you imagine a pile of 15million iPods looks like? Or is it 15million retail boxes stacked in neat rectangular prisms? Or is it 15 million iPods laid end to end? Big numbers need to be expressed in ways that are easily divisible into realistic chunks people can hold in their heads. I have no idea what kind of volume this many iPods takes up, or how expensive it would be, I doubt anyone really does off the top of their head.
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Skylab was never really meant to be a long-term satellite. It spent 2,249 and only 171 of those were spent occupied. In comparison, the ISS has been in orbit for 5288 days, 4575 of them occupied. So I'd say ISS is over twice as kickass, and over 25 times as habitable as skylab.
Electrodes of any kind implanted directly into the brain are an insanely high risk for infection. That's why we do it to chimps instead of people. Nobody wants meningitis, but I'd rather a chimp get sacrificed in the name of science than condemn a human to the same fate, even though chimps are essentially the same as us.
Brain implanted electrodes also can't really be removed, so once they're in, they're there forever. Or at least until they're metabolized and worn down beyond use. They also have a high risk for acute immune reactions, which cause the brain to swell up rapidly, causing terrible problems similar to coma complications, and cerebral hemorrhage.
Direct brain implanted electrodes are absolutely Not ready for prime time.
So let's keep working on them, and experimenting, and looking for alternatives. I'm a strong believer that eventually we'll have nano-tech that can cross the blood brain barrier, appear invisible to the immune system, set up shop in our brains, figure them out, and open up an API of some kind for us, so we'll be able to store our own personal memories and life feed directly to silicon, or receive memories, training, and data directly from the silicon (or whatever we're using) via these nanites that have worked their way into the brain. This is quite futuristic, but I feel it's an endgame to nano-tech. We'll eventually be able to use it to maintain the health of our bodies, and use it as storage space and up-links to others in our brain.
I'd be disgusted if it weren't so damn perfect for this case. It allows for a lot of pincer strength, proprioception, a relatively high level of dexterity (it does much better blind than any cybernetic prosthesis), and has a biological feedback that's exactly the same as the regular forearm tissue, since that's what it is.
The only real drawbacks are that it has no thumb equivalent since it's a single-jointed pincer, and that once the operation is complete and healed it looks gross.
A major advantage is that it doesn't preclude the use of prosthetics in the future. It preserves a lot of nerves, and could possibly be linked up with a prosthetic forearm and hand kit in coming years, reducing strength requirements for these prosthesis since there won't be need for a prosthetic elbow, nor the need to probe around an inert stump. I'd bet that an actively used pincer could be much more quickly integrated to use a cybernetic controller than an inert stump, since the user keeps the pincer's motor and proprioceptive feedback nerves active all the time.
I don't know about you, but my master is a super-intelligent shade of the color blue.
FTL was already resolved within the first run of the show. Cubert pointed out that nothing can go faster than light, the professor replied "that's why scientists increased the speed of light". Also, it would seem that ships run on Alcubier warp drives (at least the planet express ship seems to, in that the engines don't move the ship, but instead move the universe around the ship.)
Caffeine isn't a nutrient, it's a drug. I was thinking about nutrition very narrowly, so I didn't think to include drugs and preservatives.
I think the main problem is that I'm not a dieticianI always stick ingredients in three categories. For instance 1. Thermodynamic gradient powered metabolism. 2 membranes (separation from the environment of some kind). And 3 inheritance (dna and genetics). These are all features necessary to qualify as living.
Powerbars actually do have some nutritive value, with reasonable vitamin content. You wouldn't be able to survive on them alone though. They're mostly fat and sugar, but also have good fiber. They're closer to food than Doritos by a longshot, but they're still not really food, just nutritive product.
Just the rough Numbers:
Gatorade and Mountain Dew only differ in sugar concentration. The difference in salt is relatively unimportant. There's a significant difference between powerbars and Doritos. #1 Doritos are much cheaper, #2 powerbars have nutritive value, while Doritoes are edible product and not really food.
If you ate as much by weight in power bars as people typically do in doritoes, you will be both overfed, and have a pretty bad time on the toilet.
