Actually, it does mean that its evolution, however, its not natural evolution, and its not natural selection. Its human selection and intelligent design. And don't go there, 'cause thats a whole can of worms:P
The opinions expressed above do not represent the opinions of the author.
Re:Be careful not to take this too far.
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Digital Biology
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· Score: 2
sorry, that was the best link I found in a quick google search of my own:P Its not used as much as GA and SA. I'll try to explain, although its hard without pictures.
It starts with n + 1 points where n is the number of parameters you're optimizing. That's 3 points forming a triangle in 2D space or 4 points forming a tetrahedron in 3D space (the space being the values you're optimizing). Its easiest to think of the 2D situation with the triangle.
Each corner of the triangle is some set of parameters, each of which will have a different 'fitness'. The fitness is the value that you're trying to minimize. Evaluate the fitness at each vertex of teh triangle. Take the largest "least fit" vertex, and 'step the triangle downhill' by reflecting it through the midpoint between the other two points.
This should create a reflected triangle closer to the fitness minimum that you are trying to find. repeat until you get so close to the minimum that you're going in circles.
Now, with the CRS, you use the simplex to take all your steps, but in this case you create a large pool of initial candidates at random, just like you do for the Genetic or Simulated Annealing algorithms. The you create a new simplex by selecting n+1 elements from your initial pool. Step the simplex downhill, and see if your new value is better. IF so, throw away the worst element of the initial population, and replace it with the new one. Then select a new simplex at random from your pool of candidates and repeat the procedure.
This way, you're always producing random steps, so you can't easily get caught in a local minimum, and its a pretty efficient solution. It works well with linear constraints, which seemed to be an advantage over GA and SA when I was working on this myself. I should put a discaimer on here that I'm a geophysicist, not a computer scientist, so I may not use the lingo the same way your average/.er would.
Hope that wasn't too confusing. I'm trying to write this without my boss knowing I'm not working >:)
Re:Biologists and Psychologists Abuse this...
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Digital Biology
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· Score: 2
Welcome to the hell that we physicists have been dealing with when philosophers start talking about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Trying to explain that it doesn't mean "nothing is true" is a bit like explaining the entire history of the East India company to a tea leaf.
Be careful not to take this too far.
on
Digital Biology
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm a little worried that if this gets too 'faddy' that people could start looking for biological metaphors and ignore other eqeually effective, or perhaps more effective solutions.
For example, from the review above:
genetic algorithms may find patterns of credit card fraud and help us find better jet turbine blades
The genetic algorithm is a great algorithm for optimization problems. However, its not significantly more effective than the simulated annealing algorithm or the less-known controlled random search algorithm.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but getting too caught up in the metaphors these algorithms and techniques are based on will unnecessarily shackle your thinking. Of course, the opposite is also true. Refusing to embrace metaphors at all will leave you without the insights that we use metaphors to see, so don't take me too seriously:).
Yeah, the data requirements for this type of wireless network prediction are pretty steep. I work in a GIS lab producing data for wireless network planning (mostly cellular right now), and this data production and RF modelling are still pretty poorly implemented on a commercial level for the really high-resolution stuff. The biggest reason for this is that actual building-scale data is pretty expensive. We can use 30m Landsat imagery for creating data for cell phone planning, but for this type of thing you need either airphotos or Ikonos style 1m or better imagery, which drives the cost way up.
Hmm, I don't think the Government is necessarily going to be able to create good computer games. The BBC is about the only example of a successful government arts project, and even there, have you actually watched much of their regular programming? In the US, we get some of their stuff run on our PBS (Public Broadcasting System, which only recieves around 10% of its funding from the gov't). Based on that I thought that the UK was blessed with the best television ever. After spending some time in the UK, actually watching their TV, I realized that they have just as much crap as we do (well actually less, because they've only got 4 channels, so they don't get cable crap) but we only get the best BBC stuff here.
