Do however be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent; they may not have much of an interest in making you aware of things that might threaten or delay the transaction.
As with anything related to toxicology, the dose is the poison.
In this case, it may be the gene that's the poison. It appears that a gene called CYP1A2 determines how fast you metabolize caffeine, depending on which of two variants you have. People with two copies of the variant CYP1A2*1A metabolize caffeine about 4X faster than those with two copies of the other variant, CYP1A2*1F. The study found that more than 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day increases the risk of cardiovascular disease for the slow metabolizers, but may actually reduce it for those carrying CYP1A2*1A.
That could be why studies on the health effects of coffee have been all over the map. The trick is to know your genotype with regard to CYP1A2, and of course very few of us do (or can)...
Interesting. That might explain why American Idol does so well. The media surrounds us with people who are much more talented than we are, but where do we go to see/hear people who suck as badly as we do? It's very reassuring.
It used to be that there was something to going to the theater for the big screen experience. With that going away, I can't see people really interested in the cinema much at all. Someone let me know if they think people will still be "going" to the movies in 25 years in Japan or the US.
I'm not going to try to read the tea leaves on this one, but for me "going to the theater" has always been a way to get out of the house, much like going out for dinner or to a coffee shop. Yes, I can cook my own dinner or make my own coffee at home more cheaply and conveniently, but I do like to change my surroundings and see other people once in a while. More and more, I see Americans (particular in the burbs) fortressing themselves in their bedroom communities with their home entertainment systems, looking for ever more ways to avoid ever leaving their homes. Whatever works for you is fine, of course, but I think I'd go nuts living that way.
That said, the one thing that has destroyed the cinema experience for me more than anything else is: Commercials. No way will I pay $10 to see a movie and then be made to sit through 15 minutes of commercials.
And there will be no more $30M paydays for an actor for one movie. Which is fine by me -- once again, it's supply and demand.
There's another side to that coin, though. Suppose that your involvement in a film (or any other endeavor, for that matter) demonstrably adds $50 million of value to it (i.e., in increased revenues), for whatever reason. Or, suppose that 100,000 people are willing to pay $50 a head to watch you do your thing in a large stadium. How big a slice of that pie would you think you deserve, and if it's only a tiny slice, then who deserves the rest?
Sounds like you're into this more for the SF-inspired adventure than for the science. Results from COBE and WMAP have pretty much revolutionized our understanding of the Universe just in the last few years, for example. Data returned from planetary probes has been absolutely spectacular. IMHO, it would have been a tragedy to have allocated those funds to more manned space flight instead.
Space is absurdely huge. Absurdely. It's difficult for you and I to imagine Pluto's distance, much less the Oort cloud's.
Which is why it makes no sense (technological or economic) for people to go there. Besides, Pluto is nothing. Right now we can observe gamma ray bursts billions of light years away, from when the Universe was only a tenth of its current age, and use that information to learn very fundamental things. How exciting is that? I highly doubt that there will ever be human interstellar travel, but if there is it will only be because we've learned some very exotic new astrophysics that provides us with a cosmic "shortcut" of some kind.
The New Horizons probe is hitting an astonishing 21m/s now - 25 or so when it's past jupiter. Maybe they could stive for a bit more than a 4m/s gain?
This was never supposed to be a speed trial, was it? The acceleration is due to the gravitational effects of shooting past Jupiter, not any special technology aboard the craft. You'd have to change the laws of physics to increase it by much, even if that were a goal.
Maybe they could spend some money to show how safe nuclear power is instead of dealing with the bullshit anti-rng protesters?
Those experiments have already been done, by the former USSR at Chernobyl and by the US at Three Mile Island. But I agree with you that more nuclear power is probably inevitable. If we actually do the research and spend the money to make it safe, you can thank those bullshit protesters.
How about spending a little less money with Lockheed Martin, and a little more with creative engineers at @ Scaled Composites?
That'll happen when Scaled Composites starts matching the Big Boys in corruption and political patronage (just wait a decade or so). Much of the motivation in shifting NASA from science to manned exploration is exactly what you suggest.
It's all those people that smoke and drink and don't run every morning before work and play rugby after work on Thursdays!
No, no, the rugby is out; too easy to get hurt doing that. Come to think of it, a lot of distance runners eventually have knee problems requiring surgery, so nix that too. With everyone paying in and me as the only beneficiary (because things I do are reasonable by definition), I expect the system to work quite well, thank you!
But of course that's the point I was trying to make (sarcastically) with my previous comment...
Remember that he changed a budget surplus of almost US$ 480 billion into the greatest deficit America has ever faced.
And it's even worse than that, because he's doing the whole Iraq war thing off-budget. I.e., it would be a lot larger except for the accounting tricks (learned from his buddies at Enron, no doubt).
Merely sending people up in to space isn't exploration.
True, but there are a lot more people into science fiction than there are that actually understand the science, and those are the ones you have to entertain these days...
Absolutely. And you can throw in people who eat unhealthy diets, people who don't get enough exercise, and people who engage in accident-prone recreational activities, as well...
Bush wants to get to all that green cheese before the Chinese do.