I did consider it, but I've seen a lot of laboriously explained R'amen around the web, so I thought I'd play to a wider audience.
But god saw that the programmer was lonely. And so he said, let there be internet porn, and such there was porn of every proclivity and vice and fascination, and he saw it was good. And he rested.
WRONG!
We are matrilinearly descended from many women, all of whom shared very similar/identical mitochondrial DNA. Their ancestors most likely had distinct mitochondrial DNA from mitochondrial eve as well. It absolutely wasn't one woman. Your mtDNA is not nearly as variable as chromosomal DNA. One reason is because it's smaller (fewer basepairs) than chromosomal DNA, another reason is that it is transmitted without recombination, only from your mother, which means that it doesn't change as quickly as chromosomal DNA. There are many strains of mtDNA, but many people have identical/nearly identical mtDNA.
Amen.
I agree that there's no way that it can detect bombs.
What I meant was, if there's a 50/50 chance of a positive result for a test, and someone does 10 tests, and ~5 results are positive, most people have a strong confirmation bias that lets them think that the ~5 negative results don't count as much as the ~5 positive, so they feel it was a success overall and that it really works when in reality it did no better than chance. People tend to rationalize away the failed trials with excuses like "being in the wrong mindset" or "there were guys with ammo within a 3 mile radius" or "the operator didn't have the right 'energy'". The list goes on.
I didn't mean to offer a validation at all. There's no high quality evidence that these devices work at finding anything, and there's so much bias, noise and poorly done tests that the guys selling this shit are obviously scammers.
They very well may have evidence that it works. Just low quality evidence that comes from poorly done and non-blinded tests. That's probably good enough for most people, since most people are scientifically illiterate and equate most science and technology with magic.
Most people are far too credulous, and will accept nonsense explanations for extraordinary claims as long as it sounds either vaguely "sciencey" or you tell them it must've been their god who did it.
Ok, I was a little confused about who bought it.
The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia
These are ADE 651 Devices desinged to make tons of money off of gullible people, and it appears that their use has replaced physical vehicle searches in some cases, which is just abhorrently stupid and foolish.
It looks like the US military doesn't use these devices, but has bought a few to determine whether they're any good. So I've been pleasantly surprised to find the Army wasn't duped in this case
Michael Shermer noted that these devices are being sold to high schools for $900 a unit in his TED talk here
Unfortunately that was the reference I was thinking of, or at least the most prominent one, and it looks like it didn't make claims about military sales.
Make of it what you will, but I'm pretty sure I read about the US army buy the same kind of junk for preposterous amounts of money. I'll reply again if I find a source on that.
Yes. Because this isn't the first time this scam has been perpetrated on a military.
The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago. I just hope they were thrown out and never saw the field. A lot of soldiers can end up maimed and killed trusting this untested, poorly evaluated, pseudoscientific garbage.
Whoosh.
I never thought of English as a rich language. All the good words that seem to enrich the language are mostly just acquired from other languages. And since our linguistic rules (both syntax and the separation of verbs, nouns and adjectives) is rather fluid, English speakers can be pretty lazy when it comes to stringing a sentence together.
Interesting fact: neural activity can be modulated by shining light on the neurons. Here's a video of a mouse forced to RUN when a blue light is shone onto it's motor cortex
Oh puh-leeze. Both electable choices are corrupt, every time, without exception. What determines your vote depends on what type of corruption and to what degree you're more tolerant of. That isn't to say everyone is just as bad as everyone else, just that everyone is corrupt.
And our government is absolutely willing to believe whatever the entrenched industry tells it. No matter what evidence to the contrary they are presented.
It's the way faith-based governments work. Just have faith in the lobbies with the most money, and that money will be transferred to you.
What's ironic is that 15 million iPods is no more relatable than saying 960 Petabytes. What do you imagine a pile of 15million iPods looks like? Or is it 15million retail boxes stacked in neat rectangular prisms? Or is it 15 million iPods laid end to end? Big numbers need to be expressed in ways that are easily divisible into realistic chunks people can hold in their heads. I have no idea what kind of volume this many iPods takes up, or how expensive it would be, I doubt anyone really does off the top of their head.
Very true. I did miss that.