There is an anecdote , which may or may not be accurate in which my father quotes an australian friend of his as saying that Australia only used to import the best American TV programs. So he'd always thought that the US just had the best TV in the world. Then he came here and watched our standard programming, and said "oh holy cow. this is really bad." I polled my australian coworker, but she just has a low opinion of TV in general, and thus disqualified herself as a source, but did say that Oz now imports Jerry Springer, so now they will understand just how crappy American TV can be. Still, my point is, that we are not getting a representative sample of BBC shows, and most of it, like any other TV broadcaster, is crap.
But really, I just can't imagine the US Government being able to produce good computer games. Its just so much more difficult than just writing a story or painting a picture.
Re:There's a dead giveaway in the article itself..
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
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· Score: 2
Canary Wharf would be a great target if it were better known. Parliament and any of the castles would be likely choices, along with MI-6. Of course the IRA has already nicked that one once.
St. Pauls seems unlikely to me, because they've always avoided religious targets. They seem to really take aim at the flashy secular elements of western civ. Sbarro's pizza, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, discos, etc.
The percentage of weight problems, especially in this country (USA) that are the result of metabolic disorders is very small. Few fat people ery few thin people are thin solely because of higher metabolism. The number one determinant of obesity is activity. The number two determinant is dietary habits.
Also, these things are controlable. The bald man cannot exactly change his hair loss, but the overweight can make dietary and lifestyle changes to control their problem. And it is a problem. There are serious health effects of obesity.
And this is not just a thin man railing against fatties. I am badly out of shape, and its not because I'm cursed with bad genes, its because I sit behind a desk for 8-10 hours a day, eat out 2-3 times per day, and sit in front of the television or my computer with a coke or a beer every night after I get home. If I'm going to complain about how I look, I have to accept the fact that I have no excuse. I am the way I am because I haven't gotten up and gone out and ridden my bike or run around the block on any regular basis for over two years.
By the way, body odor and halitosis are largely manageable health problems too. 90% of severe halitosis problems can be controlled with more frequent brushing. Sure, it sucks to have a slower metabolism or stinkier mouth than other folks. And anyone who judges you based solely on the basis of that sort of thing is a dickweed. But if you have a manageable health problem, and you don't take the required steps to manage it, you are to blame, not your genes.
Your statement about diabetics is particularly off the mark. My grandfather had diabetes. His was caused by chronic obesity when he was younger (from about age 25 to 50). However, despite the serious metabolic and chemical problems caused by diabetes, he decided that he had to kick that if he was going to live, and so he carefully controlled his diet, began excersizing regularly, and lost the weight. It was only through his controling his disease that he avoided the circulatory problems, blindness, and other disastrous health problems caused by diabetes.
Truly some small portion of the current explosion of obesity in America is the result of serious metabolic disorders, but most is the result of lifestyle choices, and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can start making the changes necessary to solve the problem. Most of us need to understand that WE are in control of our problems, not our blood chemistry. We can solve this, and if we don't, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Well, Teflon was actually patented by DuPont, and was never public domain.
OF course the problem with the Russians is not the technology, but the funding. And who's ROC? The only ROC I can think of off the top of my head is the Republic of China, AKA Taiwan. Is Taiwan or the PRC associated with the ISS?
Hmm, good point. I'm curious to take this reasoning a step further. Is it possible that NASA might actually one day stifle space use, by perpetuating a government monopoly and effectively driving out private firms that might one day provide cheaper space flight for the unwashed?
Where would the computer industry be if the government had decided to regulate computer use through a single agency? If there had been a "NCA" that was in charge of providing computing power to those who needed it, would that have prevented the private computer industry from forming? I mean, since all the computer engineering know-how would have been under government control, then any private venture that was trying to build computers would have inferior products at high prices when they started up, while the government agency would be covering its development costs with taxpayer money.
What I'm getting at, is if we shouldn't have the government in the rich-guys-in-space business, should we have them in the rich-corporations-putting-satelites-in-space business? Would a ban on ESA and NASA launches of private satelites spur private space development? Certainly if the NASA and ESA stopped, it wouldn't reduce the demand for orbital insertions. Everybody and his brother wants to put things in orbit. Get Arien and NASA out of the loop, and private corporations would step into the void.
