For starters... While there is currently no technology to produce healthy human clones technology for growing muscles is readily available and has been for centuries. It is only that now it can all be replaced with exoskeletons.
As for reflexes... you have no idea what you are talking about don't you? Reflexes are built into the nervous system. As in - it's biology. Like heart pumping blood. You don't "learn" that. That's why when checking the nervous system for damage one of the main indicators that are checked are reflexes.
And standing, walking, talking etc. are NOT reflexes. Hint: Humans have to learn to do those things. And relearn to do them in the case of an injury, through physical therapy. Injury like breaking both legs in a skiing accident, a car crash - or a full body transplant. What's the use of a clone knowing how to walk or dance? That's gonna get overwritten anyway.
You don't pick up a taste for cigarettes with a smoker's kidney or hearts, nor do you get artistic with painter's cornea. There is no soul, spirit, sentience or skill in a bunch of CELLS. Same way, there are no transferable reflexes from a body to a mind - cause body don't know jack shit.
Sure... stuff will taste, smell and look kinda different for a while and you'll have to get your liver used to alcohol and fatty food again... but that's just the part of necessary physical therapy.
Praise the penis that we have such paragons of morality like you - ready to sentence random strangers to death based on their own antiquated moral and other beliefs. Including scientific beliefs. As opposed to scientific reality.
Cause believing that a clone which was never allowed to grow into a person (cause it was built that way) is anything more than an overgrown collection of cells - is no different than the beliefs of those religious nuts who claim every fertilized and unfertilized egg and every sperm are a potential human being.
You make clones. Design them. Fully healthy human clones means that you could have a blonde Asian female clone of yourself as well as a redhead black male clone of yourself. If you wanted to. They are not persons any more than a collection of human organs kept alive by a machine is a person. Or a braindead body with no cerebral activity. Just organs. No person inside.
Compared to steam catapults, EMALS weighs less, occupies less space, requires less maintenance and manpower, is more reliable, recharges more quickly, and uses less energy. Steam catapults, which use about 1350 pounds of steam per launch, have extensive mechanical, pneumatic, and hydraulic subsystems.[4] EMALS uses no steam, which makes it suitable for the Navy's planned all-electric ships.[14] The EMALS could be more easily incorporated into a ramp.[4]
Compared to steam catapults, EMALS can control the launch performance with greater precision, allowing it to launch more kinds of aircraft, from heavy fighter jets to light unmanned aircraft.[14] EMALS can also deliver 29 percent more energy than steam's approximately 95 megajoules, increasing the output to 122 megajoules.[4] The EMALS will also be more efficient than the 5-percent efficiency of steam catapults.[2]
and they were certainly sentient beings being sacrificed.
They were "sentient" cause the story demanded it. There is no reason why a jar-grown clone would need to be anything other than completely brain dead. Hell... If they can be grown to a full healthy adult in an artificial womb - make the clones anencephalic.
And then there's that whole bit where people don't give a flying fuck about what happens to their clone's ass when their own ass is on the line. I for one wouldn't care. Hell... I'd club my own clone-self to death with a garden dwarf if necessary. Though it would probably just be much simpler to just check the "yes - I would like to have a clone(s) for all my future transplant needs" box.
And besides that... It is not sentient if it is never allowed to be sentient. Keep it in a box - both physical and mental. All that needs to be done is just get in there while it is still just an abortion in a jar, and never allow it to form sentience. There. "Morality" problem solved.
And for anyone out there who's getting their panties all bunched up while getting their favorite appeal to emotion argument ready - THINK OF THE CHILDREN YOU HEARTLESS CUNTS! You know how hard it is to get child-sized organs for transplantation? You wanna go and tell those dying children they have to die cause your "morality" won't allow them to have clones? Boy are you people fucking heartless.
But in all seriousness now - that's what all "morality" arguments about cloning boil down to. Appeal to this or that emotion. Whether it is fear or guilt-shaming or simply "my god is against that".
A clone raised in a jar is no different from a stillborn baby, resuscitated into a coma and kept alive by machines. Except there are no parents to fool themselves that their little Braindead Billy will get better and grow up to be a politician or a model.
Oh... And to any of those Fuckers for Ethical Treatment of Clones out there... My clones come with a contract on their ass. Clone leaves the storage without my consent - its head explodes. It leaves the storage WITH my consent but without my immediate medical need - there's money in an account out there for anyone who blows its head off.
MotherJones used to have journalists, but they are now nothing but a pro-progressive propaganda rag, fond of running hit pieces on anyone to the right of Mao Zedong.
You do realize you just replied with a "god damn commies" ad hominem to an article citing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, on the topic of... well... diseases and vaccination?
And as usual, it is probably a combination of factors which influence the anti-vaccination attitudes. Though one factor does seem to be common - clustering. I.e. It's social. Where there's one anti-vaxxer, there's more anti-vaxxer.
Overall, national vaccination rates seem high: The median rate of coverage for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, administered to most before entry into kindergarten, was 94.7 percent for the 2013-14 school year. But, as Schuchat points out, the rate is lower in communities where unvaccinated families tend to cluster. In some areas, low rates might have more to do with access to clinics than with beliefs about vaccinations.
"The national estimates hide what's going on state to state. The state estimates hide what's going on community to community. And within communities there may be pockets," Schuchat said. "It's one thing if you have a year where a number of people are not vaccinating, but year after year in terms of the kids that are exempting, you do start to accumulate."
They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year in order, in McConnell's words, to "ensure that there is adequate time.â.â. to build and test a system that doesn't yet exist." Another required telecom companies to notify the government if they change their data-retention policies.
On the Senate floor, his allies continued to rail against the House bill, arguing that it would hamstring the national security apparatus at a time of significant and emerging global threats.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Snowden a "traitor to the United States" who has "put the lives of Americans and foreigners at risk," while Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) doubted whether the new system established by the bill would do any more to protect Americans' privacy by keeping the records out of government hands.
"The telecom companies sell our personal data, including our names, our phone numbers, our addresses, to the highest bidder for telemarketing and other purposes, and some of that data ends up in the hands of con artists," she said, adding, "The fact is that the House bill substantially weakens a vital tool in our counterterrorism efforts at a time when the terrorist threat has never been higher."
