Members of the LGBT community still feel they need to fight for their rights, even in regions where they've already won the gay marriage debate (like much of Europe and Canada) because there's elements in society who would take the rights away from them at the first opportunity.
There *are* people out there who feel that the gay people shouldn't be allowed on the bus at all, let alone making them sit all the way at the back of the bus.
If you're honestly in a situation where you need to do work, via cell phone, during your commute, then do the world a favour and either take the bus, or get a chauffeur. Either option would allow you to work on a laptop computer while you commute, too, which would be much more productive, don't you think?
Having a cell phone in your car is a good thing, in that you can call service or help when you need it, and you can call for directions. But pull over and park the car when you're in such a situation, so that you can focus all of your attention on driving when the vehicle is in motion. I spend enough of my energy while driving on reacting to the stupid things other people do when they aren't paying attention, and I don't need you adding to the situation, thanks.
Here we are in an environment where it's accepted as common knowledge that embryonic stem cells are a panacea. They hold the secret of life everlasting and the cure to all of mankinds ailments. Yet, all of the advances are being made with adult stem cells.
Your first premise is false. I cite myself as a counter-example. I, like many others, do not believe that embryonic stem cells are a panacea. I believe that they are an important key to a broad field of study. There is no single panacea, and there probably never will be one.
Your second assertion is also false, as can be proven by a quick Google search. As is quite clear, while many breakthroughs are being made using adult and induced stem cells, there are still breakthroughs happening with embryonic stem cells, and the main reason that more are happening with adult and induced types is because in many jurisdictions the use of embryonic stem cells is illegal for moral/ethical reasons. In other words, more's happening with adult and induced stem cells because *gasp* more people are doing studies and experiments involving them. However, despite your assertion, breakthroughs involving embryonic stem cells are still happening.
I'm sure that you won't understand. Perhaps your ignorance isn't feigned after all. In which case, your argument becomes stronger. It's not ironic because you're not pretending to be stupid, but you actually are stupid.
So going back to my original statement, the only irony here is your insistence that other people are stupid. As you seem to have missed that point, it's because of the discordance there... you insist that other people are stupid because they can't see what's not there, and in so doing, you're actually saying that you're the one who's being stupid.
In other news, naa naa, my father can beat up your father. With that out of the way, could you possibly try to maintain some level of enlightened discourse? I know that this *is* the Internet, but theoretically Slashdot is supposed to attract the more intelligent and mature among the net denizens. (though looking at some of the trolls posting NSFW stuff, that's really not saying much)
Although your inability to actually demonstrate its presence (beyond saying "you're stupid if you can't see it") is rather telling. So please, indulge me. Exactly how is that situation ironic?
Because quite honestly, the most obvious irony here is your insistence that because I can't see the irony, I must be stupid.... I blame Alanis Morisette. The only thing about that song that was actually ironic was that the song had nothing to do with irony.
GPS, AM, FM are on different frequencies. You must live a sheltered life and not have had the opportunity to see many antennas and compare them.
Actually, I worked in military communications, and have *built* AM/FM transmitters and antennas, as well as cellular networks. I can tell you from experience that while they work on different frequencies, it's entirely possible to connect an appropriate antenna to a wiring harness to bring the signal inside what's effectively a Faraday cage.
Many many passengers talk on cell phones to get directions. Some even answer the driver's cell phone. You must live a sheltered exist with few friends who would do that for you.
I turn my cell phone off when I'm driving, actually. Probably has something to do with that military background, and that desire to have all of my focus on driving when I get behind the wheel. *shrugs*
There is a general trend away from purpose built GPS navigators and toward GPS applications on smart phones. You must live a sheltered life with little contact with the technical world.
See above. And you must have lived a very sheltered life to have not come in contact with cars that have in-dash navigation systems....
I dunno about you, but my car's radio has an antenna that's outside the glass. Yes, they're making radios that are silkscreened onto the rearview window, and my car is one of those, but the radio also has a small antenna on the roof for sattelite radio. There's absolutely no reason that the FM radio can't use that antenna, too.
As for cell phones, I don't see the problem. It's very rude to be talking on your cell phone while you're in a car with somebody else, and it's incredibly dangerous to be talking on the phone while you're driving.
I see the hindering of GPS receivers as a bad thing, but with so many cars having GPS receivers these days, it's a bit of a moot point. Those GPS receivers have antennas that are outside of the car's glass, too. There's absolutely no reason for the radio/GPS antenna to be inside, behind the glass of the cabin. Not when there's access to a wiring harness behind it which can easily carry a link to an antenna that's outside of the passenger compartment.