Heh... And you can bet that if he announced such a program, the mainstream press would be talking about the "controversy" over the composition of the moon, as if it were a legitimate debate.
all these amazing space exploration projects just give us hints at the good info. they never really reveal the outstanding stuff.
I'd love to know what you consider the "outstanding stuff" to be. The answer to life, the universe, and everything, maybe? Aliens with pointy ears? Most astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and planetary scientists would tell you that the progress that's been made just in the last decade has been nothing short of stunning.
I decided I would try a whole bunch of distributions, I tried Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 2, SuSe 9.1, Debian, and Mandrake 10.
So after having a miserable experience with one distribution - on top of objecting morally to the whole idea of FOSS to begin with - you actually had the tenacity to try out five more distributions. Well, I for one am impressed with your tenacity (if not your honesty). But with your ability to learn and figure out simple things, not so much.
I'm an excellent software engineer
I'll bet you're an excellent driver, too. Glad you don't work for me if you couldn't figure this stuff out after years of trying, though.
Troll or not, only three minutes passed between the posting of the original article and this response. So, either this Anonymous Coward thinks and types really, really fast, or maybe it's just more canned material from the FUD factory?
Nevermind there simply is not enough oil being "wasted" that could be used for biodiesel.
This is only because Americans don't eat enuough french fries, potato chips, and other fried foods to ensure an adequate supply. Our own public health agencies (like the FDA) actually encourage us to eat less of these things, and by doing this they only deepen our dependence on foreign oil. We can only hope that our President continues his valiant purge of science-worshipping liberals from these agencies and replaces them with real Patriots who understand where our true national interest lies.
Does anyone think congress reads any of these bills?
You assume that the result would be any different if they did. This Congress - and I'm referring to a particular political party here - exists for one reason only, and that is to assist their corporate clients as they engage in the wholesale looting of the federal treasury. That's how you get the "bridge to nowhere" and the interminable war in Iraq, and that's how you get what we're talking about here.
All the other "religious right" nonsense is just there to pull in the moron vote that they need to stay in power. At the top, everything is about money.
Amen to that. I've used Linux for years and have had hardly any of the difficulties that my MS friends say I should be having. I can do a lot more with my machine than they can with theirs, too. It would be kind of fun to get a virus once in a while, though...
"Impossible" is a strong word, but she's right that it certainly makes it more difficult. Before, all you had to do was catch some seamy-looking people with a cache of software CDs, and you could safely presume that they were selling them illegally. Now, you have to bring in lawyers to examine licenses and such, and it all becomes a big pain in the ass.
No different with the RIAA, really. They want to presume that any distribution of digital music (except by their own members, of course) is illegal, and hence they attempt to shut down distribution channels for all large binary files. They're as much afraid of future competition from public-domain (e.g., creative commons) and permissively-licensed music as they are of actual copyright infringement.
I'm not sure I see the stupidity here; the woman called to inquire about the licensing status of the software, just as she should have. Stupid would have been to prosecute without having taken that critical step.
Guilty as charged for ignorance of FOSS, though...
Slashdot Mirror
Do however be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent; they may not have much of an interest in making you aware of things that might threaten or delay the transaction.
In this case, it may be the gene that's the poison. It appears that a gene called CYP1A2 determines how fast you metabolize caffeine, depending on which of two variants you have. People with two copies of the variant CYP1A2*1A metabolize caffeine about 4X faster than those with two copies of the other variant, CYP1A2*1F. The study found that more than 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day increases the risk of cardiovascular disease for the slow metabolizers, but may actually reduce it for those carrying CYP1A2*1A.
That could be why studies on the health effects of coffee have been all over the map. The trick is to know your genotype with regard to CYP1A2, and of course very few of us do (or can)...
. html
See http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn8816
Interesting. That might explain why American Idol does so well. The media surrounds us with people who are much more talented than we are, but where do we go to see/hear people who suck as badly as we do? It's very reassuring.
I'm not going to try to read the tea leaves on this one, but for me "going to the theater" has always been a way to get out of the house, much like going out for dinner or to a coffee shop. Yes, I can cook my own dinner or make my own coffee at home more cheaply and conveniently, but I do like to change my surroundings and see other people once in a while. More and more, I see Americans (particular in the burbs) fortressing themselves in their bedroom communities with their home entertainment systems, looking for ever more ways to avoid ever leaving their homes. Whatever works for you is fine, of course, but I think I'd go nuts living that way.
That said, the one thing that has destroyed the cinema experience for me more than anything else is: Commercials. No way will I pay $10 to see a movie and then be made to sit through 15 minutes of commercials.
And there will be no more $30M paydays for an actor for one movie. Which is fine by me -- once again, it's supply and demand.
There's another side to that coin, though. Suppose that your involvement in a film (or any other endeavor, for that matter) demonstrably adds $50 million of value to it (i.e., in increased revenues), for whatever reason. Or, suppose that 100,000 people are willing to pay $50 a head to watch you do your thing in a large stadium. How big a slice of that pie would you think you deserve, and if it's only a tiny slice, then who deserves the rest?
