All this said, the real big thing in diabetes research is xenotransplantation of pig islets which are coated in a substance which makes them invisible to the immune system.
While the research is very promising (and has been trialled in humans in the past) it is currently on hiatus due to the "concerns" some people have with xenotransplantation.
Concerns!?
Shit, if it cured my diabetes, I wouldn't care if it made me grow a two rows of of pig teats down my stomache! Hook me up with the animal islets the moment we know it won't kill me, thanks.
You are completely correct, but let me balance your warning of mortal terror to point out that the outlook for those with Type II diabetes (which is far more common) is quite a bit less bleak.
With the right nutrition and excersize (as well as avoiding too much glucose at once), people can manage type 2 and have a fairly normal life.
In fact, lose enough weight and often type 2 (a.k.a. "adult onset") diabetes symptoms might go away entirely in some cases.
So if you have any symptoms of diabetes or even hypoglycemia, don't avoid doctors out of irrational fear that you will learn your ticket has been punched. Finding out what your situation is can only help.
Besides, you might not die of complications due to diabetes... You could get hit by a bus or something first.
Hong Kong cinema has a long tradition of falling back on the mythology of Shaolin Buddhism to explain the "wire fu."
The idea is, if you master the martial art of Kung Fu enough, you can move in ways which defy conventional physics. Things like weight and momentum become irrelevant to you.
"Hero" is another good recent martial arts movie which is almost as pretty to gawk at as "House of Flying Daggers."
The whole point of the Matrix story was to create a Kung Fu superhero which Western audiences could suspend their disbelief for. It worked rather well, if only they had stuck with it and not made the next two movies mainly about the dreary "Zion" battles.
I would put it to you that Harrison Ford, Sir Alec Guiness, and James Earl Jones comprised 90% of the reason why the original trilogy was at all entertaining.
I just keep my hard drive carefully arranged and orderly. Folders are your friend. Nest them with wild abandon. I also print out any interesting info tidbits (stuff I know I'll reference multiple times) I find online, and put them in a couple large notebooks that I maintain.
If you are an OS X user, and you like keeping things organized, there are two words which you will probably fall in love with:
Smart folders.
Example of how they work: Do a search for all your.xml files. Close that window as a "smart folder." The next time you open that window, it will not only display the result of the search you ran, but it will also include any.xml files which have been added since.
Are you starting to think of ways in which such a feature could be really handy? I bet you are.
The more odd-sized and odd-shaped aliens you have the less detatched
er.... ummm...
g/less/s//more/
Typing fast while waiting for little blue fill-bars on the other screen can lead to lazy errors sometimes.
Animation and puppetry have their place, but you get a lot more subtle nuance out of a live actor in most cases... Keanu Reeves being an obvious exception.
Movies are not just a medium for storytelling. They are also a medium for visual art.
Look at Rodin's famous sculpture "The Thinker." Not much story going on there: "A naked guy sits on a rock and ponders something that troubles him." There's your whole plot, yet people come from all over the world just to gape at his naked pondering.
Is that so different from paying a few bucks to see a Death Star blow up? A little less highbrow than Rodin, perhaps, but at least on a par with going to the museum to check out that painting of a Campbell's Soup can by Andy Warhol.
but I mean, how about something twice the size of a wookie?
So... about the size of Jabba the Hutt, then?
Here's the thing: Actors tend to be human sized. The more odd-sized and odd-shaped aliens you have the less detatched from humanity your story becomes.
Farscape is cool and fun, but it borders on feeling like H.R. Puffinstuff every once in a while.
Has it been cancelled yet? I haven't really watched the WB since Buffy & Angel were there. I'm going to assume that it has been... or if it hasn't, it's probably "on the bubble." I seem to recall hearing they tried to shoe-horn Rose McGowen into the cast after firing that 90210 chick. Anyway, the show sucked, but if Voyager and Enterprise had a core "loyal" fans, I bet Charmed does too.
The hope of seeing Alyssa Milano's legs on TV again ought to fetch me at least a few grand from the same sort of ignorant boobs as those who donated to TrekUnited.
Example: You are studying music history. Should you pay more attention to C.P.E. Bach than to Giovanni Gabrieli, or less? Or about the same? Which compositions should you spend time listening to closely in order to best understand their contributions?
It's very hard for an unguided curious mind to absorb the essense of a broad subject via their own research, unless they happen to stumble across a very, very good book (for example, "Relativity for the Layman", or "The Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball") or TV/Film production (Ken Burn's "Jazz", Carl Segan's "Cosmos", etc.) which essentially is a published/recorded version of a professor's seminar. Even then, a good teacher with a sufficiently small class can adjust his approach to best meet the needs of the student, which you can't get with prepared media... nor are you likely to have a clue which book or film to start with as an intro to the topic.