From TFA, people were listening on £500 headphones, with a high end amplifier.
Now, there's other factors that could have a big impact on the quality, but apparently the speakers that they were listening to aren't among them. My short list would include:
- the sound card in the computer that they played stuff back with.
If they were playing back with a low-end sound card, then the quality of the speakers and amplifier are irrelevant. especially if they're not using a digital output to the amplifier. even if they were using digital/optical output to the amplifier, the playback to the user could still be limited by the sound card in the computer, in that computer digital output codecs usually limit the output codec or normalize it. Because of these, they could have been artificially limiting the quality of the playback to users beyond the limitations of the original encoding.
- by their own admission, they did not reencode the audio using the same codec.
They make this sweeping statement that users can't tell the difference between 160kbit and 48kbit, but they don't add in the caveat that these are samples that they've trapped from the live stream on both radio stations, and that they have not reencoded the music. If they wanted a scientific test, they should have taken a very high quality lossless recording, preferably an original direct from the studio, and played back 160kbit and 48kbit samples encoded with the same codec. Take a 160kbit VBR MP3 and a 48kbit VBR MP3, all other settings identical, and users will *probably* hear the difference between them, and correctly identify the 160kbit as the higher quality. With different codecs being used, all bets are off. The bitrates have different meanings in different codecs. (witness that most people can't tell the difference between a 160kbit OGG/Vorbis and a 360kbit VBR MP3)
I say probably, though, because of the final on my short list: - a person's hearing is very subjective, and could be impaired
If your hearing is impaired or has been damaged by loud noises or other factors, then there may be no point in using high end audio equipment or encoding at a high bit rate. I know people whose hearing is so bad that they cannot tell the difference between the $2500 studio speakers I have on my stereo (made by Tannoy) and the $100 computer speakers (with subwoofer) that they have hooked up to their PC. There's also the element of psychology, too... people tend to think that something that's louder sounds better. That's why TV commercials turn the sound up over the show, and that's why so much modern music has been post-processed to normalize the sound wave. (le sigh)
A single success would not be ironic. Another success in a long string of successes when compared to a complete and total lack of success from embryonic stem cells, however, is.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There is no irony at all in that. It is perhaps damning evidence against embryonic stem cells (which, incidentally, have not suffered a "complete and total" lack of success), and it is perhaps evidence that we should be looking more thoroughly at induced and adult stem cells for research (principally of interest for those who don't already have ethical and moral objections to using embryonic cells), but that's not ironic.
Quite aside from that, if it were not for the benefits derived from embryonic stem cell research, and the moral/ethical objections to ESC use, then scientists never would have been looking for a way to induce stem cells from adult tissue. In an indirect way, this very result we've been discussing is a result of embryonic stem cell research. Keeping in mind that you're using it as an argument against embryonic stem cell research, *that* is ironic. But it's the only irony I can find in the situation, and it's tenuous at best, because as near as I can tell, you're not arguing that we never should have engaged in ESC research to begin with, just that we've found some alternatives and shouldn't be continuing with it.
Premise 1) Most hackish types are either probably or definitely autistic.
I'd disagree with your basic premise. Most of the geeky types I know are certainly not autistic. And those that claim some form of Autism or Asperger's are self-diagnosed based on a short list of symptoms, and they use it as an excuse and blanket justification to avoid developping social skills.
Premise 2) Most autistic individuals genuinely *are* basement dwelling freaks, on a level that would make the Joker or the Addams Family look normal. Before you call me a bigot for saying that, realise that I'm an autistic person myself. My Quasimodo/Frankenstein/Joseph Merrick complex is both strong, and fully justified. Most of us genuinely are the sort of person who was interviewed in the documentary, "Trekkies."
Living with your parents does not make you a freak, nor does it make you autistic or a quasimodo. And those people I know who actually are genuinely autistic actually don't live with their parents at all. Only one of the ones I know actually has any form of assistance in his existence at all, the others are all living on their own. (low autism, not high autism... but if you had high autism, I'd have a hard time believing that you were able to hold a job at all)
I don't have a girlfriend, I've only had one sexual partner, and I lost my virginity very late. (at 26) Part of my current celibacy is by choice; female psychology simply doesn't have what it takes to be able to tolerate an autistic male. Women just aren't strong enough to be able to handle us. I realised that, and so I made a decision to never put another woman through what I put my ex through again.