Just before the final vote around 4 p.m. Tuesday, McConnell took the floor to defend his moves to preserve the existing surveillance programs. He also lambasted Obama's foreign policy, calling the end of the phone-data program the latest in a series of missteps that includes his decisions to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to seek the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
"The pattern is clear," McConnell said. "The president has been a reluctant commander in chief."
The opposition to the bill, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), prompted an intraparty standoff that exposed sharp splits along philosophical and generational lines, and between the two chambers on Capitol Hill.
The bill passed by a wide margin in the House last month but languished as those who sought to maintain the status quo, led by McConnell, tried to stare down Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the other senators who supported either ending or reforming the most controversial provisions of the surveillance programs.
"It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens, and it surely compromises American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in my view, at exactly the wrong time," McConnell said Tuesday, minutes before colleagues rejected a series of amendments he favored.
"This is the Senate, and members are entitled to different views, and members have tools to assert those views. Itâ(TM)s the nature of the body where we work," McConnell said Tuesday morning. "But what's happened has happened, and we are where we are. Now is the time to put all that in the past and work together to diligently make some discrete and sensible improvements to the House bill."
They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year
Carlton Reid 19th century cyclists paved the way for modern motorists' roads Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago
Wooden hobbyhorses evolved into velocipedes; velocipedes evolved into safety bicycles; safety bicycles evolved into automobiles.
It's well known that the automotive industry grew from seeds planted in the fertile soil that was the late 19th century bicycle market. And to many motorists it's back in the 19th century that bicycles belong. Cars are deemed to be modern; bicycles are Victorian.
Many motorists also assume that roads were built for them. In fact, cars are the johnny-come-latelies of highways.
The hard, flat road surfaces we take for granted are relatively new. Asphalt surfaces weren't widespread until the 1930s. So, are motorists to thank for this smoothness?
No. The improvement of roads was first lobbied for - and paid for - by cycling organisations.
In the UK and the US, cyclists lobbied for better road surfaces for a full 30 years before motoring organisations did the same. Cyclists were ahead of their time.
When railways took off from the 1840s, the coaching trade died, leaving roads almost unused and in poor condition. Cyclists were the first vehicle operators in a generation to go on long journeys, town to town. Cyclists helped save many roads from being grubbed up.
Roads in towns were sometimes well surfaced. Poor areas were cobbled; upmarket areas were covered in granite setts (what many localities call cobbles). Pretty much every other road was left unsurfaced and would be the colour of the local stone. Many 19th century authors waxed lyrical about the varied and beautiful colours of British roads.
Cyclists' organisations, such as Cyclists' Touring Club in the UK and League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in the US, lobbied county surveyors and politicians to build better roads. The US Good Roads movement, set up by LAW, was highly influential. LAW once had the then US president turn up at its annual general meeting.
The CTC individual in charge of the UK version of the Good Roads movement, William Rees Jeffreys, organised asphalt trials before cars became common. He took the reins of the Roads Improvement Association (RIA) in 1890, while working for the CTC.
He later became an arch motorist and the RIA morphed into a motoring organisation. Rees Jeffreys called for motorways in Britain 50 years prior to their introduction. But he never forgot his roots. In a 1949 book, Rees Jeffreys - described by former prime minister David Lloyd George as "the greatest authority on roads in the United Kingdom and one of the greatest in the whole world" â" wrote that cyclists paved the way, as it were, for motorists. Without the efforts of cyclists, he said, motorists would not have had as many roads to drive on. Lots of other authors in the early days of motoring said the same but this debt owed to cyclists by motorists is long forgotten.
The CTC created the RIA in 1885 and, in 1886, organised the first ever Roads Conference in Britain. With patronage - and cash - from aristocrats and royals, the CTC published influential pamphlets on road design and how to create better road surfaces. In some areas, county surveyors took this on board (some were CTC members) and started to improve their local roads.
Even though it was started and paid for by cyclists, the RIA stressed from its foundation that it was lobbying for better roads to be used by all, not just cyclists.
However, in 1896 everything changed. Motoring big-wigs lobbied for the Locomotives Amendment Act to be repeal
The first thing I do when I arrive at any remote office today is plug the laptop in
Then obviously, the selling point of "thinnest and lightest" is not aimed at you. You are carrying ADDITIONAL hardware. Probably even in a bag of some kind.
"Thinnest and lightest" (which is the cause of the whole non-replaceable battery thing) is aimed at people trying to dazzle their clients with toys - and crawling under the desk to plug in the cord does not count. They WILL have to throw it out. You on the other hand might even try to connect it to an additional external battery of some sorts. And it might work.
But that still makes that laptop an overpriced and badly designed toy whose major component will die in a couple of years, without a way to replace or restore it.
I'm not suffering from the 'natural is good' delusion;
Followed by...
natural substances have been around for a long time, so nature has had time to adjust to them.
That is EXACTLY an example of appeal to nature with added appeal to tradition on top of it.
Petrochemicals have been around for a long time too and are also PERFECTLY NATURAL substances. Oil comes from nature. A great part of it from - HA! - the sea. Plastics are nothing but petrochemicals. See?
Who are we to argue with nature? Nature wants plastics. And oil spills. And ice ages. And tectonic shifts. Even asteroids slamming into the planet and killing nearly everyone on it. Nature just LOVES THOSE!
Whatever harm plastic may cause, we are not liekly to have a good defence against it
And that is both appeal to fear AND appeal to ignorance. "We don't know - therefore it must be bad."
Also, it is shifting the goalposts cause now it is "we" and not "nature" who are in trouble. And if that is the only problem... solution for all plastic everywhere is very simple. Dump it all in the ocean and don't eat the fish if you're queasy about a little plastic getting in your system that way. There. "We" no longer have a problem.
Remove the licenses for other taxi companies, and they will offer the same price as Uber.
Those companies already got the cars, trained drivers, a complete support network, decades of experience... They would bury Uber in any case where they would be allowed to play by the same rules.
Hell... they could probably forgo on the whole "mobile app" thing. Calling a dispatcher and getting assigned and forwarded the closest car is nothing particularly innovative and has worked since... well since one was able to use a phone to call a taxi. No need for GPS or touch screen or whatever...
