That such candidates as Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee, whose apparent science knowledge is not even at the third-grade level, can rise to such prominence in US politics leads me to ask a more general question:
"We live in a world that is ever more complex in the depth and breadth of technology. I realize that no politician, or any human for that matter, can be conversant in the nuts and bolts of every area of knowledge, but what can you say to convince me that you know enough about science and technology to be able to appoint legitimate experts to serve as your science advisers and agency chiefs?"
As a skeptic, I have tended to dismiss reports of natural ball lightning, but I must say that I experienced something that appeared similar. When I was a teenager (in the 1960s), I was playing my electric guitar in the living room, when the electrical transformer on the utility pole in front of the house was struck by lightning and exploded in yellow fire. I perceived a white light from behind, and when I turned around, there was an impossibly bright shiny ball of blue-white light sitting right in front of the amplifier speaker. It lasted for less than a second and quickly faded, leaving the amp unscathed and completely functional (after household current was eventually restored).
You can count me among those who will not buy any discs that employ a standard that keeps me from getting HD signals into the analogue component video inputs on my switching receiver. Although my TV has an HDMI interface as well as component inputs, my $3000 Denon A/V receiver has component only. Being able to switch both audio and video inputs simultaneously was a major feature that led me to buy such a high-end receiver.
I am reasonably sure that Google does not support regular expressions in its search fields. There is no mention of regex on a search of the help pages, and this page specifically indicates that the asterix character does not function as it does in a regex.
There was some European general search engine a few years ago that did support regex, but it had indexed only a paltry number of pages on the Web and was pretty much useless.
Millennialsists love to fixate on the natural ebb and flow of disasters to give credence to their nutty prophecies of the End of the World. In fact, what we are seeing now is nothing new, and much worse plagues have occurred in post-Biblical times:
The Plague of Justinian was possibly the most devastating pestilence of the ancient world. Lasting fifty years, it arrived in the Imperial capital, Constantinople, in 542 A.D. Mortality in the city reached as high as 10,000 per day. Ships were loaded with the dead, towed out to sea, and abandoned. Fortification towers were unroofed, filled with corpses, then re-roofed.
The most famous pandemic was the Black Death, which, like a lot of the perturbations that perennially rattled the cage of Western Civilization (Aryans, Mongols, Huns, Turks, gunpowder, etc) originated in Asia. From 1346 to 1361, the epidemic killed up to one-third of the population of Europe.
The last pandemic ravaged Europe in the seventeenth century and is best known to us as the Plague of London, 1665-66. This is the one chronicled by Samuel Pepys in his diary (which most of us didn't mind reading in high school because of all the sexual content). Since the printing press was now available, this was the first epidemic in which the populace was kept thoroughly informed of the latest in cutting-edge medical knowledge. One pamphlet informed its readers that the plague was caused by "eating radishes, a cat catter wouling, immoderate eating of caviare and anchovies, tame pigeons that flew up and down an alley, and drinking strong heady beer." Rumors that syphilis prevented the disease caused the gentlemen of London to storm local houses of ill-repute. English physicians apparently knew better; many just left the country.
Well, it took two decades, but Robin Warren and Barry Marshall are finally being honored for making sense of something we pathologists had all seen right in front of our noses but ignored.
What I really love about their work is that it was done with the conventional clinical tools that had been available to pathologists and gastroenterologists for decades, even in non-academic venues. Their example illustrates that great work can still be done without employing multimillion-dollar labs, big grants, and multi-institutional cooperative groups.
After suffering one intellectually challenged Bush appointee after another, I find some consolation in the Miers nomination. First of all, she has an undergraduate degree in math, which puts her above 99.9% of all politicians in the intelligence department. Second, the fact that she successfully defended Microsoft indicates that she at least understands some geek issues.
I have been a subscriber to both Sirius and XM within the past 12 months. Most of my listening has been done in my car in the Houston area.
In terms of overall quality, I would have to give the edge to XM:
Sirius compresses their music channels too much, and the swirling compression artifact, which makes hi-hats and acoustic rhythm guitars blend into a homogeneous mush, is continually audible, and quite distracting. You occasionally hear some compression artifact on XM, but it is much less frequent and considerably more subtle.
