Then Nielsen is fucking stupid, and by extension so are the execs for the channels that are accepting what Neilsen says. Streaming views should be easier to collect and be more accurate than doing statistics on a sample and estimating how many viewers there were.
That's one of the best explanations I've ever seen of the true picture of "government spending" in regards to social security (which is a complex and difficult subject to understand) and why the kind of statistics often quoted by the OP are so misleading, though sadly, I think many people quote those kinds of statistics actually believe they represent reality.
Because he specifically decided to replant the Monsanto seed. It's one thing to have your crops polluted; it's quite another to say "hey, I like this pollution and I'm going to spread it further".
If you really think that it's OK for a farmer not to be allowed to save his own seed, from crops growing in his own field, as farmers have done since the dawn of history, regardless of the selection criteria he uses, then I'm afraid you sir, are lost in the insanity of our world. The circle of life itself can no more be owned by an individual or a corporation than can the Sun and Moon.
I'm all for progress and technology, but some things are truly "sacred" -- not in any religious sense, but in a practical one. Food production is the single most important activity that we humans undertake concerning our survival.
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer if our food production systems were a little more robust than having a cadre of corporations dictate to all farmers exactly what they can and can't do on their own farms.
The makeup air I have to have because the house is so damn air-tight, uses a high capacity heat exchanger, but still is a water-vapor sieve pumping water vapor into the conditioned space
There now exist air-air heat exchangers that also balance humidity -- they are expensive, though from my research, they work quite well. A light-colored roof (and walls) can help a lot too.
That's not *entirely* fair... there are currently some reps who actually seem to *have* principles, and a handful of those who vote by them, from both "sides" of the aisle. I'd list a few, but I'm afraid the list would be embarrassingly short.
I can't really think of any senators that vote anything but the party line, though I'd hope there are at least a few.
Most elected officials, of course *profess* all kinds of principles, but these tend to always be "safe" ones, falling entirely along ideological lines, that are in reality, largely constructed positions, designed to produce perpetual incumbency by pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is the new republic. Same as the old republic.
In other words, the issue (in my mind) is the whole idea of "career" politicians, combined with the huge power and money interests, that are able to get whatever they want, probably without even resorting (most of the time) to outright bribes, but just a nudge here and a little support there.
Extricating ourselves from this predicament (into a more direct-democracy or some other system with a less-entrenched power base -- an "agile democracy" -- if you will) will be, to use the technical term a real lu-lu.
Yes, that's why despite the repeal of the prohibition the Mafia is still as strong as ever. Right.
Quite relevant to this discussion, I think would be that after prohibition ended (1933) the vast majority of organized crime *did* indeed lose all their black-market booze money, though there were still *plenty* of existing illegal activities for them to continue to capitalize on (prostitution, existing blatantly racist drug laws, e.g. the Harrison Act from 1914), and some new ones which conveniently materialized,only 5 years later, for instance: the Marijuana Tax Act)
Obviously we can't legalize actual violent crimes or bribing/blackmailing lawmakers, that organized criminals profit from. Though legalizing and regulating simple possession and sale of a freaking dried plant or some powder, would likely free up law enforcement resources to deal with those kinds of things. Again, one could argue that that's not a certainty, but what is?
We'll never find out *for sure* if "legalizing everything" will *drastically* reduce violent crime, unless we do it (it couldn't be more of a disaster than prohibition if that experiment failed) though, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that it wouldn't reduce violent crime at all, it's really pretty simple to see that it would.
The important question is: would legalizing the drugs cause more harm than the increased violence that their prohibition causes (directly and indirectly)?
I suppose that's a complex question, but I've never seen *anyone* present hard evidence that it would. In fact the evidence is growing from countries like Switzerland, Holland and even the UK -- that drug legalization/decriminalization programs do indeed have a net positive benefit to a society currently undergoing drug prohibition, especially when coupled with a good public health program for treating addiction, even though, seemingly there are some people that don't seem to be able to stop their self-abusive behavior. But if they are getting their drugs from a clinic, for free even, they're probably not out knocking over a liquor store.