Hell... call it a feature. "Retro-Taxi". For all the hipsters out there.
A bit harder to transport to a client's office, though.
Do you want to dance the extension cord dance at your client's office?
I'm talking about a situation few years down the road where supposedly thinnest and lightest workstation turns into a stationary object which has to be constantly powered from the mains. And all over a few millimeters and grams of style over functionality. Making a $2000+ machine useless as far as its main feature (portability) is concerned - when a $50 dollar replaceable part could give one decades of work and hand-me-down use.
And had your mom stuck to being fucked in the ass and giving blowjobs to sailors she would have had enough strength to choke you in the toilet where you were plunked out instead of just choking you enough to produce a thoroughly mentally retarded bastard like you.
Still not user serviceable for a simple task of replacing a battery on something that should be a workSTATION. A stationary object used for work. Where those extra 3-4 mm of thickness and 50-100 grams saved mean somewhere between bupkis and diddlysquat.
So one can chuck that $2000+ "workstation" into the bin in 3 years as the size of the battery does not matter when it comes to the heat-degradation. It's how many times and how often its cells hit the "overheating" limit, causing them to shrink in capacity to under that limit.
At which point it COULD be made into a cabled-down machine with enough minutes on the battery to MAYBE save the project one is working on in the case of a power outage. But if it is cable-only in 3 years (or maybe sooner if one likes draining the battery to the core and charging it on a bed under a blanket) - who gives a fuck about how slim or light it is?
One can buy a far better desktop machine and a UPS for that money. And it would be user-serviceable and upgradeable.
Fucker is SO sensationalism-happy it's amazing he hasn't migrated to Gawker yet. They probably wouldn't take him cause he's too old for them.
Actual summed up numbers are overall positive. From TFS:
% Extremely good: 24 On balance good: 28 That's 52% samzenpus, you fucking illiterate hack.
More or less neutral: 17 That's 69% who think it will be the same OR BETTER, you sensationalist troll.
On balance bad:13 Extremely bad (existential catastrophe): 18 That's a mere 31% (less than a third) who are into gloom and doom scenarios. You human cockroach samzenpus.
Oh and BTW... Those negative numbers mostly come from "the 'theoretical' (PT-AI and AGI)" groups (with PT-AI leading in crying "The END is NIGH!") while those engaged in actual technical AI work gave mostly positive grades. From TFA:
The participants of PT-AI are mostly theory-minded, mostly do not do technical work, and often have a critical view on large claims for easy progress in AI (Herbert Dreyfus was a keynote speaker in 2011).
But the best part is that out of 170 who responded to the survey (out of 549 queried), 115 (~67.6%) belonged to the more AI-critical group of PT-AI and AGI. Meaning that EVEN AMONG GLOOM&DOOMERS, majority is NOT buying into gloom & doom scenario.
Which means that the summary is not even wrong. Seriously, why hasn't anyone yet replaced samzenpus with a script? No advanced AI is needed in his case.
So, it is good that that "M3800 is the world's thinnest" mobile workstation, cause they can shove it up their asses with that policy of chasing the "looks" factor over functionality.
Which can be seen in the design of the keyboard as well. It sits there centered, with HUGE empty spaces on both sides, and no dedicated numeric keys while navigation keys are down to very crammed arrow keys.
Workstation? This is a glorified e-mail machine that you discard after 3 years.
Sand is a natural material, and the environment already knows how to deal with it.
Every time you get the urge to say "it's natural so it is OK" - REMEMBER CYANIDE. Or Ebola. Or AIDS. Cancer too...
All perfectly natural.
Just like sulfuric acid - which is used to unclog pipes once they accumulate too much sand. Or even "apricot shells and cocoa beans" suggested by the idiotic article. Both of which soak up water, sink to the bottom and clog up pipes - calling for more perfectly natural chemicals to poured down the drain more often.
Maybe you can try going to poor towns in West Virginia and tell them that they have to spend millions of dollars on new sewage treatment plants because of toothpaste and skin soap.
Lay off the appeal to the poor and other forms of appeal to emotion and look at your question again.
Then, consider that the article itself argues how California (due to its economy's size) banning this particular product (which article claims is being used because it is cheaper) will FORCE the industry to stop using it altogether. Meaning that instead of "poow witwe tows iw Wewst Wiwviwia" (Isn't appeal to emotion retarded?) it will affect the economy of the ENTIRE USA and thus indirectly the world - because "estimated 38 tons of plastic pollution in California".
On the other hand... Why are you OK with California influencing both world economy INCLUDING Wewst Wiwviwia evowowy (OK... I'll stop) in one dictatorial form - but not in another which would be ameliorated by various federal and state grants and caps based on quantity of produced/treated sewage, AFTER it gets voted in on a federal level? How many poow wi... how many small towns outside California would be influenced by regulations for stricter filtration INSIDE California? Which would produce cleaner water all-round, and not just from that one form of particles.
And really... California, the 10th economy by nominal GDP, IN THE WORLD, surpassing India and Canada, can't afford better treatment of its water - so it has to shift the cost of its inhabitants fear of plastic onto everyone else's wallets?
On a side note... Can't wait until it dawns on Californians that glitter is made out of the same stuff, only covered with various shiny metals. I wonder if they'll ban Mariah Carey?
Thus, probably unwittingly, cause if your comments on the topic lack anything clearly it is having wits behind them, you go off to hide in your corner from the straw bogeymen coming for your "stuff", clutching at your gun to defend you. Because, clearly, poor people are getting ready to take everything from you. $1000 today and other nonsense.
Here's the thing boyo... Can you shoot viruses with them guns of yours? How bout bacteria? Can you shoot 'lectricity into your wires and oil and water into your pipes? How about simply shoot some bread on your table?
You know... stuff that will appear suddenly as what amounts to entire nations (there are countries with fewer people than 3.5 million truckers alone) suddenly end up without food or medicine or pot to piss in, and in the long run, without the ground to bury their dead. Following your "Fuck them I got mine" economic policy.