You're generalizing females. I don't like it. It's insulting to the whole gender, for one, and for two, you're setting yourself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why don't you let a woman decide if she can handle you? We aren't as weak as you seem to think. As long as you're honest up front, and we know what we're getting ourselves into, the it isn't that much of a big deal. (and no, I'm not offering... I'm in a happy relationship with somebody, and she would be very miffed, and probably a little confused, if I hooked up with some guy from the Internet)
My father was a misogynist, but I honestly am not. I loved my ex, despite what I put her through; and I left her because I loved her. I wanted her to find someone who she could be truly happy with.
If you're an autistic person, you have a moral responsibility to stay away from neurotypicals, particularly from women. They need to be protected from us.
That's a pretty damned misogynistic thing to say, IMO. You had one bad experience, and generalizing an entire group based on it. Seriously bad juju.
*mutters* I will not feed trolls, I will not feed trolls....
You... don't seem to understand what Irony is. A success using stem cells derived from fat is in no way ironic, even up against people who claim that embryonic stem cells are needed. You might be asking a rhetorical question; coupled with the obvious ellipsis in your statement, you could be asking people to consider the morality/ethics of using embryonic stem cells when here's an example of stem cells from an alternate source working, but it's in no way ironic. In order for it to have any trace of irony, you'd have to be speaking one thing while saying something else. For example, your calling him stupid is quite ironic, in my not so humble opinion.
The thing being... we have a 2D view of a 3D object. From our perspective it runs perpendicular to the axis of the magnetic field. But without a second observation point that's far enough away from the original observation point, we can't actually know that it actually *is* perpendicular to the axis, or whether it's an optical illusion and really going off at some oddball angle.
Just playing devil's advocate here. It certainly does look as though it's related to the galactic magnetic field, and I liked the suggestion of another poster, that it's basically just the galactic equivalent of Aurora Borealis. But at this point, we just can't *know* that it's related to the magnetic field at all. We could be seeing that giant floating ribbon from Star Trek: Generations.
And my first thought was to the 1992 video game, Star Control II... the documentation that came with that game said that access to hyperspace was impossible within large gravity wells (such as those around stars), and that there was a visible shimmer when you got to the region of space where the transition between dimensions was possible...:)
Charest took office in 2003, not 2008. While you're right that he got 46% of the popular vote, rather than the 70%, the voter turnout in that particular election was 70.5%, which is one of the highest voter turnouts in a long time. (and also explains where the 70% I quoted came from).
That was the 37th general assembly of Quebec, not the 39th (the one you linked)
The cost of manufacturing solar panels is one of the biggest arguments against them in enviro-geek circles.... it runs similar to the arguments against buying a Prius. You get a warmfuzzy from owning one, but the amount of energy that went into the production of the batteries, the toxic cost to the environment both from the production and the ultimate disposal thereof, all the travel that the thing has done in its various component levels... you end up costing the environment more than you ever save by buying one. With regards to solar panels, that is why there's projects like the solar-thermal generators in Spain and the USA. With regards to cars, if you want to save the environment, don't buy a Prius, buy a small engined turbodiesel (ideally) or gasoline engine (in a pinch, small turbodiesels are hard to get in some parts of the world including North America). Yes, they'll use more gas than a hybrid electric, but the carbon footprint over the production and lifetime of the vehicle is nowhere near as high, especially if you keep the machine properly serviced and maintained.
It doesn't go to show you that you could live forever and not have seen everything (that's what Hollywood Blvd. in LA is for), but it does go to show you that not every environmentalist lives up to the "mental" part of the moniker. There's a lot of environmentalists out there who put in a lot of thought about how best to save the environment, and who don't automatically jump on an idea without first researching to find out whether it's really as good for the environment as it might appear on paper.
The Wii supports 4 Wiimotes, as well as 4 Gamecube controllers. You can connect the GC controllers simultaneously with the Wiimotes, and there are a handful of games out there that can take input from both at the same time and theoretically support up to 8 player multiplay. The DDR games jump to mind immediately, though in their case, the DDR mat connects to the GC port, and one player does input through both the DDR mat *and* the Wiimote simultaneously, so it's only a 4-player game.
Most of the people in this country don't distinguish between the Bloc Quebecois, which is, as you say, a party whose sole purpose is to defend Quebec's interest at the federal level, and the Parti Quebecois, to which the separatists belong. While it's true that many separatists belong to the Bloc, it's not in their party constitution or published ideals to pursue sovereignty, though preservation of Quebec's identity as a nation (in a similar way to that which the natives enjoy) is.
Nation, in this case, referring to preservation of unique culture, unique language, and their own way of doing things. Quebec maintains its own education system, its own legal system, and its own culture, which is very different from most of Canada (and similar, but distinctly different to that in France... Quebec is *much* more European than anywhere else in North America, though). They think, rightly IMO, that this culture is worth preserving. They may have some wonky ways of going about preserving it, but the ideal itself is still a good thing.