Right now, the private companies that are developing things like SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) and similar technologies are not getting much capital funding because, why develop a cow when the government gives you milk for free?
I've heard a great deal of talk about NASA supporting itself with private space launches, but should we be thinking the other way around?
I'm just thinking out loud here.
Of course, a counter-example is the air-passenger service industry. This actually formed from government contracted air-mail carriers adding rich, high-paying passengers to their mail flights. If we'd said, "No you can't do that, because its a waste of taxpayer funds" where would the airline industry be today? I'd certainly have to drive 1000 miles to see my family at christmas, which would suck.
I am simply against letting the government use its considerable power to reward those who have already been rewarded by the capitalist system.
I am also against governments rewarding anyone who has not done something to earn that reward. However, you have not made the case that this guy is being rewarded in any real way. Every indication is that these guys are paying a fair sum for the extra costs of sending them up with a mission that's going up anyway. The extra costs associated with their presence is offset not by government favoritism, but by the money that these guys actually pay. That's not immoral in the slightest, unless you feel that anyone who pays for something that most cannot afford is immoral, in which case, I guarantee that your millionaire brother should have his Lexus confiscated forthwith, and probably your Jetta, too.
Now, if you don't believe that these guys have paid enough money to cover the expenses they incur, that's a different story, but has nothing to do with the capitalist system. Capitalism is all about charging enough to cover your own expenses, so if governments don't do it, then they should be showered with derision.
As for government not kissing your butt for getting a paycheck, well, actually they do. You can go to a national park any time you want. Poor people rarely do, but the middle class partake often. Do you like space? Have you ever been to the Air and Space museum? I have. Its cool. Its government funded. Do you think that the government would have funded it if only the unemployed were interested? Hell no.
they don't want space travel to become commoditized.
The simple fact of only allowing people who spend big bucks be early adopters of space tourism technology is hardly evidence that they are attempting to exclude the poor from space. Early cars were only affordable to the rich. They were impractical toys. But now if you post a flyer at any college campus you can find somebody getting rid of their car for under a thousand bucks.
This helps ease overcrowding of Earth, and helps people experience new living environments.
Unfortunately, space will never be a viable solution to overcrowding. Certainly not within the next few centuries. The number of people removed from the population will be a drop removed from the ocean compared to the population of the earth. The only folks for whom it might relieve overcrowding would be those who actually left. The ones remaining would not be any better off.
BTW, Moding this guy's post as flaimbait veers toward the ri-damn-diculous. It might be poorly argued, it might be a crazy liberal or crazy libertarian screed. But while there are undoubtedly jackasses out there who'll flaim it (and this response) this is more reasoned and less flaimworthy than your average Katz article. Lighten up.
Theoretically, they're planning to credit us @ 2 for 1 for unconnected days. So if my acess comes back up today, they'll credit me for either 4 or 6 days depending on wether they think its a 3 day or 2 day downtime.
I'm not holding my breath or anything, but that's what they're currently saying.
Hopefully this will be more accurate than their emails saying that they didn't expect any problems with the transition.
I guess I should say there are spoilers here for anyone who hasn't seen Insurrection and actually wants to, but I won't recomend it.
It made sense. It was entertaining.
It made sense and was entertaining only in the way that Armageddon made sense and was entertaining. It made sense because it did not require anyone to think. The good guys were beautiful suburban white people. The bad guys were ugly, puss ridden freaks, so it was easy to keep track of who was who. Then, there was twenty minutes of running away from baddies through caves. Who didn't see that they were going to have to go back for that kiddie's pocket baby-seal and get trapped by a cave-in at least five minutes before it happened? For me, it was entertaining in the same way as Armageddon, which is to say it was not.