As much as anything else, it's this kind of manipulation of the end-user that got me to break out of the MS cage. The "free" part didn't hurt, either.
Oh, I like that. May I use it? I think I could easily say that at least once a day. Plus, my dog is sitting in my lap as I type this...
Space is absurdely huge. Absurdely. It's difficult for you and I to imagine Pluto's distance, much less the Oort cloud's.
Which is why it makes no sense (technological or economic) for people to go there. Besides, Pluto is nothing. Right now we can observe gamma ray bursts billions of light years away, from when the Universe was only a tenth of its current age, and use that information to learn very fundamental things. How exciting is that? I highly doubt that there will ever be human interstellar travel, but if there is it will only be because we've learned some very exotic new astrophysics that provides us with a cosmic "shortcut" of some kind.
The New Horizons probe is hitting an astonishing 21m/s now - 25 or so when it's past jupiter. Maybe they could stive for a bit more than a 4m/s gain?
This was never supposed to be a speed trial, was it? The acceleration is due to the gravitational effects of shooting past Jupiter, not any special technology aboard the craft. You'd have to change the laws of physics to increase it by much, even if that were a goal.
Maybe they could spend some money to show how safe nuclear power is instead of dealing with the bullshit anti-rng protesters?
Those experiments have already been done, by the former USSR at Chernobyl and by the US at Three Mile Island. But I agree with you that more nuclear power is probably inevitable. If we actually do the research and spend the money to make it safe, you can thank those bullshit protesters.
How about spending a little less money with Lockheed Martin, and a little more with creative engineers at @ Scaled Composites?
That'll happen when Scaled Composites starts matching the Big Boys in corruption and political patronage (just wait a decade or so). Much of the motivation in shifting NASA from science to manned exploration is exactly what you suggest.
No, no, the rugby is out; too easy to get hurt doing that. Come to think of it, a lot of distance runners eventually have knee problems requiring surgery, so nix that too. With everyone paying in and me as the only beneficiary (because things I do are reasonable by definition), I expect the system to work quite well, thank you!
But of course that's the point I was trying to make (sarcastically) with my previous comment...
And it's even worse than that, because he's doing the whole Iraq war thing off-budget. I.e., it would be a lot larger except for the accounting tricks (learned from his buddies at Enron, no doubt).
True, but there are a lot more people into science fiction than there are that actually understand the science, and those are the ones you have to entertain these days...
Absolutely. And you can throw in people who eat unhealthy diets, people who don't get enough exercise, and people who engage in accident-prone recreational activities, as well...
Heh... And you can bet that if he announced such a program, the mainstream press would be talking about the "controversy" over the composition of the moon, as if it were a legitimate debate.
I'd love to know what you consider the "outstanding stuff" to be. The answer to life, the universe, and everything, maybe? Aliens with pointy ears? Most astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and planetary scientists would tell you that the progress that's been made just in the last decade has been nothing short of stunning.
So after having a miserable experience with one distribution - on top of objecting morally to the whole idea of FOSS to begin with - you actually had the tenacity to try out five more distributions. Well, I for one am impressed with your tenacity (if not your honesty). But with your ability to learn and figure out simple things, not so much.
I'm an excellent software engineer
I'll bet you're an excellent driver, too. Glad you don't work for me if you couldn't figure this stuff out after years of trying, though.
Troll or not, only three minutes passed between the posting of the original article and this response. So, either this Anonymous Coward thinks and types really, really fast, or maybe it's just more canned material from the FUD factory?
we'll just have to take Mr. Furguson's word for it.
This is only because Americans don't eat enuough french fries, potato chips, and other fried foods to ensure an adequate supply. Our own public health agencies (like the FDA) actually encourage us to eat less of these things, and by doing this they only deepen our dependence on foreign oil. We can only hope that our President continues his valiant purge of science-worshipping liberals from these agencies and replaces them with real Patriots who understand where our true national interest lies.
You assume that the result would be any different if they did. This Congress - and I'm referring to a particular political party here - exists for one reason only, and that is to assist their corporate clients as they engage in the wholesale looting of the federal treasury. That's how you get the "bridge to nowhere" and the interminable war in Iraq, and that's how you get what we're talking about here.
All the other "religious right" nonsense is just there to pull in the moron vote that they need to stay in power. At the top, everything is about money.
It also assumes that there aren't any possible points of entry (like windows) that are less secure than the door.
Amen to that. I've used Linux for years and have had hardly any of the difficulties that my MS friends say I should be having. I can do a lot more with my machine than they can with theirs, too. It would be kind of fun to get a virus once in a while, though...
For the final exam, students should be required to supply the answers for next year's final...
No different with the RIAA, really. They want to presume that any distribution of digital music (except by their own members, of course) is illegal, and hence they attempt to shut down distribution channels for all large binary files. They're as much afraid of future competition from public-domain (e.g., creative commons) and permissively-licensed music as they are of actual copyright infringement.
But, I digress...
Guilty as charged for ignorance of FOSS, though...
Also, Evince will read both PDF and PostScript documents, and of course OpenOffice can export documents as PDFs.
I see the corollary of this used equally often: Any evil is acceptable, so long as there exists a greater evil.