Interestingly, when Charest was elected Premier with an overwhelming majority (something like 70% of the popular vote; 40% is enough to form a majority government in this country), one of his campaign platform's major planks was to modify the code in Quebec to prevent future separation votes... the people of Quebec have spoken, pretty clearly, that they don't actually want to separate, they just want to preserve their identity.
I wasn't aware that the colon is the most direct way to access the brain. Then again, maybe if you use a really powerful laser...
Maybe they only do their probes on conservatives, or on people who are genetically predisposed to going into politics. Their brains are much closer to that point of entry....
You do realize that the bombs were dropped after the battles at Midway and the invasion and taking of Okinawa? Little Boy (Hiroshima) was dropped August 6, 1945, and Okinawa ended in June, 1945.
In other words, the war was effectively over. By the end of the battle of Okinawa, Allied victory in the Pacific was pretty much guaranteed. The Japanese lines had been broken, and the Allies had a strong foothold on Japanese soil. They most certainly did have a choice about whether or not to drop the nuclear bombs. That was more of a publicity stunt than anything... while it did shorten the war, its effect was more to start the cold war than it was to end the Pacific war.
So I can assume that you're implying that operators of a flying car would need appropriate training (such as the 'driver's training' courses we have now) in how to safely operate such a vehicle.
More than that, I'm afraid. Flying machines need a lot more training to learn to operate safely, because their operation is so much more complicated. Even a fixed-wing single-engine light aircraft, you're usually using both feet at the same time (rudder pedals), as well as both hands (stick/yoke, throttle, flaps, trim, radio, GPS, and various other tracking/approach equipment). While flying, there is a lot more that you need to pay attention to, as you need to be looking around 360 degrees, but also above and below, as well as RADAR if your plane is equipped with it. (and believe me, if there were millions of extra aircraft in the skies, you'd be an idiot to buy one that didn't have RADAR). Parking an airplane is also a lot more extra hassle... landing is a difficult procedure: you need to choose the correct approach, you need to make sure that your trim/flaps are properly adjusted, you need to adjust your angle to account for crosswind, and you need to adjust your throttle to account for head/tail wind. You also need to be prepared to go full throttle and overshoot the runway if you don't have enough runway to land and stop safely. Once you've landed, you need to worry about hangar or tarmac space to leave the plane, and refuelling every time you touch ground. On the subject of refuelling, you need to plan your route so that you don't run out of gas in the air, and you need to file a flightplan.
Flying a helicopter, landing is just as difficult (as you need to account for the wind and are constantly feathering the throttle), but you also have a lot more controls in the aircraft that you're constantly monitoring and adjusting. Flying a rotary wing aircraft is a pain in the butt, and very mentally and physically draining... while I am licensed to fly one, I would much prefer to stick to fixed wing machines.
So no. It's not a simple question of a little extra training so that we can all fly. It's a question of a lot of extra training, and a lot of extra expensive safety equipment. Air-traffic controllers already have the highest stress job in the world (and the accompanying highest suicide rates). Do you really want to replace a few hundred or thousand pilots in the average city, most of whom aren't flying at the same time, with a few million who are? I sure as hell wouldn't. If there started being that many people in the air, I'd retire from flying.
In reading your post, I do find that I need to ask: what speed is your hard drive?
Even 3 years ago, the overwhelming majority of hard drives that were sold in desktop computers were 7200rpm SATA II, and were capable of very high (comparatively) transfer rates, and had on average low seek times.
By contrast, even today the overwhelming majority of hard drives that are sold in laptop computers are 5400rpm, and some manufacturers are even still using 4200rpm drives in an effort to make it run quieter and use less power. If you want a "performance" drive, you have to specifically ask to get a 7200rpm drive, and it makes a huge difference to your drive's performance in terms of seek and spin up times. I've seen it first-hand, at that... my HTPC is a Mini-ITX system that bolts to the back of my TV... essentially, it's a laptop without a screen (but connected to a 42" plasma by HDMI). I chose to buy a large hard drive for it, and so it's got a 500GB 5400rpm SATA II drive in it. That takes a long time to spin up, and even though it's got twice the RAM of my laptop, and the cores are running faster (2.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz), the laptop is much faster to boot up and to load programs once it's up. The only major difference between the two systems is that the laptop has a 7200RPM drive instead of a 5400RPM drive.
You do know that "Dominator" is one of the few words left in the English language that conjugates to gender, and that "Dominatrix" is the female form of the word?