And then there's the lame transporter save. If they could save Picard from the thing before it blew up, why not the baddie, too? If they neglect to save him when all they have to do is beam up two people instead of just one, isn't that just murder? If not, its at least sloppy writing.
As for First Contact, I thought there were some great moments of real internal conflict where data is being tempted. And they made Troi tolerable. All you had to do was get her drunk. Who knew?
I do agree that the (only) cool thing in Insurrection was Data going nuts at the begining. That was fun, and unexpected.
Hmm I tend to concur. Remember once saying, "it can't be as bad as Star Trek V!" At least 5 had one funny line: "What does God need with a Starship?" There was nothing funny about Insurrection (OK, DATA going nuts was actually really cool, but otherwise it was excessively lame).
And with respect to another crappy odd-numbered trek, I found it interesting that, in an interview on John Stewart's short lived late-night talk show immediately prior to the release of Generations and Tank Girl, Malcom McDowell would only allow Stewart to talk about Tank Girl, not "the other movie."
We can only hope that the odd-even thing continues to play out.
This is why Astrology is bunk
on
Mapping Gravity
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· Score: 2
There are few pseudo-sciences as well entrenched as Astrology. Every once in a while somebody tries to rationalize the effects of Astrology as an actual gravitational effect of the planetary alignments that has a slight but important effect on world affairs and on individual people's destiny. The problem with this is, that there are so many other variations in the Earth's gravitational field that no such effect could get through the background noise. As a geophysicist, I've used measurements of the variations in the local gravitational field to model underground structures, ranging in size from the Rio Grande Rift in New Mexico, to small landfills and service tunnels on the campus of UT Dallas. We never correct for planetary gravity. In fact, when doing gravity measurements in the field, you have to make sure to park the truck a few yards away from where you take your measurement, because an SUV has enough mass to mess up your reading. The mass of Mars, or even Jupiter is very large, but so far away that the SUV a few feet away has several orders of magnitude more influence.
Astrology doesn't work through any physical medium.
I agree! We should outlaw anything we disagree with anywhere around the globe! China killed as many people in the Cultural Revolution as Germany did in the holocaust. We should outlaw sales of the Little Red Book! That Maoist shit is all about hate and oppression. And while we're at it, let's ban American memorabilia, since we annihilated the Indians. The Koran, Talmud, and Bible all have passages promoting slavery, and oppression of women. Let's outlaw them too.
And yes. The US would be bombing France for stating that French companies were not bound by US law. You should see all the dead Frenchmen that were piled up after the French said "screw you" to the Helms-Burton Act. America just likes to bomb people.
Well, This Economist article argues that manned spaceflight is a boondoggle. The basic idea is that there's never been any benefit from putting men where machines are better suited to go. I tend to disagree, but its important to remember that the shuttle is now a 30 year old piece of technology. They're the DeHaviland Comet (the first jet airliner) of space vehicles. Its time to make a 777 to replace those guys, venerable though they are. They just aren't efficient, and they don't make as much sense as they used to. If privatization is the way to go, then that would be OK by me.
As for the loss of US prestige and vision, well, we aren't making Hoover Dams any more either. We found out that they were destroying the environment and Glenn Canyon was the last such dam. Those building projects were from an era gone past, but despite the fact that that era was past, America had not run out of tricks. As Lake Powell, the lake which has drowned Glenn Canyon, was filling with water, marking the last gasp of the big government construction projects, we were putting men on the moon for the first time. And even as we were reaching the pinnacle of our space flight technology between 1969 and 1980, when the Shuttle program was really getting going, other men were working quietly behind the scenes trying out this silly little idea to create a nationwide network of computers.
If the US does drop the manned space program, would that not put more impetus into the X-prize? NASA's monopoly on American space resources might be due for phasing out. Let NASA go to an oversight role. Let real people get out there and take risks on the final frontier.
It may turn out that this is a bad idea, but the reason will be a technical one, not because of lost pride or enterprising spirit. I think America still has plenty of both.
nice try, but it takes CFCs 50 years to get to the upper atmosphear where it can cause the damage to O3.