With Sirius, I would repeatedly lose the signal on almost every outing, irrespective of atmospheric conditions, or whether I kept to the open road. In contrast, I can't remember the last time I lost the XM signal. When it does happen, it's because I got into some heavily sheltered area.
Of course, this is just a matter of taste, but I prefer the playlist and selection of musical genres on XM. My favorite XM channel is "XM Music Lab" which specializes in progressive art rock. I never could find this kind of selection on Sirius.
I do give Sirius the edge on talk shows, mostly because I love "The Young Turks" (on SiriusLeft) so much. The talk on XM is pretty generic, with brainless liberals like Randi Rhodes and brainless conservatives like Michael Reagan. Not much independent thought there.
There has already been an initiative from the NIH that NIH-supported research be freely accessible after 6 months.
Unfortunately, after the publishing lobby got through with this, the final NIH policy is so watered down as to be rendered toothless and meaningless. The policy, best explained in the FAQ PDF, indicates that authors are only encouraged to place their papers in the public domain. There is no policy binding on them or on scientific publishers to allow public access, even when the work was fully funded from public coffers.
Since few publishers will accept a manuscript without insisting on owning the copyright, the author will not be able to comply with the NIH "encouragement," even if he/she wanted to.
Although three of the Viking experiments did give results that would be expected if life had been present, the 400-lb gorilla was the fourth experiment, the GCMS (gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer), which showed that there were no organic compounds present.
Obviously, this was pretty much a dealbreaker, lifewise, especially considering that non-organic chemical reactions that could produce the oher postive results were soon elucidated.
I agree that the ear buds shipped with the iPod fail to deliver good bass. However, if you replace those with a set of in-the-ear 'phones, like the Fontopia model from Sony, for less than thirty bucks, you'll be very pleased with the bass, I think.
In lieu of any detailed description of this case in peer-reviewed scientific literature, this news item should be taken under advisement with appropriate skepticism.
The spinal cord is an enormously complex structure, the exact neural connections of which are formed in early embryonic life. That you could simply inject multipotential cells into a damaged cord and expect them to differentiate and grow into mature neurons, complete with appropriate connections, is asking an awful lot. In addition, in this patient, "paralyzed" for two decades, you have the issue of muscles, bones, and joints that haven't been in use all that time.
It would be wonderful if this account is true, but I'm not getting my hopes up until I see more of the fine print.
Medical laboratories do not "routinely ignore mouth bacteria in samples." Bacterial endocarditis is diagnosed by blood culture, and any bacterium that grows in a blood culture is dutifully reported to the doctor.
The only time we don't report out normal mouth bacteria is when we are working with a specimen from, uh, the mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
That such candidates as Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee, whose apparent science knowledge is not even at the third-grade level, can rise to such prominence in US politics leads me to ask a more general question:
"We live in a world that is ever more complex in the depth and breadth of technology. I realize that no politician, or any human for that matter, can be conversant in the nuts and bolts of every area of knowledge, but what can you say to convince me that you know enough about science and technology to be able to appoint legitimate experts to serve as your science advisers and agency chiefs?"
As a skeptic, I have tended to dismiss reports of natural ball lightning, but I must say that I experienced something that appeared similar. When I was a teenager (in the 1960s), I was playing my electric guitar in the living room, when the electrical transformer on the utility pole in front of the house was struck by lightning and exploded in yellow fire. I perceived a white light from behind, and when I turned around, there was an impossibly bright shiny ball of blue-white light sitting right in front of the amplifier speaker. It lasted for less than a second and quickly faded, leaving the amp unscathed and completely functional (after household current was eventually restored).
;)
I wasn't doing any drugs either.
You can count me among those who will not buy any discs that employ a standard that keeps me from getting HD signals into the analogue component video inputs on my switching receiver. Although my TV has an HDMI interface as well as component inputs, my $3000 Denon A/V receiver has component only. Being able to switch both audio and video inputs simultaneously was a major feature that led me to buy such a high-end receiver.