How many bullets does it take to stop that guy who's off his meds and out of a job but perfectly able to steal a truck, get drunk on stolen booze and go ramming it into other people's cars? Or simply take HIS gun (You think you're the only one with a peashooter?) and gun you down for no reason cause he's off his meds? You some gun-ninja, with a six sense for danger? No... not fear. We know you got that covered. DANGER-sense. Like what Spiderman has. No? Well... no wonder you're shaking in your boots then... you'd have to be shooting at everyone you don't know. And that's a lot of boo-lets...
How about that other guy who decides to steal the copper out of them power lines and gets both himself electrocuted AND takes out half the local grid in the process? Are YOU gonna guard all the power lines everywhere by your own lonesome, clutching your pathetic little Saturday night special? What's that? You're gonna PAY someone to guard them? Will that be $1000, $5000 or more? Lotsa them power lines...
BTW... did you know that you can use transformer oil (from power transformers) to run engines? Yeah... And they like have these pathetic locks on them. You just kick them a little. Then you drill a hole in the transformer, drain the oil into a can and leave it to rot or catch fire. Someone will come along and strip it of the wiring later. You're gonna pay that? Oh right... guns... Your gonna shoot the transformer into working. No... wait... you're gonna pay more guards and police...
But fuck that... right... You know what that oil does best? It works GREAT in chainsaws. Heatin don't come free, you know. But LANDSLIDES do! You're gonna love those... they take out houses, roads, tear up underground pipes... You'll be paying that shit too, I know. Right after you shoot that landslide.
But hold on... Them poor people don't have medical or any kind of insurance. You won't mind them going around all sick and stuff... urinating in your yard... taking shit where ever they can... and eventually dying all around your place. Right-right... you're gonna shoot that too. Shoot the sick right out of them. Then shoot the medicine and doctors INTO hospitals to treat YOU when you need them instead of all them poor people swamping the system. Then you're gonna pay someone to bury/burn the corpses, sanitize everything, give you daily checkups to make sure you didn't catch anything... must be great to be able to afford all that on your private tropical island.
And that's all before your next door neighbor, your huntin/fishin/masturbatin buddy, comes to your door with a plan to shoot himself some stuff. See... his trucking business went belly up on account of all them self-driving trucks not needing his local services in your neighborhood cause nobody's buying shit there anymore. So... nothing to transport. You and your ex-billionaire buddy are the only ones there - and you got yourself all the shit you need behind your guns and walls and moats and crocodiles and drawbridges and all that other shit you built around your personal "one-person prison".
Come on... He's your buddy. He's just gonna shoot you a little. And take your crocodiles.
Even their aircraft worked on a form of teleportation.
As for the nukes... it was actually a case of many dirty bombs exploding under an energy shield, down through a hollowed out core of the planet which was mined for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here:
Finally they projected it. What a brilliant picture! They had thought it might be fuzzy such as you get with heat waves. But the light that had traveled for over a year was crystal-clear and straight.
There was the imperial City of Psychlo. Circular tram rails, streets down from its cliffs like conveyor belts. They even carried the idea of mining into their city design. Huge, bustling Psychlo! The center of power of the universes. The hub of the great, cruel claw that raked the bones from planets and peoples everywhere. There was the three-hundred-two-thousand-year-old monster itself, spread out in its sadistic and ugly might!
Neither Jonnie nor Angus had ever seen a live city of that size before. A hundred million population? A billion? Not the planet, just the city above the lower plain. Look at the trams. Rails that ran in circular spirals. Cars that looked for all the world like mine cars but full of people. Mobs in the streets. Mobs! Not riots. Just Psychlos.
You ever see so many beings? Even in such a tiny size one could see mobs! They were daunted. They compared it to their own towns, even to their own ruined cities. These didn't measure up to it at all. What arrogance to attack anything like that. They were so awestruck and impressed they hadn't even been looking at the transshipment rig of Psychlo. They missed the beginning and had to track back.
They adjusted the projector lens and position to get the transshipment platform of Psychlo more centered and enlarged. And then they saw the whole sequence, just as it had occurred right after Jonnie and Windsplitter had raced across the Earth platform.
First, there were the Psychlo workers racing out to leave the platform clear for the incoming semiannual from Earth. There were flatbeds lined up to receive coffins and personnel. There was the first shimmer of arrival of the Psychlos Jonnie and Windsplitter had knocked down. Then a small puff. There were the Psychlo workmen flinching back. A force screen had gone on! A dome over the platform had closed instantly to contain that small explosion. It could not have been an atmosphere armor cable. Some sort of shimmering, sparkling screen. Transparent but very much there.
Trucks had time to start up before anything else occurred. One huge emergency truck had lunged nearer the platform, evidently to handle the minor blast. A whole minute went by. Then the first lethal coffin exploded! A big âoeplanet busterâ nuclear bomb, nestled into a bed of dirty mines. The force screen held.
The holocaust was contained. The boiling, ferocious blast had not even bulged the screen. Then another shock as the second coffined âoeplanet busterâ went off. The screen held! Good lord, what technology to build a screen like that. What power it must take to hold it. Another shock inside that dome. The third planet buster. It and all its ancient, very dirty atomic bombs. The screen held.
Psychlos were racing toward it from far off. Those near the platform were flattened by concussion transmitting through the screen. The fourth contained bomb went off. The screen still held. But the transmitted concussion had hurled the emergency truck backward. Nearby buildings lost their glass. The ground was shaking as though hit by gigantic earthquakes.
A nearby building suddenly dropped downward as though sucked from below. Other buildings began to go the same way. The fifth bomb went off! And seen in slow motion, first narrowly, then more broadly, the entire scene went into a churning, boiling mass of atomic fire. No, something more! Molten, flaming fire was erupting in spots all over the plain. They widened the angle quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
For starters...
While there is currently no technology to produce healthy human clones technology for growing muscles is readily available and has been for centuries.
It is only that now it can all be replaced with exoskeletons.
As for reflexes... you have no idea what you are talking about don't you? Reflexes are built into the nervous system.
As in - it's biology. Like heart pumping blood. You don't "learn" that.
That's why when checking the nervous system for damage one of the main indicators that are checked are reflexes.
And standing, walking, talking etc. are NOT reflexes. Hint: Humans have to learn to do those things.