My guess is that what you read somewhere said, chemicals can take as long as 50 years to reach the ozone layer, but on balance they get there "It can take days or even years for some chemicals to reach the stratosphere." (this quoted from this article at ENN.)
Also, not all CFCs take so long to break down. To quote the ENN article again, "Ozone depleting chemicals such as CFCs, halons and other substances commonly found in coolants, foaming agents, fire extinguishers and solvents linger in the atmosphere for different periods of time."
perhaps the hole had been growing for the last 400 years.
Actually, the hole did appear after we began measurements in Antarctica. This does not preclude some cyclical natural phenomenon, but there's good evidence that anthropogenic effects are at least a major part of the problem.
Indeed, the evidence is much more clear than anthropogenic global warming.
I myself, tend to believe more of the crackpot pseudoscience than the greedy bastard pseudoscience, thank you very much!
If you believe pseudoscience, you're part of the problem. You see, it is likely that the changeover from CFC based systems to other systems did cost on the order of a billion dollars (that isn't that much, just 1 B2 bomber). Now if, in fact, we did not need to do so, that billion dollar hit to the economy could have been taken in an environmental area that was needed. So getting environmental science wrong is not helpful. The emotional environmentalists have done more to harm the environment than any single chemical manufacturer. My own case in point is the nuclear debate. Emotional environmentalists have pushed FUD tactics regarding nuclear power for some time. This has caused industrial nations to increase use of oil, coal, and hydro-electric systems, each of which have terrible environmental disadvantages of their own. Geologically, coal tends to be a trap for naturally occuring radiogenic compounds, and your average coal plant spews out more radioactive gasses than all the nuclear spills of all western reactors combined (clearly Chernobyl is a case apart), not to mention the tons and tons of CO2 that get tossed into the atmosphere. Hydro dams destroy habitat by the hundreds of square miles.
here are evidences[sic] that we are destroying nature, look at the rivers!
The US is hardly the worst polluter of riparian environments in the world. The clean water act has actually been very effective at cleaning the rivers. I heard a story by an entymologist I know at Clemson university who specializes in cadis flies and other aquatic insects as indicators of stream health. He'd developed standards of measurements for defining stream pollution throughout the southeastern US. He traveled to China to do some work there, and had to travel several hundred miles inland before he found environments that were healthy enough to even show up on his scale.
US citizens are not even one 20th of the world population but they manage to produce half the pollution.
This depend highly on how polution is defined. We are the largest producer of CO2, which was not considered a pollutant until fairly recently. In other respects, we've greatly reduced our environmental destruction. At the turn of the century, South Carolina was largely devoid of trees. Through conservation and forestry, that state has now recovered large tracts of forest land. Clearly this land is not as healthy as old-growth forest yet, but such things take time, and its doing better than one might think.
Also, it is the third world, the developing countries, that continue to use CFC depleting chemicals. For more details check out this article at ENN.
Now, I do believe that CFC reductions are largely responsible for the halting of growth in the ozone layer. It is true that ozone depletors remain active for quite some time. However, ozone is continuously being produced by incident radiation, and even if depletors are present in the atmosphere, ozone levels will quickly reach equilibrium once the amount of depleting agents stabilizes. We can expect a slow recovery, but we should expect to see stabilization quickly. This is precisely what is being reported.
I do pay for my own programming on PBS. And those jack-holes still put their damned logo on things. Typically its just the translucent kind. And even when I pay them to play Doctor Who, they only play thirty-year-old re-runs and play them at midnight on Friday. Jerks.
Seriously, I think they're feeling the hurt from Discovery, TLC, etc. so they want people to know they're watching Nova rather than Extreme Machines or something.
Yeah, TNT is really bad about putting a little animation in to advertise that they're gonna show "Spawn" or whatever next weekend. They're actually designed to get attention. Of course, something that gets your attention during a TV show that isn't the TV show would best be termed a "distraction" which is damned annoying.