I am reasonably sure that Google does not support regular expressions in its search fields. There is no mention of regex on a search of the help pages, and this page specifically indicates that the asterix character does not function as it does in a regex.
There was some European general search engine a few years ago that did support regex, but it had indexed only a paltry number of pages on the Web and was pretty much useless.
The Plague of Justinian was possibly the most devastating pestilence of the ancient world. Lasting fifty years, it arrived in the Imperial capital, Constantinople, in 542 A.D. Mortality in the city reached as high as 10,000 per day. Ships were loaded with the dead, towed out to sea, and abandoned. Fortification towers were unroofed, filled with corpses, then re-roofed.
The most famous pandemic was the Black Death, which, like a lot of the perturbations that perennially rattled the cage of Western Civilization (Aryans, Mongols, Huns, Turks, gunpowder, etc) originated in Asia. From 1346 to 1361, the epidemic killed up to one-third of the population of Europe.
The last pandemic ravaged Europe in the seventeenth century and is best known to us as the Plague of London, 1665-66. This is the one chronicled by Samuel Pepys in his diary (which most of us didn't mind reading in high school because of all the sexual content). Since the printing press was now available, this was the first epidemic in which the populace was kept thoroughly informed of the latest in cutting-edge medical knowledge. One pamphlet informed its readers that the plague was caused by "eating radishes, a cat catter wouling, immoderate eating of caviare and anchovies, tame pigeons that flew up and down an alley, and drinking strong heady beer." Rumors that syphilis prevented the disease caused the gentlemen of London to storm local houses of ill-repute. English physicians apparently knew better; many just left the country.
Well, it took two decades, but Robin Warren and Barry Marshall are finally being honored for making sense of something we pathologists had all seen right in front of our noses but ignored.
What I really love about their work is that it was done with the conventional clinical tools that had been available to pathologists and gastroenterologists for decades, even in non-academic venues. Their example illustrates that great work can still be done without employing multimillion-dollar labs, big grants, and multi-institutional cooperative groups.
After suffering one intellectually challenged Bush appointee after another, I find some consolation in the Miers nomination. First of all, she has an undergraduate degree in math, which puts her above 99.9% of all politicians in the intelligence department. Second, the fact that she successfully defended Microsoft indicates that she at least understands some geek issues.
Before Miers, all we had was Al Gore.
In terms of overall quality, I would have to give the edge to XM:
There has already been an initiative from the NIH that NIH-supported research be freely accessible after 6 months.
Unfortunately, after the publishing lobby got through with this, the final NIH policy is so watered down as to be rendered toothless and meaningless. The policy, best explained in the FAQ PDF, indicates that authors are only encouraged to place their papers in the public domain. There is no policy binding on them or on scientific publishers to allow public access, even when the work was fully funded from public coffers.
Since few publishers will accept a manuscript without insisting on owning the copyright, the author will not be able to comply with the NIH "encouragement," even if he/she wanted to.
Although three of the Viking experiments did give results that would be expected if life had been present, the 400-lb gorilla was the fourth experiment, the GCMS (gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer), which showed that there were no organic compounds present.
Obviously, this was pretty much a dealbreaker, lifewise, especially considering that non-organic chemical reactions that could produce the oher postive results were soon elucidated.
I agree that the ear buds shipped with the iPod fail to deliver good bass. However, if you replace those with a set of in-the-ear 'phones, like the Fontopia model from Sony, for less than thirty bucks, you'll be very pleased with the bass, I think.
The spinal cord is an enormously complex structure, the exact neural connections of which are formed in early embryonic life. That you could simply inject multipotential cells into a damaged cord and expect them to differentiate and grow into mature neurons, complete with appropriate connections, is asking an awful lot. In addition, in this patient, "paralyzed" for two decades, you have the issue of muscles, bones, and joints that haven't been in use all that time.
It would be wonderful if this account is true, but I'm not getting my hopes up until I see more of the fine print.
The only time we don't report out normal mouth bacteria is when we are working with a specimen from, uh, the mouth.