I, for one, do not look forward to seeing the fat guy as a domme... and something tells me that if Apple really did try that... well... they'd probably attract a new audience, but they'd probably also alienate large parts of their existing one.... >.>
When talking about convictions, yes. False positives are worse. When talking about investigations, false negatives are worse. A false positive during an investigation means that you spend a little time and resources investigating and proving somebody's innocense. A false negative during an investigation means that you might let the guilty party walk free, uninvestigated, because you don't believe they're the one.
In an ideal world, at least.:) In the real world, things are never so cut/dry as that.
Because current fingerprints are a transcription of a 3D object into a 2D format, one that's often smudged, partial, or otherwise. The idea is to ultimately transfer the entire existing fingerprint database into 3D format... while you'd still be comparing 2D images from fingerprints taken from crime scenes, it would allow for easier and more accurate identification of people who are unknown, when their person (or corpse) is available.
Slashdot Mirror
Members of the LGBT community still feel they need to fight for their rights, even in regions where they've already won the gay marriage debate (like much of Europe and Canada) because there's elements in society who would take the rights away from them at the first opportunity.
There *are* people out there who feel that the gay people shouldn't be allowed on the bus at all, let alone making them sit all the way at the back of the bus.
If you're honestly in a situation where you need to do work, via cell phone, during your commute, then do the world a favour and either take the bus, or get a chauffeur. Either option would allow you to work on a laptop computer while you commute, too, which would be much more productive, don't you think?
Having a cell phone in your car is a good thing, in that you can call service or help when you need it, and you can call for directions. But pull over and park the car when you're in such a situation, so that you can focus all of your attention on driving when the vehicle is in motion. I spend enough of my energy while driving on reacting to the stupid things other people do when they aren't paying attention, and I don't need you adding to the situation, thanks.
Your first premise is false. I cite myself as a counter-example. I, like many others, do not believe that embryonic stem cells are a panacea. I believe that they are an important key to a broad field of study. There is no single panacea, and there probably never will be one.
Your second assertion is also false, as can be proven by a quick Google search. As is quite clear, while many breakthroughs are being made using adult and induced stem cells, there are still breakthroughs happening with embryonic stem cells, and the main reason that more are happening with adult and induced types is because in many jurisdictions the use of embryonic stem cells is illegal for moral/ethical reasons. In other words, more's happening with adult and induced stem cells because *gasp* more people are doing studies and experiments involving them. However, despite your assertion, breakthroughs involving embryonic stem cells are still happening.
So going back to my original statement, the only irony here is your insistence that other people are stupid. As you seem to have missed that point, it's because of the discordance there... you insist that other people are stupid because they can't see what's not there, and in so doing, you're actually saying that you're the one who's being stupid.
In other news, naa naa, my father can beat up your father. With that out of the way, could you possibly try to maintain some level of enlightened discourse? I know that this *is* the Internet, but theoretically Slashdot is supposed to attract the more intelligent and mature among the net denizens. (though looking at some of the trolls posting NSFW stuff, that's really not saying much)
Although your inability to actually demonstrate its presence (beyond saying "you're stupid if you can't see it") is rather telling. So please, indulge me. Exactly how is that situation ironic?
Because quite honestly, the most obvious irony here is your insistence that because I can't see the irony, I must be stupid. ... I blame Alanis Morisette. The only thing about that song that was actually ironic was that the song had nothing to do with irony.
I thought that the first step was a Recall vote. Or I suppose in Arnie's case, a Total Recall vote...
That is how he took office in the first place, isn't it?
Actually, I worked in military communications, and have *built* AM/FM transmitters and antennas, as well as cellular networks. I can tell you from experience that while they work on different frequencies, it's entirely possible to connect an appropriate antenna to a wiring harness to bring the signal inside what's effectively a Faraday cage.
I turn my cell phone off when I'm driving, actually. Probably has something to do with that military background, and that desire to have all of my focus on driving when I get behind the wheel. *shrugs*
See above. And you must have lived a very sheltered life to have not come in contact with cars that have in-dash navigation systems....
I dunno about you, but my car's radio has an antenna that's outside the glass. Yes, they're making radios that are silkscreened onto the rearview window, and my car is one of those, but the radio also has a small antenna on the roof for sattelite radio. There's absolutely no reason that the FM radio can't use that antenna, too.
As for cell phones, I don't see the problem. It's very rude to be talking on your cell phone while you're in a car with somebody else, and it's incredibly dangerous to be talking on the phone while you're driving.