Some of the same people who say that there's no climate change because it snowed last week would say that "the science isn't in" on this one too, and while they may have a point (albeit possibly for the wrong reasons) -- sometimes you have to do something, even with "limited data", simply because it's the right thing to do, even with risk of failure, or risk of making things worse.
Since hey, if it doesn't reduce violent crime, or generates millions of new addicts (yeah, right), then launch the war on drugs "reloaded" or whatever.
With alcohol people realized after only a decade that it wasn't helping (or maybe more because a few too many senators and their buddies got caught drinking.)
After over 70 years of racist, poorly-conceived reactionary drug policy, it's time to do something to change it. I'd suggest that "legalizing everything" would be less harmful than what we have now, in almost every way -- but ideally there would probably be some kind of regulation, which is something that would require mature, reasonably smart people, with the authority to enact law to sit down and discuss the issues and listen to people who have actually already studied and thought about the issues -- I wonder how long it'll be before the US has that.
That may all be totally true, however I'd submit that talent is a difficult thing to measure, and that looking at random geocities webpages (or any other sites from the mid-late 90's for that matter) doesn't necessarily indicate a sample of the actual talent present in the population at large, particularly since back then, half the point of having a "web site" was simply to have one, and (again, I submit) very little thought was put into the content to go therein. There was a high "coolness-factor" simply for having one.
That has largely faded.
I'd further submit that the (current) internet is chock FULL of examples of amateur talent in all the areas you mention, not to mention a ton more.
That said, yes, there is a some god-awful stuff out there, a lot that is mediocre, and some phenomenal. Which is pretty much as expected.
Basically I'm saying that the high noise level on geocities (and the early web in general) had more to do with the newness (and limitations) of the medium itself, than the talent-level of the participants.
To my mind "whoever thinks freely, thinks well" holds, perhaps more now than ever. Though precious little thinking (free or otherwise) seems to be happening, at least in vast areas of our society.
That's the processor for a Cray-3 -- Cray's Last project before the company went bankrupt, not because the Cray-3 was a bad design (it wasn't) but because there was falling demand for supercomputers.
... "voting with your wallet" is dead and gone. To any major corporation you aren't even a drop in a bucket...
While I can understand the sentiment of what you are saying, and believe me, I sympathize.
However, that is *exactly* the attitude that the giant megacorps WANT us to have.
You DO vote with your wallet, constantly. And it may not seem like a lot, but making small sacrifices, and/or just being noisy about it CAN make a difference.
"One person can make a difference" is a truism, because none of us are really are "one person" we have a whole network of friends and contacts, and everything we do has a ripple effect.
Facebook, et. al., are tools, and sometimes I wonder if they are helping us (I hope they are), or are just making us (even more than we already are) tools of the corporations, by helping us forget that we do make a difference, even out here in meatspace.
Any "Smart" Grid system needs to bring local generation strategies into the picture, where, for lack of a better term the grid is "segmented" so that if the main power supply for a region goes away, for whatever reason, local "segments" of the grid can still keep running on locally generated power, with reduced capacity, so that at least some buildings will still have power for emergency shelter, with functioning lighting, heat & communications.
Local generation could include wind, solar, battery banks, gas generators, and fuel cells and/or tiny natural gas plants, maybe even as individual units installed in residential homes or municipal buildings -- these could all be managed both during normal grid operation and when there is a large-scale outage.
This sounds like a no-brainer to me, but maybe there's some reason it's not practical, aside from cost, since I'm tired of hearing: "No we can't do that, even though it's a good idea" just because it's "too expensive". We created the idea of money thousands of years ago, and if it's preventing us from doing things that make sense now, maybe we should fucking get rid of it, or at least change the way we use it.