Simply putting the phrase "last man to know everything" (in quotes) into Google's search puts that blog on page 2. It would be relatively futile to guess what else you may have used to narrow it further.
At that rate, will we soon experience an information overload? What sort of psychological and physiological effects will it produce?
Are you saying we have not already experienced "information overload"?
The last man who was commonly accepted by many scholars as probably the last to know "everything" the known world had to offer died in the 1500s.
Ever since then, we've all be specialists.
(Would-be librarians: Have fun googling for his name. Hint: Not DaVinci, Goethe, or Veblen, and certainly not John Stuart Mill... and Wiki doesn't mention it in his bio. Good luck!)
Just as an example, say I wanted to know why some people have two different colored eyes. I wouldn't even begin to know where to look for that in a book...
Conan the Librarian says:
"Don't yoo know dah dewey decimal sistahm?
(Never miss an opportunity to quote the Great Classics of Hollywood cinema.)
Wikipedia used to be the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom in the universe. That is, until H2G2 came along. H2G2 scores higher that Wikipedia in two respects. First, H2G2 is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large, friendly letters on the front page.
Slashdot Mirror
All this said, the real big thing in diabetes research is xenotransplantation of pig islets which are coated in a substance which makes them invisible to the immune system.
While the research is very promising (and has been trialled in humans in the past) it is currently on hiatus due to the "concerns" some people have with xenotransplantation.
Concerns!?
Shit, if it cured my diabetes, I wouldn't care if it made me grow a two rows of of pig teats down my stomache! Hook me up with the animal islets the moment we know it won't kill me, thanks.
You are completely correct, but let me balance your warning of mortal terror to point out that the outlook for those with Type II diabetes (which is far more common) is quite a bit less bleak.
With the right nutrition and excersize (as well as avoiding too much glucose at once), people can manage type 2 and have a fairly normal life.
In fact, lose enough weight and often type 2 (a.k.a. "adult onset") diabetes symptoms might go away entirely in some cases.
So if you have any symptoms of diabetes or even hypoglycemia, don't avoid doctors out of irrational fear that you will learn your ticket has been punched. Finding out what your situation is can only help.
Besides, you might not die of complications due to diabetes... You could get hit by a bus or something first.
Ok, what sucks about diabetes is having to take the injections
No. Trust me on this. What sucks about diabetes is the high likelyhood of losing your vision, pancreas, liver, feet, or even your dick.
A little jab in the stomache with a needle is nothing to fear compared to what high blood sugar does to your body over the long haul.
Hong Kong cinema has a long tradition of falling back on the mythology of Shaolin Buddhism to explain the "wire fu."
The idea is, if you master the martial art of Kung Fu enough, you can move in ways which defy conventional physics. Things like weight and momentum become irrelevant to you.
"Hero" is another good recent martial arts movie which is almost as pretty to gawk at as "House of Flying Daggers."
The whole point of the Matrix story was to create a Kung Fu superhero which Western audiences could suspend their disbelief for. It worked rather well, if only they had stuck with it and not made the next two movies mainly about the dreary "Zion" battles.
The most popular theory seems to be that it's the briefcase full of diamonds from Resevior Dogs.
I would put it to you that Harrison Ford, Sir Alec Guiness, and James Earl Jones comprised 90% of the reason why the original trilogy was at all entertaining.
Heh. Good one.
You would be at 5 for "Funny" by now if a few more moderators knew how the fuck to pronounce "Rodin."
I just keep my hard drive carefully arranged and orderly. Folders are your friend. Nest them with wild abandon. I also print out any interesting info tidbits (stuff I know I'll reference multiple times) I find online, and put them in a couple large notebooks that I maintain.
.xml files. Close that window as a "smart folder." The next time you open that window, it will not only display the result of the search you ran, but it will also include any .xml files which have been added since.
If you are an OS X user, and you like keeping things organized, there are two words which you will probably fall in love with:
Smart folders.
Example of how they work: Do a search for all your
Are you starting to think of ways in which such a feature could be really handy? I bet you are.
Perhaps Metallica just needed a longer hiatus between albums?
Might I propose they wait until the year after I die to release the next one?
Meh. All the most amusing stories on FARK come from the Mainichi Times anyway.
Those wacky Japanese... bless their hearts for lightening my Mondays.