And relearn to do them in the case of an injury, through physical therapy.
Injury like breaking both legs in a skiing accident, a car crash - or a full body transplant.
What's the use of a clone knowing how to walk or dance? That's gonna get overwritten anyway.
You don't pick up a taste for cigarettes with a smoker's kidney or hearts, nor do you get artistic with painter's cornea.
There is no soul, spirit, sentience or skill in a bunch of CELLS.
Same way, there are no transferable reflexes from a body to a mind - cause body don't know jack shit.
Sure... stuff will taste, smell and look kinda different for a while and you'll have to get your liver used to alcohol and fatty food again... but that's just the part of necessary physical therapy.
Praise the penis that we have such paragons of morality like you - ready to sentence random strangers to death based on their own antiquated moral and other beliefs.
Including scientific beliefs. As opposed to scientific reality.
Cause believing that a clone which was never allowed to grow into a person (cause it was built that way) is anything more than an overgrown collection of cells - is no different than the beliefs of those religious nuts who claim every fertilized and unfertilized egg and every sperm are a potential human being.
You make clones. Design them.
Fully healthy human clones means that you could have a blonde Asian female clone of yourself as well as a redhead black male clone of yourself. If you wanted to.
They are not persons any more than a collection of human organs kept alive by a machine is a person.
Or a braindead body with no cerebral activity. Just organs. No person inside.
Which part of "I'd club my own clone-self to death with a garden dwarf" did you miss?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Advantages
Compared to steam catapults, EMALS weighs less, occupies less space, requires less maintenance and manpower, is more reliable, recharges more quickly, and uses less energy. Steam catapults, which use about 1350 pounds of steam per launch, have extensive mechanical, pneumatic, and hydraulic subsystems.[4] EMALS uses no steam, which makes it suitable for the Navy's planned all-electric ships.[14] The EMALS could be more easily incorporated into a ramp.[4]
Compared to steam catapults, EMALS can control the launch performance with greater precision, allowing it to launch more kinds of aircraft, from heavy fighter jets to light unmanned aircraft.[14] EMALS can also deliver 29 percent more energy than steam's approximately 95 megajoules, increasing the output to 122 megajoules.[4] The EMALS will also be more efficient than the 5-percent efficiency of steam catapults.[2]
Check those links.
Article cites and quotes CDC for all the relevant information. Then it quotes itself quoting and citing CDC.
and they were certainly sentient beings being sacrificed.
They were "sentient" cause the story demanded it.
There is no reason why a jar-grown clone would need to be anything other than completely brain dead.
Hell... If they can be grown to a full healthy adult in an artificial womb - make the clones anencephalic.
And then there's that whole bit where people don't give a flying fuck about what happens to their clone's ass when their own ass is on the line.
I for one wouldn't care. Hell... I'd club my own clone-self to death with a garden dwarf if necessary.
Though it would probably just be much simpler to just check the "yes - I would like to have a clone(s) for all my future transplant needs" box.
And besides that... It is not sentient if it is never allowed to be sentient.
Keep it in a box - both physical and mental.
All that needs to be done is just get in there while it is still just an abortion in a jar, and never allow it to form sentience.
There. "Morality" problem solved.
And for anyone out there who's getting their panties all bunched up while getting their favorite appeal to emotion argument ready - THINK OF THE CHILDREN YOU HEARTLESS CUNTS!
You know how hard it is to get child-sized organs for transplantation?
You wanna go and tell those dying children they have to die cause your "morality" won't allow them to have clones?
Boy are you people fucking heartless.
But in all seriousness now - that's what all "morality" arguments about cloning boil down to.
Appeal to this or that emotion.
Whether it is fear or guilt-shaming or simply "my god is against that".
A clone raised in a jar is no different from a stillborn baby, resuscitated into a coma and kept alive by machines.
Except there are no parents to fool themselves that their little Braindead Billy will get better and grow up to be a politician or a model.
Oh... And to any of those Fuckers for Ethical Treatment of Clones out there...
My clones come with a contract on their ass.
Clone leaves the storage without my consent - its head explodes.
It leaves the storage WITH my consent but without my immediate medical need - there's money in an account out there for anyone who blows its head off.
MotherJones used to have journalists, but they are now nothing but a pro-progressive propaganda rag, fond of running hit pieces on anyone to the right of Mao Zedong.
You do realize you just replied with a "god damn commies" ad hominem to an article citing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, on the topic of... well... diseases and vaccination?
Bible Belt states have some of the highest AND the lowest vaccination rates.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
And as usual, it is probably a combination of factors which influence the anti-vaccination attitudes.
Though one factor does seem to be common - clustering.
I.e. It's social. Where there's one anti-vaxxer, there's more anti-vaxxer.
Overall, national vaccination rates seem high: The median rate of coverage for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, administered to most before entry into kindergarten, was 94.7 percent for the 2013-14 school year. But, as Schuchat points out, the rate is lower in communities where unvaccinated families tend to cluster. In some areas, low rates might have more to do with access to clinics than with beliefs about vaccinations.
"The national estimates hide what's going on state to state. The state estimates hide what's going on community to community. And within communities there may be pockets," Schuchat said. "It's one thing if you have a year where a number of people are not vaccinating, but year after year in terms of the kids that are exempting, you do start to accumulate."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year in order, in McConnell's words, to "ensure that there is adequate time .â.â. to build and test a system that doesn't yet exist." Another required telecom companies to notify the government if they change their data-retention policies.
On the Senate floor, his allies continued to rail against the House bill, arguing that it would hamstring the national security apparatus at a time of significant and emerging global threats.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Snowden a "traitor to the United States" who has "put the lives of Americans and foreigners at risk," while Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) doubted whether the new system established by the bill would do any more to protect Americans' privacy by keeping the records out of government hands.
"The telecom companies sell our personal data, including our names, our phone numbers, our addresses, to the highest bidder for telemarketing and other purposes, and some of that data ends up in the hands of con artists," she said, adding, "The fact is that the House bill substantially weakens a vital tool in our counterterrorism efforts at a time when the terrorist threat has never been higher."