And if you're concerned about EMP attacks, I don't think there's any way that EMP could affect big honking knife switches, so make sure it has some of those to handle the segmentation. That would probably have some advantages for backup switching even for things other than EMP attacks, which (as others are saying) doesn't seem like a very efficient way to mess things up. There are better ways to create havoc.
Yes! Large asteroid impacts to the earth is practically the only natural disaster in which we have a reasonable possibility of averting, which is good, since they are potentially the most devastating.
To not at least start the process of actually doing something about it could be suicide by inaction.
Besides, it sounds fun! Moving around asteroids could even (eventually) be profitable:
Um, no, not really. There's no reason to stop producing power when the grid goes down. You, however really do have to have an automated Transfer Switch (these are sometimes integrated into the inverter with a solar system) with any on-line power system, so that when the grid goes down, you stop powering the GRID. You can do whatever you want with power you are generating inside your home, which if the power goes out when it's sunny, or if you have a battery system, or a generator, feeding the inverter, should be plenty to run your fridge, and maybe a few lights, even if you are producing less than you need to run everything. This is vastly under-appreciated I think, in terms of the value it adds to your home.
Humanity is actually mostly nice, really. It's just that with 7 billion people, even if only.01% are complete assholes, that's almost a million people, and you just know that ALL of those people are on the internet messing with us, and they seem like a billion people thanks to the amplification power of technology.
Yes! Exactly. This has the potential to (ultimately) make automobie-related deaths a thing of the past.
Go one step further:
The ability to "Declare an emergency" to acquire traffic priority -- not unlike with air traffic. The emergency would (of course) be reviewed, after the fact, and you're fined if there wasn't one.
Lane of road to all traffic traveling in, or entering that lane: The speed of this lane is (currently) 160kph, adjust speed
Basically have cooperative traffic "networks" where cars can be safely "parted" (for example) on a three lane road for an emergency vehicle, without anyone having to stop. Have a whole lane speed up (to relieve congestion) or slow down (when road conditions deteriorate).
That'd require that all cars have basically network-controlled cruise-control -- not technically difficult -- but is a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" kinda thing, though if it could be made 99.99% (or so) reliable, with safe failure modes, the possibility of a fully informed "swarm" of vehicles, automated with regard to speed, especially on crowded highways would be a godsend. Think: no more traffic jams. Ever.
Think about "speed limits" that are, while automatically enforced, twice the limits (in the fast lane) we have now, since safety can be assured by automatic vehicle spacing and collision avoidance. Drivers pick a lane that has a speed that they (and their car) are comfortable in.
As for privacy implications, yeah, that'd have to be worked out. How about any sustained erratic driving behavior, like swerving or inability to stay in-lane (without having already declared an emergency) and the network/car gives the driver a warning or two before simply giving you a buffer zone in traffic, and if the erratic driving continues, then call the cops.
Performance-based warnings in driving systems could make driving safe enough to allow us to have more reasonable legal BAC levels, to where you can have a couple glasses of wine with dinner at a restaurant and not worry about having your life turned upside down by a DUI charge -- and also flag drivers who are unsafe when sober.
Oh, and I'm off-topic now, but get the frigging truck trailers off the highways and use trains for long-haul freight, and box trucks for short haul/delivery.
I just survived 11 days without power in central Massachusetts. Though how much of that was really necessary because of devastation due to the ice storm (which really was devastating) and how much was due to penny pinching by the gas & light company, remains to be seen, there is an ongoing investigation.
Read (or watch the documentary adaptation: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) Manufacturing Consent for a deep analysis of this phenomenon -- or at least a parallel one: people tend to reinforce the "propaganda model" -- simply because in order to "float to the top" one has to support dominant/accepted (propaganda-inspired) views and positions in the "media system" -- which are those views that can be expressed as sound-bites -- or risk staying below the "noise floor" -- and thus unpopular or controversial views, even when true or innovative, tend to evaporate -- and so even the most progressive and intelligent commentators tend to support the status-quo, despite their own best intentions.