Yeah, over-hyping a mediocre movie is a recipe for hatred, a lesson that Waterworld illustrated perfectly.
But honestly, I thought Jedi sucked, and I hadn't seen any trailers, mostly because the plot wasn't as strong, and the ewoks were lame. I'd have thought it was fine, but it was being compared to the first two. Although the ewoks really were the poisoned pill.
EP1 had the same problem. I wouldn't have liked it if it had been the first movie, and I'd never have seen the trailer. It was devoid of ideas and full of empty gimmicks. Marketing is a distant second to craft.
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Actually, it does mean that its evolution, however, its not natural evolution, and its not natural selection. Its human selection and intelligent design. And don't go there, 'cause thats a whole can of worms :P
The opinions expressed above do not represent the opinions of the author.
sorry, that was the best link I found in a quick google search of my own :P Its not used as much as GA and SA. I'll try to explain, although its hard without pictures.
/.er would.
The CRS is based on the 'Nelder-Mead' simplex method. Here's a better description of that.
It starts with n + 1 points where n is the number of parameters you're optimizing. That's 3 points forming a triangle in 2D space or 4 points forming a tetrahedron in 3D space (the space being the values you're optimizing). Its easiest to think of the 2D situation with the triangle.
Each corner of the triangle is some set of parameters, each of which will have a different 'fitness'. The fitness is the value that you're trying to minimize. Evaluate the fitness at each vertex of teh triangle. Take the largest "least fit" vertex, and 'step the triangle downhill' by reflecting it through the midpoint between the other two points.
This should create a reflected triangle closer to the fitness minimum that you are trying to find. repeat until you get so close to the minimum that you're going in circles.
Now, with the CRS, you use the simplex to take all your steps, but in this case you create a large pool of initial candidates at random, just like you do for the Genetic or Simulated Annealing algorithms. The you create a new simplex by selecting n+1 elements from your initial pool. Step the simplex downhill, and see if your new value is better. IF so, throw away the worst element of the initial population, and replace it with the new one. Then select a new simplex at random from your pool of candidates and repeat the procedure.
This way, you're always producing random steps, so you can't easily get caught in a local minimum, and its a pretty efficient solution. It works well with linear constraints, which seemed to be an advantage over GA and SA when I was working on this myself. I should put a discaimer on here that I'm a geophysicist, not a computer scientist, so I may not use the lingo the same way your average
Hope that wasn't too confusing. I'm trying to write this without my boss knowing I'm not working >:)
Welcome to the hell that we physicists have been dealing with when philosophers start talking about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Trying to explain that it doesn't mean "nothing is true" is a bit like explaining the entire history of the East India company to a tea leaf.
I'm a little worried that if this gets too 'faddy' that people could start looking for biological metaphors and ignore other eqeually effective, or perhaps more effective solutions.
:).
For example, from the review above:
genetic algorithms may find patterns of credit card fraud and help us find better jet turbine blades
The genetic algorithm is a great algorithm for optimization problems. However, its not significantly more effective than the simulated annealing algorithm or the less-known controlled random search algorithm.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but getting too caught up in the metaphors these algorithms and techniques are based on will unnecessarily shackle your thinking. Of course, the opposite is also true. Refusing to embrace metaphors at all will leave you without the insights that we use metaphors to see, so don't take me too seriously
Put it in your super-soaker and annihilate the competition!
Yeah, the data requirements for this type of wireless network prediction are pretty steep. I work in a GIS lab producing data for wireless network planning (mostly cellular right now), and this data production and RF modelling are still pretty poorly implemented on a commercial level for the really high-resolution stuff. The biggest reason for this is that actual building-scale data is pretty expensive. We can use 30m Landsat imagery for creating data for cell phone planning, but for this type of thing you need either airphotos or Ikonos style 1m or better imagery, which drives the cost way up.
This project looks like a lot of fun, though.
The Onion describes new technology that is bound to cure electrical sensitivity. Approved for your use by men in very white coats.