Ah, but it is the story that makes the explosion so satisfying.
Yes, and it's the explosion that makes the story so satisfying.
I didn't say that story is unimportant. I said that movie-making is an artform in which the story is not the only imporant element.
If all of the battles in Star Wars were simply described by people sitting in a room, would it have been such a hit?
In The Princess Bride... Highlander IV... Ask yourself what the difference is.
I asked, and the reply came back: The Princess Bride was funny on purpose.
The more odd-sized and odd-shaped aliens you have the less detatched
er.... ummm...
g/less/s//more/
Typing fast while waiting for little blue fill-bars on the other screen can lead to lazy errors sometimes.
Animation and puppetry have their place, but you get a lot more subtle nuance out of a live actor in most cases... Keanu Reeves being an obvious exception.
I somewhat disagree.
Movies are not just a medium for storytelling. They are also a medium for visual art.
Look at Rodin's famous sculpture "The Thinker." Not much story going on there: "A naked guy sits on a rock and ponders something that troubles him." There's your whole plot, yet people come from all over the world just to gape at his naked pondering.
Is that so different from paying a few bucks to see a Death Star blow up? A little less highbrow than Rodin, perhaps, but at least on a par with going to the museum to check out that painting of a Campbell's Soup can by Andy Warhol.
but I mean, how about something twice the size of a wookie?
So... about the size of Jabba the Hutt, then?
Here's the thing: Actors tend to be human sized. The more odd-sized and odd-shaped aliens you have the less detatched from humanity your story becomes.
Farscape is cool and fun, but it borders on feeling like H.R. Puffinstuff every once in a while.
Genius!
I think I'll start a "Save Charmed fund."
Has it been cancelled yet? I haven't really watched the WB since Buffy & Angel were there. I'm going to assume that it has been... or if it hasn't, it's probably "on the bubble." I seem to recall hearing they tried to shoe-horn Rose McGowen into the cast after firing that 90210 chick. Anyway, the show sucked, but if Voyager and Enterprise had a core "loyal" fans, I bet Charmed does too.
The hope of seeing Alyssa Milano's legs on TV again ought to fetch me at least a few grand from the same sort of ignorant boobs as those who donated to TrekUnited.
Ah, well that's only because they took advantage of time travel to exploit a loophole in local copyright and patent laws. ;)
The purpose of a Prof is to provide emphasis.
Example: You are studying music history. Should you pay more attention to C.P.E. Bach than to Giovanni Gabrieli, or less? Or about the same? Which compositions should you spend time listening to closely in order to best understand their contributions?
It's very hard for an unguided curious mind to absorb the essense of a broad subject via their own research, unless they happen to stumble across a very, very good book (for example, "Relativity for the Layman", or "The Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball") or TV/Film production (Ken Burn's "Jazz", Carl Segan's "Cosmos", etc.) which essentially is a published/recorded version of a professor's seminar. Even then, a good teacher with a sufficiently small class can adjust his approach to best meet the needs of the student, which you can't get with prepared media... nor are you likely to have a clue which book or film to start with as an intro to the topic.
I guess I missed what was "stunning" about this.
Simply putting the phrase "last man to know everything" (in quotes) into Google's search puts that blog on page 2. It would be relatively futile to guess what else you may have used to narrow it further.
See, ain't the Internet beautiful? Somebody shot back with the exact answer within the hour. :)
I was really sad to see that the H2G2 entry for Wikipedia was so factual and even-handed.
It seems to me that they should have had nothing there apart from the following entry:
"A bunch of mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes."
At that rate, will we soon experience an information overload? What sort of psychological and physiological effects will it produce?
Are you saying we have not already experienced "information overload"?
The last man who was commonly accepted by many scholars as probably the last to know "everything" the known world had to offer died in the 1500s.
Ever since then, we've all be specialists.
(Would-be librarians: Have fun googling for his name. Hint: Not DaVinci, Goethe, or Veblen, and certainly not John Stuart Mill... and Wiki doesn't mention it in his bio. Good luck!)
(Okay, okay... one more hint: He was Dutch.)
Just as an example, say I wanted to know why some people have two different colored eyes. I wouldn't even begin to know where to look for that in a book...
Conan the Librarian says:
"Don't yoo know dah dewey decimal sistahm?
(Never miss an opportunity to quote the Great Classics of Hollywood cinema.)
Wikipedia used to be the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom in the universe. That is, until H2G2 came along. H2G2 scores higher that Wikipedia in two respects. First, H2G2 is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large, friendly letters on the front page.
If you are pissing UID's, see a doctor immediately.