You've got a lot of company with that POV... I think a lot of people don't express it, for the reason you mention: ridicule.
I too am aware of anecdotal evidence that cancer has a correlation to the sufferer feeling deeply "wrong" (or wronged), and even cases of remission where the feeling of wrongness is overcome.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see conclusive, repeatable studies on this subject without some methodological compromises, since "mental state" and "emotional state" will always have a subjective component that is difficult to quantify, though perhaps "qualitative" treatment of the subject might be of use, someday.
That aside, this is a promising development for cancer treatment. I wonder what the effect of simply having a person with strong "immunity" to cancer spend time (perhaps counseling) someone with cancer might do... particularly alongside medical therapies, especially something like this new treatment.
I also wonder if there might be a relation between this and how some dogs can "smell" cancer.
A quick search doesn't turn up much, but I remember reading years ago about an experimental power station in Australia that attempted to charge a huge battery bank using lightning rod(s). The biggest problem with their system was that after each strike, the generating equipment (and some of the batteries) got completely destroyed -- severely limiting the economics of such a system -- though it did (sort of) work. I've no idea if the experiment is still in operation. My guess is not, since I'd imagine it'd be pretty expensive, with no real return on investment, other than basic research -- though I'm sure they learned some interesting stuff.
Perhaps there'd be ways to capture lightning energy as heat, but lightning is pretty unpredictable, so I'd think our materials science just isn't up to that (yet) -- too much risk of your equipment going poof, and even if the equipment could be made to withstand one hit, what if there's another one before the captured energy can be dissipated/stored somehow?
Yes, the watched need to look "back" at the watchers. In fact that is the more important activity. Any government needs to be held accountable by it's people, otherwise it becomes facist, rather quickly, as history demonstrates.
Further, I think that any cameras that "surveil" a public place should have their RAW output available to the public.. some of them do, either by design, or due to poor security, but there "otta be a law"...
Slashdot Mirror
Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!
Uh, if we had as many windmills as cats, I'd think we'd figure out a solution...
Yup! FYI (1981)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaFonefbApo
... streaming isn't counted by Nielsen
Then Nielsen is fucking stupid, and by extension so are the execs for the channels that are accepting what Neilsen says. Streaming views should be easier to collect and be more accurate than doing statistics on a sample and estimating how many viewers there were.
That's one of the best explanations I've ever seen of the true picture of "government spending" in regards to social security (which is a complex and difficult subject to understand) and why the kind of statistics often quoted by the OP are so misleading, though sadly, I think many people quote those kinds of statistics actually believe they represent reality.
*sigh*
I wish I had mod points for you.
If you really think that it's OK for a farmer not to be allowed to save his own seed, from crops growing in his own field, as farmers have done since the dawn of history, regardless of the selection criteria he uses, then I'm afraid you sir, are lost in the insanity of our world. The circle of life itself can no more be owned by an individual or a corporation than can the Sun and Moon.
I'm all for progress and technology, but some things are truly "sacred" -- not in any religious sense, but in a practical one. Food production is the single most important activity that we humans undertake concerning our survival.
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer if our food production systems were a little more robust than having a cadre of corporations dictate to all farmers exactly what they can and can't do on their own farms.
The makeup air I have to have because the house is so damn air-tight, uses a high capacity heat exchanger, but still is a water-vapor sieve pumping water vapor into the conditioned space
There now exist air-air heat exchangers that also balance humidity -- they are expensive, though from my research, they work quite well. A light-colored roof (and walls) can help a lot too.
That's not *entirely* fair... there are currently some reps who actually seem to *have* principles, and a handful of those who vote by them, from both "sides" of the aisle. I'd list a few, but I'm afraid the list would be embarrassingly short.
I can't really think of any senators that vote anything but the party line, though I'd hope there are at least a few.