Just before the final vote around 4 p.m. Tuesday, McConnell took the floor to defend his moves to preserve the existing surveillance programs. He also lambasted Obama's foreign policy, calling the end of the phone-data program the latest in a series of missteps that includes his decisions to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to seek the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
"The pattern is clear," McConnell said. "The president has been a reluctant commander in chief."
The pattern is QUITE clear indeed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The opposition to the bill, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), prompted an intraparty standoff that exposed sharp splits along philosophical and generational lines, and between the two chambers on Capitol Hill.
The bill passed by a wide margin in the House last month but languished as those who sought to maintain the status quo, led by McConnell, tried to stare down Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the other senators who supported either ending or reforming the most controversial provisions of the surveillance programs.
"It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens, and it surely compromises American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in my view, at exactly the wrong time," McConnell said Tuesday, minutes before colleagues rejected a series of amendments he favored.
"This is the Senate, and members are entitled to different views, and members have tools to assert those views. Itâ(TM)s the nature of the body where we work," McConnell said Tuesday morning. "But what's happened has happened, and we are where we are. Now is the time to put all that in the past and work together to diligently make some discrete and sensible improvements to the House bill."
They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year
so the early auto producers managed to get the US to redo all of it's roads.
Early auto producers exploited the decades of lobbying already done by cyclists.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Carlton Reid
19th century cyclists paved the way for modern motorists' roads
Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago
Wooden hobbyhorses evolved into velocipedes; velocipedes evolved into safety bicycles; safety bicycles evolved into automobiles.
It's well known that the automotive industry grew from seeds planted in the fertile soil that was the late 19th century bicycle market. And to many motorists it's back in the 19th century that bicycles belong. Cars are deemed to be modern; bicycles are Victorian.
Many motorists also assume that roads were built for them. In fact, cars are the johnny-come-latelies of highways.
The hard, flat road surfaces we take for granted are relatively new. Asphalt surfaces weren't widespread until the 1930s. So, are motorists to thank for this smoothness?
No. The improvement of roads was first lobbied for - and paid for - by cycling organisations.
In the UK and the US, cyclists lobbied for better road surfaces for a full 30 years before motoring organisations did the same. Cyclists were ahead of their time.
When railways took off from the 1840s, the coaching trade died, leaving roads almost unused and in poor condition. Cyclists were the first vehicle operators in a generation to go on long journeys, town to town. Cyclists helped save many roads from being grubbed up.
Roads in towns were sometimes well surfaced. Poor areas were cobbled; upmarket areas were covered in granite setts (what many localities call cobbles). Pretty much every other road was left unsurfaced and would be the colour of the local stone. Many 19th century authors waxed lyrical about the varied and beautiful colours of British roads.
Cyclists' organisations, such as Cyclists' Touring Club in the UK and League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in the US, lobbied county surveyors and politicians to build better roads. The US Good Roads movement, set up by LAW, was highly influential. LAW once had the then US president turn up at its annual general meeting.
The CTC individual in charge of the UK version of the Good Roads movement, William Rees Jeffreys, organised asphalt trials before cars became common. He took the reins of the Roads Improvement Association (RIA) in 1890, while working for the CTC.
He later became an arch motorist and the RIA morphed into a motoring organisation. Rees Jeffreys called for motorways in Britain 50 years prior to their introduction. But he never forgot his roots. In a 1949 book, Rees Jeffreys - described by former prime minister David Lloyd George as "the greatest authority on roads in the United Kingdom and one of the greatest in the whole world" â" wrote that cyclists paved the way, as it were, for motorists. Without the efforts of cyclists, he said, motorists would not have had as many roads to drive on. Lots of other authors in the early days of motoring said the same but this debt owed to cyclists by motorists is long forgotten.
The CTC created the RIA in 1885 and, in 1886, organised the first ever Roads Conference in Britain. With patronage - and cash - from aristocrats and royals, the CTC published influential pamphlets on road design and how to create better road surfaces. In some areas, county surveyors took this on board (some were CTC members) and started to improve their local roads.
Even though it was started and paid for by cyclists, the RIA stressed from its foundation that it was lobbying for better roads to be used by all, not just cyclists.
However, in 1896 everything changed. Motoring big-wigs lobbied for the Locomotives Amendment Act to be repeal
The first thing I do when I arrive at any remote office today is plug the laptop in
Then obviously, the selling point of "thinnest and lightest" is not aimed at you.
You are carrying ADDITIONAL hardware. Probably even in a bag of some kind.
"Thinnest and lightest" (which is the cause of the whole non-replaceable battery thing) is aimed at people trying to dazzle their clients with toys - and crawling under the desk to plug in the cord does not count.
They WILL have to throw it out.
You on the other hand might even try to connect it to an additional external battery of some sorts.
And it might work.
But that still makes that laptop an overpriced and badly designed toy whose major component will die in a couple of years, without a way to replace or restore it.
I'm not suffering from the 'natural is good' delusion;
Followed by...
natural substances have been around for a long time, so nature has had time to adjust to them.
That is EXACTLY an example of appeal to nature with added appeal to tradition on top of it.
Petrochemicals have been around for a long time too and are also PERFECTLY NATURAL substances.
Oil comes from nature. A great part of it from - HA! - the sea.
Plastics are nothing but petrochemicals. See?
Who are we to argue with nature? Nature wants plastics. And oil spills. And ice ages. And tectonic shifts.
Even asteroids slamming into the planet and killing nearly everyone on it. Nature just LOVES THOSE!
Whatever harm plastic may cause, we are not liekly to have a good defence against it
And that is both appeal to fear AND appeal to ignorance.
"We don't know - therefore it must be bad."
Also, it is shifting the goalposts cause now it is "we" and not "nature" who are in trouble.
And if that is the only problem... solution for all plastic everywhere is very simple.
Dump it all in the ocean and don't eat the fish if you're queasy about a little plastic getting in your system that way.
There. "We" no longer have a problem.
Remove the licenses for other taxi companies, and they will offer the same price as Uber.
Those companies already got the cars, trained drivers, a complete support network, decades of experience...
They would bury Uber in any case where they would be allowed to play by the same rules.
Hell... they could probably forgo on the whole "mobile app" thing.