Why am I tempted to move to Mendocino and start a HAM radio hobby?
I believe his exact quote regarding quantum mechanics was, "God does not play dice with the Universe."
And to quote the Narrator from The Powerpuff Girls, "Now Professor, just because you're a genius, it doesn't make you a smart guy."
Hmm, I don't think the Government is necessarily going to be able to create good computer games. The BBC is about the only example of a successful government arts project, and even there, have you actually watched much of their regular programming? In the US, we get some of their stuff run on our PBS (Public Broadcasting System, which only recieves around 10% of its funding from the gov't). Based on that I thought that the UK was blessed with the best television ever. After spending some time in the UK, actually watching their TV, I realized that they have just as much crap as we do (well actually less, because they've only got 4 channels, so they don't get cable crap) but we only get the best BBC stuff here.
There is an anecdote , which may or may not be accurate in which my father quotes an australian friend of his as saying that Australia only used to import the best American TV programs. So he'd always thought that the US just had the best TV in the world. Then he came here and watched our standard programming, and said "oh holy cow. this is really bad." I polled my australian coworker, but she just has a low opinion of TV in general, and thus disqualified herself as a source, but did say that Oz now imports Jerry Springer, so now they will understand just how crappy American TV can be. Still, my point is, that we are not getting a representative sample of BBC shows, and most of it, like any other TV broadcaster, is crap.
But really, I just can't imagine the US Government being able to produce good computer games. Its just so much more difficult than just writing a story or painting a picture.
Canary Wharf would be a great target if it were better known. Parliament and any of the castles would be likely choices, along with MI-6. Of course the IRA has already nicked that one once.
St. Pauls seems unlikely to me, because they've always avoided religious targets. They seem to really take aim at the flashy secular elements of western civ. Sbarro's pizza, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, discos, etc.
The percentage of weight problems, especially in this country (USA) that are the result of metabolic disorders is very small. Few fat people ery few thin people are thin solely because of higher metabolism. The number one determinant of obesity is activity. The number two determinant is dietary habits.
Also, these things are controlable. The bald man cannot exactly change his hair loss, but the overweight can make dietary and lifestyle changes to control their problem. And it is a problem. There are serious health effects of obesity.
And this is not just a thin man railing against fatties. I am badly out of shape, and its not because I'm cursed with bad genes, its because I sit behind a desk for 8-10 hours a day, eat out 2-3 times per day, and sit in front of the television or my computer with a coke or a beer every night after I get home. If I'm going to complain about how I look, I have to accept the fact that I have no excuse. I am the way I am because I haven't gotten up and gone out and ridden my bike or run around the block on any regular basis for over two years.
By the way, body odor and halitosis are largely manageable health problems too. 90% of severe halitosis problems can be controlled with more frequent brushing. Sure, it sucks to have a slower metabolism or stinkier mouth than other folks. And anyone who judges you based solely on the basis of that sort of thing is a dickweed. But if you have a manageable health problem, and you don't take the required steps to manage it, you are to blame, not your genes.
Your statement about diabetics is particularly off the mark. My grandfather had diabetes. His was caused by chronic obesity when he was younger (from about age 25 to 50). However, despite the serious metabolic and chemical problems caused by diabetes, he decided that he had to kick that if he was going to live, and so he carefully controlled his diet, began excersizing regularly, and lost the weight. It was only through his controling his disease that he avoided the circulatory problems, blindness, and other disastrous health problems caused by diabetes.
Truly some small portion of the current explosion of obesity in America is the result of serious metabolic disorders, but most is the result of lifestyle choices, and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can start making the changes necessary to solve the problem. Most of us need to understand that WE are in control of our problems, not our blood chemistry. We can solve this, and if we don't, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Well, Teflon was actually patented by DuPont, and was never public domain.
OF course the problem with the Russians is not the technology, but the funding. And who's ROC? The only ROC I can think of off the top of my head is the Republic of China, AKA Taiwan. Is Taiwan or the PRC associated with the ISS?