Most elected officials, of course *profess* all kinds of principles, but these tend to always be "safe" ones, falling entirely along ideological lines, that are in reality, largely constructed positions, designed to produce perpetual incumbency by pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is the new republic. Same as the old republic.
In other words, the issue (in my mind) is the whole idea of "career" politicians, combined with the huge power and money interests, that are able to get whatever they want, probably without even resorting (most of the time) to outright bribes, but just a nudge here and a little support there.
Extricating ourselves from this predicament (into a more direct-democracy or some other system with a less-entrenched power base -- an "agile democracy" -- if you will) will be, to use the technical term a real lu-lu.
Yes, that's why despite the repeal of the prohibition the Mafia is still as strong as ever. Right.
Quite relevant to this discussion, I think would be that after prohibition ended (1933) the vast majority of organized crime *did* indeed lose all their black-market booze money, though there were still *plenty* of existing illegal activities for them to continue to capitalize on (prostitution, existing blatantly racist drug laws, e.g. the Harrison Act from 1914), and some new ones which conveniently materialized,only 5 years later, for instance: the Marijuana Tax Act)
Obviously we can't legalize actual violent crimes or bribing/blackmailing lawmakers, that organized criminals profit from. Though legalizing and regulating simple possession and sale of a freaking dried plant or some powder, would likely free up law enforcement resources to deal with those kinds of things. Again, one could argue that that's not a certainty, but what is?
We'll never find out *for sure* if "legalizing everything" will *drastically* reduce violent crime, unless we do it (it couldn't be more of a disaster than prohibition if that experiment failed) though, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that it wouldn't reduce violent crime at all, it's really pretty simple to see that it would.
The important question is: would legalizing the drugs cause more harm than the increased violence that their prohibition causes (directly and indirectly)?
I suppose that's a complex question, but I've never seen *anyone* present hard evidence that it would. In fact the evidence is growing from countries like Switzerland, Holland and even the UK -- that drug legalization/decriminalization programs do indeed have a net positive benefit to a society currently undergoing drug prohibition, especially when coupled with a good public health program for treating addiction, even though, seemingly there are some people that don't seem to be able to stop their self-abusive behavior. But if they are getting their drugs from a clinic, for free even, they're probably not out knocking over a liquor store.
Some of the same people who say that there's no climate change because it snowed last week would say that "the science isn't in" on this one too, and while they may have a point (albeit possibly for the wrong reasons) -- sometimes you have to do something, even with "limited data", simply because it's the right thing to do, even with risk of failure, or risk of making things worse.
Since hey, if it doesn't reduce violent crime, or generates millions of new addicts (yeah, right), then launch the war on drugs "reloaded" or whatever.
With alcohol people realized after only a decade that it wasn't helping (or maybe more because a few too many senators and their buddies got caught drinking.)
After over 70 years of racist, poorly-conceived reactionary drug policy, it's time to do something to change it. I'd suggest that "legalizing everything" would be less harmful than what we have now, in almost every way -- but ideally there would probably be some kind of regulation, which is something that would require mature, reasonably smart people, with the authority to enact law to sit down and discuss the issues and listen to people who have actually already studied and thought about the issues -- I wonder how long it'll be before the US has that.
That may all be totally true, however I'd submit that talent is a difficult thing to measure, and that looking at random geocities webpages (or any other sites from the mid-late 90's for that matter) doesn't necessarily indicate a sample of the actual talent present in the population at large, particularly since back then, half the point of having a "web site" was simply to have one, and (again, I submit) very little thought was put into the content to go therein. There was a high "coolness-factor" simply for having one.
That has largely faded.
I'd further submit that the (current) internet is chock FULL of examples of amateur talent in all the areas you mention, not to mention a ton more.
That said, yes, there is a some god-awful stuff out there, a lot that is mediocre, and some phenomenal. Which is pretty much as expected.
Basically I'm saying that the high noise level on geocities (and the early web in general) had more to do with the newness (and limitations) of the medium itself, than the talent-level of the participants.