Calling a dispatcher and getting assigned and forwarded the closest car is nothing particularly innovative and has worked since... well since one was able to use a phone to call a taxi.
No need for GPS or touch screen or whatever...
Hell... call it a feature. "Retro-Taxi". For all the hipsters out there.
A bit harder to transport to a client's office, though.
Do you want to dance the extension cord dance at your client's office?
I'm talking about a situation few years down the road where supposedly thinnest and lightest workstation turns into a stationary object which has to be constantly powered from the mains.
And all over a few millimeters and grams of style over functionality.
Making a $2000+ machine useless as far as its main feature (portability) is concerned - when a $50 dollar replaceable part could give one decades of work and hand-me-down use.
And had your mom stuck to being fucked in the ass and giving blowjobs to sailors she would have had enough strength to choke you in the toilet where you were plunked out instead of just choking you enough to produce a thoroughly mentally retarded bastard like you.
Still not user serviceable for a simple task of replacing a battery on something that should be a workSTATION.
A stationary object used for work.
Where those extra 3-4 mm of thickness and 50-100 grams saved mean somewhere between bupkis and diddlysquat.
So one can chuck that $2000+ "workstation" into the bin in 3 years as the size of the battery does not matter when it comes to the heat-degradation.
It's how many times and how often its cells hit the "overheating" limit, causing them to shrink in capacity to under that limit.
At which point it COULD be made into a cabled-down machine with enough minutes on the battery to MAYBE save the project one is working on in the case of a power outage.
But if it is cable-only in 3 years (or maybe sooner if one likes draining the battery to the core and charging it on a bed under a blanket) - who gives a fuck about how slim or light it is?
One can buy a far better desktop machine and a UPS for that money. And it would be user-serviceable and upgradeable.
Fucker is SO sensationalism-happy it's amazing he hasn't migrated to Gawker yet. They probably wouldn't take him cause he's too old for them.
Actual summed up numbers are overall positive. From TFS:
%
Extremely good: 24
On balance good: 28
That's 52% samzenpus, you fucking illiterate hack.
More or less neutral: 17
That's 69% who think it will be the same OR BETTER, you sensationalist troll.
On balance bad:13
Extremely bad (existential catastrophe): 18
That's a mere 31% (less than a third) who are into gloom and doom scenarios. You human cockroach samzenpus.
Oh and BTW...
Those negative numbers mostly come from "the 'theoretical' (PT-AI and AGI)" groups (with PT-AI leading in crying "The END is NIGH!") while those engaged in actual technical AI work gave mostly positive grades.
From TFA:
The participants of PT-AI are mostly theory-minded, mostly do not do technical work, and often have a critical view on large claims for easy progress in AI (Herbert Dreyfus was a keynote speaker in 2011).
But the best part is that out of 170 who responded to the survey (out of 549 queried), 115 (~67.6%) belonged to the more AI-critical group of PT-AI and AGI.
Meaning that EVEN AMONG GLOOM&DOOMERS, majority is NOT buying into gloom & doom scenario.
Which means that the summary is not even wrong.
Seriously, why hasn't anyone yet replaced samzenpus with a script? No advanced AI is needed in his case.
From TFA:
Battery 61Whr (6-cell) non-replaceable
So, it is good that that "M3800 is the world's thinnest" mobile workstation, cause they can shove it up their asses with that policy of chasing the "looks" factor over functionality.
Which can be seen in the design of the keyboard as well.
It sits there centered, with HUGE empty spaces on both sides, and no dedicated numeric keys while navigation keys are down to very crammed arrow keys.
Workstation?
This is a glorified e-mail machine that you discard after 3 years.
Sand is a natural material, and the environment already knows how to deal with it.
Every time you get the urge to say "it's natural so it is OK" - REMEMBER CYANIDE.
Or Ebola. Or AIDS. Cancer too...
All perfectly natural.
Just like sulfuric acid - which is used to unclog pipes once they accumulate too much sand.
Or even "apricot shells and cocoa beans" suggested by the idiotic article.
Both of which soak up water, sink to the bottom and clog up pipes - calling for more perfectly natural chemicals to poured down the drain more often.
Maybe you can try going to poor towns in West Virginia and tell them that they have to spend millions of dollars on new sewage treatment plants because of toothpaste and skin soap.
Lay off the appeal to the poor and other forms of appeal to emotion and look at your question again.
Then, consider that the article itself argues how California (due to its economy's size) banning this particular product (which article claims is being used because it is cheaper) will FORCE the industry to stop using it altogether.
Meaning that instead of "poow witwe tows iw Wewst Wiwviwia" (Isn't appeal to emotion retarded?) it will affect the economy of the ENTIRE USA and thus indirectly the world - because "estimated 38 tons of plastic pollution in California".
On the other hand...
Why are you OK with California influencing both world economy INCLUDING Wewst Wiwviwia evowowy (OK... I'll stop) in one dictatorial form - but not in another which would be ameliorated by various federal and state grants and caps based on quantity of produced/treated sewage, AFTER it gets voted in on a federal level?
How many poow wi... how many small towns outside California would be influenced by regulations for stricter filtration INSIDE California?
Which would produce cleaner water all-round, and not just from that one form of particles.
And really... California, the 10th economy by nominal GDP, IN THE WORLD, surpassing India and Canada, can't afford better treatment of its water - so it has to shift the cost of its inhabitants fear of plastic onto everyone else's wallets?
On a side note...
Can't wait until it dawns on Californians that glitter is made out of the same stuff, only covered with various shiny metals.
I wonder if they'll ban Mariah Carey?
Dinosaurs replied that they will cross THAT particular road when they get to it.
One or more of those words do not mean what you think they mean.
Also, you're arguing a metaphor.
Thus, probably unwittingly, cause if your comments on the topic lack anything clearly it is having wits behind them, you go off to hide in your corner from the straw bogeymen coming for your "stuff", clutching at your gun to defend you.
Because, clearly, poor people are getting ready to take everything from you. $1000 today and other nonsense.
Here's the thing boyo...
Can you shoot viruses with them guns of yours? How bout bacteria?
Can you shoot 'lectricity into your wires and oil and water into your pipes?
How about simply shoot some bread on your table?