I see the hindering of GPS receivers as a bad thing, but with so many cars having GPS receivers these days, it's a bit of a moot point. Those GPS receivers have antennas that are outside of the car's glass, too. There's absolutely no reason for the radio/GPS antenna to be inside, behind the glass of the cabin. Not when there's access to a wiring harness behind it which can easily carry a link to an antenna that's outside of the passenger compartment.
From TFA, people were listening on £500 headphones, with a high end amplifier.
Now, there's other factors that could have a big impact on the quality, but apparently the speakers that they were listening to aren't among them. My short list would include:
- the sound card in the computer that they played stuff back with.
If they were playing back with a low-end sound card, then the quality of the speakers and amplifier are irrelevant. especially if they're not using a digital output to the amplifier. even if they were using digital/optical output to the amplifier, the playback to the user could still be limited by the sound card in the computer, in that computer digital output codecs usually limit the output codec or normalize it. Because of these, they could have been artificially limiting the quality of the playback to users beyond the limitations of the original encoding.
- by their own admission, they did not reencode the audio using the same codec.
They make this sweeping statement that users can't tell the difference between 160kbit and 48kbit, but they don't add in the caveat that these are samples that they've trapped from the live stream on both radio stations, and that they have not reencoded the music. If they wanted a scientific test, they should have taken a very high quality lossless recording, preferably an original direct from the studio, and played back 160kbit and 48kbit samples encoded with the same codec. Take a 160kbit VBR MP3 and a 48kbit VBR MP3, all other settings identical, and users will *probably* hear the difference between them, and correctly identify the 160kbit as the higher quality. With different codecs being used, all bets are off. The bitrates have different meanings in different codecs. (witness that most people can't tell the difference between a 160kbit OGG/Vorbis and a 360kbit VBR MP3)
I say probably, though, because of the final on my short list:
- a person's hearing is very subjective, and could be impaired
If your hearing is impaired or has been damaged by loud noises or other factors, then there may be no point in using high end audio equipment or encoding at a high bit rate. I know people whose hearing is so bad that they cannot tell the difference between the $2500 studio speakers I have on my stereo (made by Tannoy) and the $100 computer speakers (with subwoofer) that they have hooked up to their PC. There's also the element of psychology, too... people tend to think that something that's louder sounds better. That's why TV commercials turn the sound up over the show, and that's why so much modern music has been post-processed to normalize the sound wave. (le sigh)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There is no irony at all in that. It is perhaps damning evidence against embryonic stem cells (which, incidentally, have not suffered a "complete and total" lack of success), and it is perhaps evidence that we should be looking more thoroughly at induced and adult stem cells for research (principally of interest for those who don't already have ethical and moral objections to using embryonic cells), but that's not ironic.
Quite aside from that, if it were not for the benefits derived from embryonic stem cell research, and the moral/ethical objections to ESC use, then scientists never would have been looking for a way to induce stem cells from adult tissue. In an indirect way, this very result we've been discussing is a result of embryonic stem cell research. Keeping in mind that you're using it as an argument against embryonic stem cell research, *that* is ironic. But it's the only irony I can find in the situation, and it's tenuous at best, because as near as I can tell, you're not arguing that we never should have engaged in ESC research to begin with, just that we've found some alternatives and shouldn't be continuing with it.
I'd disagree with your basic premise. Most of the geeky types I know are certainly not autistic. And those that claim some form of Autism or Asperger's are self-diagnosed based on a short list of symptoms, and they use it as an excuse and blanket justification to avoid developping social skills.
Living with your parents does not make you a freak, nor does it make you autistic or a quasimodo. And those people I know who actually are genuinely autistic actually don't live with their parents at all. Only one of the ones I know actually has any form of assistance in his existence at all, the others are all living on their own. (low autism, not high autism... but if you had high autism, I'd have a hard time believing that you were able to hold a job at all)
You're generalizing females. I don't like it. It's insulting to the whole gender, for one, and for two, you're setting yourself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why don't you let a woman decide if she can handle you? We aren't as weak as you seem to think. As long as you're honest up front, and we know what we're getting ourselves into, the it isn't that much of a big deal. (and no, I'm not offering... I'm in a happy relationship with somebody, and she would be very miffed, and probably a little confused, if I hooked up with some guy from the Internet)
That's a pretty damned misogynistic thing to say, IMO. You had one bad experience, and generalizing an entire group based on it. Seriously bad juju.
*mutters* I will not feed trolls, I will not feed trolls....
You... don't seem to understand what Irony is. A success using stem cells derived from fat is in no way ironic, even up against people who claim that embryonic stem cells are needed. You might be asking a rhetorical question; coupled with the obvious ellipsis in your statement, you could be asking people to consider the morality/ethics of using embryonic stem cells when here's an example of stem cells from an alternate source working, but it's in no way ironic. In order for it to have any trace of irony, you'd have to be speaking one thing while saying something else. For example, your calling him stupid is quite ironic, in my not so humble opinion.