To my mind "whoever thinks freely, thinks well" holds, perhaps more now than ever. Though precious little thinking (free or otherwise) seems to be happening, at least in vast areas of our society.
That's the processor for a Cray-3 -- Cray's Last project before the company went bankrupt, not because the Cray-3 was a bad design (it wasn't) but because there was falling demand for supercomputers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-3
... "voting with your wallet" is dead and gone. To any major corporation you aren't even a drop in a bucket ...
While I can understand the sentiment of what you are saying, and believe me, I sympathize.
However, that is *exactly* the attitude that the giant megacorps WANT us to have.
You DO vote with your wallet, constantly. And it may not seem like a lot, but making small sacrifices, and/or just being noisy about it CAN make a difference.
"One person can make a difference" is a truism, because none of us are really are "one person" we have a whole network of friends and contacts, and everything we do has a ripple effect.
Facebook, et. al., are tools, and sometimes I wonder if they are helping us (I hope they are), or are just making us (even more than we already are) tools of the corporations, by helping us forget that we do make a difference, even out here in meatspace.
Any "Smart" Grid system needs to bring local generation strategies into the picture, where, for lack of a better term the grid is "segmented" so that if the main power supply for a region goes away, for whatever reason, local "segments" of the grid can still keep running on locally generated power, with reduced capacity, so that at least some buildings will still have power for emergency shelter, with functioning lighting, heat & communications.
Local generation could include wind, solar, battery banks, gas generators, and fuel cells and/or tiny natural gas plants, maybe even as individual units installed in residential homes or municipal buildings -- these could all be managed both during normal grid operation and when there is a large-scale outage.
This sounds like a no-brainer to me, but maybe there's some reason it's not practical, aside from cost, since I'm tired of hearing: "No we can't do that, even though it's a good idea" just because it's "too expensive". We created the idea of money thousands of years ago, and if it's preventing us from doing things that make sense now, maybe we should fucking get rid of it, or at least change the way we use it.
And if you're concerned about EMP attacks, I don't think there's any way that EMP could affect big honking knife switches, so make sure it has some of those to handle the segmentation. That would probably have some advantages for backup switching even for things other than EMP attacks, which (as others are saying) doesn't seem like a very efficient way to mess things up. There are better ways to create havoc.
Yes! Large asteroid impacts to the earth is practically the only natural disaster in which we have a reasonable possibility of averting, which is good, since they are potentially the most devastating.
To not at least start the process of actually doing something about it could be suicide by inaction.
Besides, it sounds fun! Moving around asteroids could even (eventually) be profitable:
Asteroid Mining
Um, no, not really. There's no reason to stop producing power when the grid goes down. You, however really do have to have an automated Transfer Switch (these are sometimes integrated into the inverter with a solar system) with any on-line power system, so that when the grid goes down, you stop powering the GRID. You can do whatever you want with power you are generating inside your home, which if the power goes out when it's sunny, or if you have a battery system, or a generator, feeding the inverter, should be plenty to run your fridge, and maybe a few lights, even if you are producing less than you need to run everything. This is vastly under-appreciated I think, in terms of the value it adds to your home.
Humanity is actually mostly nice, really. It's just that with 7 billion people, even if only .01% are complete assholes, that's almost a million people, and you just know that ALL of those people are on the internet messing with us, and they seem like a billion people thanks to the amplification power of technology.
Yes! Exactly. This has the potential to (ultimately) make automobie-related deaths a thing of the past.
Go one step further:
Basically have cooperative traffic "networks" where cars can be safely "parted" (for example) on a three lane road for an emergency vehicle, without anyone having to stop. Have a whole lane speed up (to relieve congestion) or slow down (when road conditions deteriorate).
That'd require that all cars have basically network-controlled cruise-control -- not technically difficult -- but is a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" kinda thing, though if it could be made 99.99% (or so) reliable, with safe failure modes, the possibility of a fully informed "swarm" of vehicles, automated with regard to speed, especially on crowded highways would be a godsend. Think: no more traffic jams. Ever.