You know... stuff that will appear suddenly as what amounts to entire nations (there are countries with fewer people than 3.5 million truckers alone) suddenly end up without food or medicine or pot to piss in, and in the long run, without the ground to bury their dead.
Following your "Fuck them I got mine" economic policy.
How many bullets does it take to stop that guy who's off his meds and out of a job but perfectly able to steal a truck, get drunk on stolen booze and go ramming it into other people's cars?
Or simply take HIS gun (You think you're the only one with a peashooter?) and gun you down for no reason cause he's off his meds? You some gun-ninja, with a six sense for danger?
No... not fear. We know you got that covered. DANGER-sense. Like what Spiderman has. No?
Well... no wonder you're shaking in your boots then... you'd have to be shooting at everyone you don't know.
And that's a lot of boo-lets...
How about that other guy who decides to steal the copper out of them power lines and gets both himself electrocuted AND takes out half the local grid in the process?
Are YOU gonna guard all the power lines everywhere by your own lonesome, clutching your pathetic little Saturday night special?
What's that? You're gonna PAY someone to guard them? Will that be $1000, $5000 or more? Lotsa them power lines...
BTW... did you know that you can use transformer oil (from power transformers) to run engines?
Yeah... And they like have these pathetic locks on them. You just kick them a little. Then you drill a hole in the transformer, drain the oil into a can and leave it to rot or catch fire. Someone will come along and strip it of the wiring later.
You're gonna pay that? Oh right... guns... Your gonna shoot the transformer into working. No... wait... you're gonna pay more guards and police...
But fuck that... right... You know what that oil does best? It works GREAT in chainsaws.
Heatin don't come free, you know. But LANDSLIDES do!
You're gonna love those... they take out houses, roads, tear up underground pipes...
You'll be paying that shit too, I know. Right after you shoot that landslide.
But hold on... Them poor people don't have medical or any kind of insurance.
You won't mind them going around all sick and stuff... urinating in your yard... taking shit where ever they can... and eventually dying all around your place.
Right-right... you're gonna shoot that too. Shoot the sick right out of them.
Then shoot the medicine and doctors INTO hospitals to treat YOU when you need them instead of all them poor people swamping the system.
Then you're gonna pay someone to bury/burn the corpses, sanitize everything, give you daily checkups to make sure you didn't catch anything... must be great to be able to afford all that on your private tropical island.
And that's all before your next door neighbor, your huntin/fishin/masturbatin buddy, comes to your door with a plan to shoot himself some stuff.
See... his trucking business went belly up on account of all them self-driving trucks not needing his local services in your neighborhood cause nobody's buying shit there anymore. So... nothing to transport.
You and your ex-billionaire buddy are the only ones there - and you got yourself all the shit you need behind your guns and walls and moats and crocodiles and drawbridges and all that other shit you built around your personal "one-person prison".
Come on... He's your buddy. He's just gonna shoot you a little. And take your crocodiles.
Even their aircraft worked on a form of teleportation.
As for the nukes... it was actually a case of many dirty bombs exploding under an energy shield, down through a hollowed out core of the planet which was mined for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here:
Finally they projected it. What a brilliant picture! They had thought it might be fuzzy such as you get with heat waves. But the light that had traveled for over a year was crystal-clear and straight.
There was the imperial City of Psychlo. Circular tram rails, streets down from its cliffs like conveyor belts. They even carried the idea of mining into their city design.
Huge, bustling Psychlo! The center of power of the universes. The hub of the great, cruel claw that raked the bones from planets and peoples everywhere. There was the three-hundred-two-thousand-year-old monster itself, spread out in its sadistic and ugly might!
Neither Jonnie nor Angus had ever seen a live city of that size before. A hundred million population? A billion? Not the planet, just the city above the lower plain. Look at the trams. Rails that ran in circular spirals. Cars that looked for all the world like mine cars but full of people. Mobs in the streets. Mobs! Not riots. Just Psychlos.
You ever see so many beings? Even in such a tiny size one could see mobs!
They were daunted.
They compared it to their own towns, even to their own ruined cities. These didn't measure up to it at all.
What arrogance to attack anything like that.
They were so awestruck and impressed they hadn't even been looking at the transshipment rig of Psychlo. They missed the beginning and had to track back.
They adjusted the projector lens and position to get the transshipment platform of Psychlo more centered and enlarged.
And then they saw the whole sequence, just as it had occurred right after Jonnie and Windsplitter had raced across the Earth platform.
First, there were the Psychlo workers racing out to leave the platform clear for the incoming semiannual from Earth. There were flatbeds lined up to receive coffins and personnel.
There was the first shimmer of arrival of the Psychlos Jonnie and Windsplitter had knocked down.
Then a small puff.
There were the Psychlo workmen flinching back.
A force screen had gone on! A dome over the platform had closed instantly to contain that small explosion. It could not have been an atmosphere armor cable. Some sort of shimmering, sparkling screen. Transparent but very much there.
Trucks had time to start up before anything else occurred. One huge emergency truck had lunged nearer the platform, evidently to handle the minor blast. A whole minute went by.
Then the first lethal coffin exploded!
A big âoeplanet busterâ nuclear bomb, nestled into a bed of dirty mines.
The force screen held.
The holocaust was contained. The boiling, ferocious blast had not even bulged the screen.
Then another shock as the second coffined âoeplanet busterâ went off.
The screen held! Good lord, what technology to build a screen like that. What power it must take to hold it.
Another shock inside that dome. The third planet buster. It and all its ancient, very dirty atomic bombs. The screen held.
Psychlos were racing toward it from far off. Those near the platform were flattened by concussion transmitting through the screen.
The fourth contained bomb went off. The screen still held.
But the transmitted concussion had hurled the emergency truck backward. Nearby buildings lost their glass.
The ground was shaking as though hit by gigantic earthquakes.
A nearby building suddenly dropped downward as though sucked from below. Other buildings began to go the same way.
The fifth bomb went off!
And seen in slow motion, first narrowly, then more broadly, the entire scene went into a churning, boiling mass of atomic fire.
No, something more! Molten, flaming fire was erupting in spots all over the plain.
They widened the angle quickly.