If you want to grow some phalanxes, I suggest that you join a group that reenacts ancient greek military tactics, or you start playing Civilization.
If you want to regrow some phalanges, that's another story. Have you considered prosthetics?
The thing being... we have a 2D view of a 3D object. From our perspective it runs perpendicular to the axis of the magnetic field. But without a second observation point that's far enough away from the original observation point, we can't actually know that it actually *is* perpendicular to the axis, or whether it's an optical illusion and really going off at some oddball angle.
Just playing devil's advocate here. It certainly does look as though it's related to the galactic magnetic field, and I liked the suggestion of another poster, that it's basically just the galactic equivalent of Aurora Borealis. But at this point, we just can't *know* that it's related to the magnetic field at all. We could be seeing that giant floating ribbon from Star Trek: Generations.
And my first thought was to the 1992 video game, Star Control II... the documentation that came with that game said that access to hyperspace was impossible within large gravity wells (such as those around stars), and that there was a visible shimmer when you got to the region of space where the transition between dimensions was possible... :)
Charest took office in 2003, not 2008. While you're right that he got 46% of the popular vote, rather than the 70%, the voter turnout in that particular election was 70.5%, which is one of the highest voter turnouts in a long time. (and also explains where the 70% I quoted came from).
That was the 37th general assembly of Quebec, not the 39th (the one you linked)
The cost of manufacturing solar panels is one of the biggest arguments against them in enviro-geek circles.... it runs similar to the arguments against buying a Prius. You get a warmfuzzy from owning one, but the amount of energy that went into the production of the batteries, the toxic cost to the environment both from the production and the ultimate disposal thereof, all the travel that the thing has done in its various component levels... you end up costing the environment more than you ever save by buying one. With regards to solar panels, that is why there's projects like the solar-thermal generators in Spain and the USA. With regards to cars, if you want to save the environment, don't buy a Prius, buy a small engined turbodiesel (ideally) or gasoline engine (in a pinch, small turbodiesels are hard to get in some parts of the world including North America). Yes, they'll use more gas than a hybrid electric, but the carbon footprint over the production and lifetime of the vehicle is nowhere near as high, especially if you keep the machine properly serviced and maintained.
It doesn't go to show you that you could live forever and not have seen everything (that's what Hollywood Blvd. in LA is for), but it does go to show you that not every environmentalist lives up to the "mental" part of the moniker. There's a lot of environmentalists out there who put in a lot of thought about how best to save the environment, and who don't automatically jump on an idea without first researching to find out whether it's really as good for the environment as it might appear on paper.
The Wii supports 4 Wiimotes, as well as 4 Gamecube controllers. You can connect the GC controllers simultaneously with the Wiimotes, and there are a handful of games out there that can take input from both at the same time and theoretically support up to 8 player multiplay. The DDR games jump to mind immediately, though in their case, the DDR mat connects to the GC port, and one player does input through both the DDR mat *and* the Wiimote simultaneously, so it's only a 4-player game.
Most of the people in this country don't distinguish between the Bloc Quebecois, which is, as you say, a party whose sole purpose is to defend Quebec's interest at the federal level, and the Parti Quebecois, to which the separatists belong. While it's true that many separatists belong to the Bloc, it's not in their party constitution or published ideals to pursue sovereignty, though preservation of Quebec's identity as a nation (in a similar way to that which the natives enjoy) is.
Nation, in this case, referring to preservation of unique culture, unique language, and their own way of doing things. Quebec maintains its own education system, its own legal system, and its own culture, which is very different from most of Canada (and similar, but distinctly different to that in France... Quebec is *much* more European than anywhere else in North America, though). They think, rightly IMO, that this culture is worth preserving. They may have some wonky ways of going about preserving it, but the ideal itself is still a good thing.
Interestingly, when Charest was elected Premier with an overwhelming majority (something like 70% of the popular vote; 40% is enough to form a majority government in this country), one of his campaign platform's major planks was to modify the code in Quebec to prevent future separation votes... the people of Quebec have spoken, pretty clearly, that they don't actually want to separate, they just want to preserve their identity.
I don't think blue skies on Mars would induce a bad memory for Brundel-Fly, though....
Maybe they only do their probes on conservatives, or on people who are genetically predisposed to going into politics. Their brains are much closer to that point of entry....