Think about "speed limits" that are, while automatically enforced, twice the limits (in the fast lane) we have now, since safety can be assured by automatic vehicle spacing and collision avoidance. Drivers pick a lane that has a speed that they (and their car) are comfortable in.
As for privacy implications, yeah, that'd have to be worked out. How about any sustained erratic driving behavior, like swerving or inability to stay in-lane (without having already declared an emergency) and the network/car gives the driver a warning or two before simply giving you a buffer zone in traffic, and if the erratic driving continues, then call the cops.
Performance-based warnings in driving systems could make driving safe enough to allow us to have more reasonable legal BAC levels, to where you can have a couple glasses of wine with dinner at a restaurant and not worry about having your life turned upside down by a DUI charge -- and also flag drivers who are unsafe when sober.
Oh, and I'm off-topic now, but get the frigging truck trailers off the highways and use trains for long-haul freight, and box trucks for short haul/delivery.
Well, at least until the body that those stem cells live in dies, that is...
I just survived 11 days without power in central Massachusetts. Though how much of that was really necessary because of devastation due to the ice storm (which really was devastating) and how much was due to penny pinching by the gas & light company, remains to be seen, there is an ongoing investigation.
Read (or watch the documentary adaptation: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) Manufacturing Consent for a deep analysis of this phenomenon -- or at least a parallel one: people tend to reinforce the "propaganda model" -- simply because in order to "float to the top" one has to support dominant/accepted (propaganda-inspired) views and positions in the "media system" -- which are those views that can be expressed as sound-bites -- or risk staying below the "noise floor" -- and thus unpopular or controversial views, even when true or innovative, tend to evaporate -- and so even the most progressive and intelligent commentators tend to support the status-quo, despite their own best intentions.
You've got a lot of company with that POV... I think a lot of people don't express it, for the reason you mention: ridicule.
I too am aware of anecdotal evidence that cancer has a correlation to the sufferer feeling deeply "wrong" (or wronged), and even cases of remission where the feeling of wrongness is overcome.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see conclusive, repeatable studies on this subject without some methodological compromises, since "mental state" and "emotional state" will always have a subjective component that is difficult to quantify, though perhaps "qualitative" treatment of the subject might be of use, someday.
That aside, this is a promising development for cancer treatment. I wonder what the effect of simply having a person with strong "immunity" to cancer spend time (perhaps counseling) someone with cancer might do... particularly alongside medical therapies, especially something like this new treatment.
I also wonder if there might be a relation between this and how some dogs can "smell" cancer.
A quick search doesn't turn up much, but I remember reading years ago about an experimental power station in Australia that attempted to charge a huge battery bank using lightning rod(s). The biggest problem with their system was that after each strike, the generating equipment (and some of the batteries) got completely destroyed -- severely limiting the economics of such a system -- though it did (sort of) work. I've no idea if the experiment is still in operation. My guess is not, since I'd imagine it'd be pretty expensive, with no real return on investment, other than basic research -- though I'm sure they learned some interesting stuff.
Perhaps there'd be ways to capture lightning energy as heat, but lightning is pretty unpredictable, so I'd think our materials science just isn't up to that (yet) -- too much risk of your equipment going poof, and even if the equipment could be made to withstand one hit, what if there's another one before the captured energy can be dissipated/stored somehow?
Yes, the watched need to look "back" at the watchers. In fact that is the more important activity. Any government needs to be held accountable by it's people, otherwise it becomes facist, rather quickly, as history demonstrates.
Further, I think that any cameras that "surveil" a public place should have their RAW output available to the public.. some of them do, either by design, or due to poor security, but there "otta be a law"...
I for one welcome out new robot baby overlords.
Seriously though. If a robot could learn at even a tiny fraction of the rate that babies learn, that would be quite remarkable.
I'd say that's a bigger problem than just about anything else I can think of.