You do realize that the bombs were dropped after the battles at Midway and the invasion and taking of Okinawa? Little Boy (Hiroshima) was dropped August 6, 1945, and Okinawa ended in June, 1945.
In other words, the war was effectively over. By the end of the battle of Okinawa, Allied victory in the Pacific was pretty much guaranteed. The Japanese lines had been broken, and the Allies had a strong foothold on Japanese soil. They most certainly did have a choice about whether or not to drop the nuclear bombs. That was more of a publicity stunt than anything... while it did shorten the war, its effect was more to start the cold war than it was to end the Pacific war.
More than that, I'm afraid. Flying machines need a lot more training to learn to operate safely, because their operation is so much more complicated. Even a fixed-wing single-engine light aircraft, you're usually using both feet at the same time (rudder pedals), as well as both hands (stick/yoke, throttle, flaps, trim, radio, GPS, and various other tracking/approach equipment). While flying, there is a lot more that you need to pay attention to, as you need to be looking around 360 degrees, but also above and below, as well as RADAR if your plane is equipped with it. (and believe me, if there were millions of extra aircraft in the skies, you'd be an idiot to buy one that didn't have RADAR). Parking an airplane is also a lot more extra hassle... landing is a difficult procedure: you need to choose the correct approach, you need to make sure that your trim/flaps are properly adjusted, you need to adjust your angle to account for crosswind, and you need to adjust your throttle to account for head/tail wind. You also need to be prepared to go full throttle and overshoot the runway if you don't have enough runway to land and stop safely. Once you've landed, you need to worry about hangar or tarmac space to leave the plane, and refuelling every time you touch ground. On the subject of refuelling, you need to plan your route so that you don't run out of gas in the air, and you need to file a flightplan.
Flying a helicopter, landing is just as difficult (as you need to account for the wind and are constantly feathering the throttle), but you also have a lot more controls in the aircraft that you're constantly monitoring and adjusting. Flying a rotary wing aircraft is a pain in the butt, and very mentally and physically draining... while I am licensed to fly one, I would much prefer to stick to fixed wing machines.
So no. It's not a simple question of a little extra training so that we can all fly. It's a question of a lot of extra training, and a lot of extra expensive safety equipment. Air-traffic controllers already have the highest stress job in the world (and the accompanying highest suicide rates). Do you really want to replace a few hundred or thousand pilots in the average city, most of whom aren't flying at the same time, with a few million who are? I sure as hell wouldn't. If there started being that many people in the air, I'd retire from flying.
In reading your post, I do find that I need to ask: what speed is your hard drive?
Even 3 years ago, the overwhelming majority of hard drives that were sold in desktop computers were 7200rpm SATA II, and were capable of very high (comparatively) transfer rates, and had on average low seek times.
By contrast, even today the overwhelming majority of hard drives that are sold in laptop computers are 5400rpm, and some manufacturers are even still using 4200rpm drives in an effort to make it run quieter and use less power. If you want a "performance" drive, you have to specifically ask to get a 7200rpm drive, and it makes a huge difference to your drive's performance in terms of seek and spin up times. I've seen it first-hand, at that... my HTPC is a Mini-ITX system that bolts to the back of my TV... essentially, it's a laptop without a screen (but connected to a 42" plasma by HDMI). I chose to buy a large hard drive for it, and so it's got a 500GB 5400rpm SATA II drive in it. That takes a long time to spin up, and even though it's got twice the RAM of my laptop, and the cores are running faster (2.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz), the laptop is much faster to boot up and to load programs once it's up. The only major difference between the two systems is that the laptop has a 7200RPM drive instead of a 5400RPM drive.
You do know that "Dominator" is one of the few words left in the English language that conjugates to gender, and that "Dominatrix" is the female form of the word?
I, for one, do not look forward to seeing the fat guy as a domme... and something tells me that if Apple really did try that... well... they'd probably attract a new audience, but they'd probably also alienate large parts of their existing one.... >.>
When talking about convictions, yes. False positives are worse. When talking about investigations, false negatives are worse. A false positive during an investigation means that you spend a little time and resources investigating and proving somebody's innocense. A false negative during an investigation means that you might let the guilty party walk free, uninvestigated, because you don't believe they're the one.
In an ideal world, at least. :) In the real world, things are never so cut/dry as that.
False positives, and worse, False negatives.
Because current fingerprints are a transcription of a 3D object into a 2D format, one that's often smudged, partial, or otherwise. The idea is to ultimately transfer the entire existing fingerprint database into 3D format... while you'd still be comparing 2D images from fingerprints taken from crime scenes, it would allow for easier and more accurate identification of people who are unknown, when their person (or corpse) is available.