Hmm, good point. I'm curious to take this reasoning a step further. Is it possible that NASA might actually one day stifle space use, by perpetuating a government monopoly and effectively driving out private firms that might one day provide cheaper space flight for the unwashed?
Where would the computer industry be if the government had decided to regulate computer use through a single agency? If there had been a "NCA" that was in charge of providing computing power to those who needed it, would that have prevented the private computer industry from forming? I mean, since all the computer engineering know-how would have been under government control, then any private venture that was trying to build computers would have inferior products at high prices when they started up, while the government agency would be covering its development costs with taxpayer money.
What I'm getting at, is if we shouldn't have the government in the rich-guys-in-space business, should we have them in the rich-corporations-putting-satelites-in-space business? Would a ban on ESA and NASA launches of private satelites spur private space development? Certainly if the NASA and ESA stopped, it wouldn't reduce the demand for orbital insertions. Everybody and his brother wants to put things in orbit. Get Arien and NASA out of the loop, and private corporations would step into the void.
Right now, the private companies that are developing things like SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) and similar technologies are not getting much capital funding because, why develop a cow when the government gives you milk for free?
I've heard a great deal of talk about NASA supporting itself with private space launches, but should we be thinking the other way around?
I'm just thinking out loud here.
Of course, a counter-example is the air-passenger service industry. This actually formed from government contracted air-mail carriers adding rich, high-paying passengers to their mail flights. If we'd said, "No you can't do that, because its a waste of taxpayer funds" where would the airline industry be today? I'd certainly have to drive 1000 miles to see my family at christmas, which would suck.
I am simply against letting the government use its considerable power to reward those who have already been rewarded by the capitalist system.
I am also against governments rewarding anyone who has not done something to earn that reward. However, you have not made the case that this guy is being rewarded in any real way. Every indication is that these guys are paying a fair sum for the extra costs of sending them up with a mission that's going up anyway. The extra costs associated with their presence is offset not by government favoritism, but by the money that these guys actually pay. That's not immoral in the slightest, unless you feel that anyone who pays for something that most cannot afford is immoral, in which case, I guarantee that your millionaire brother should have his Lexus confiscated forthwith, and probably your Jetta, too.
Now, if you don't believe that these guys have paid enough money to cover the expenses they incur, that's a different story, but has nothing to do with the capitalist system. Capitalism is all about charging enough to cover your own expenses, so if governments don't do it, then they should be showered with derision.
As for government not kissing your butt for getting a paycheck, well, actually they do. You can go to a national park any time you want. Poor people rarely do, but the middle class partake often. Do you like space? Have you ever been to the Air and Space museum? I have. Its cool. Its government funded. Do you think that the government would have funded it if only the unemployed were interested? Hell no.
they don't want space travel to become commoditized.
The simple fact of only allowing people who spend big bucks be early adopters of space tourism technology is hardly evidence that they are attempting to exclude the poor from space. Early cars were only affordable to the rich. They were impractical toys. But now if you post a flyer at any college campus you can find somebody getting rid of their car for under a thousand bucks.
This helps ease overcrowding of Earth, and helps people experience new living environments.
Unfortunately, space will never be a viable solution to overcrowding. Certainly not within the next few centuries. The number of people removed from the population will be a drop removed from the ocean compared to the population of the earth. The only folks for whom it might relieve overcrowding would be those who actually left. The ones remaining would not be any better off.
BTW, Moding this guy's post as flaimbait veers toward the ri-damn-diculous. It might be poorly argued, it might be a crazy liberal or crazy libertarian screed. But while there are undoubtedly jackasses out there who'll flaim it (and this response) this is more reasoned and less flaimworthy than your average Katz article. Lighten up.
paying for a month of downtime.
Theoretically, they're planning to credit us @ 2 for 1 for unconnected days. So if my acess comes back up today, they'll credit me for either 4 or 6 days depending on wether they think its a 3 day or 2 day downtime.
I'm not holding my breath or anything, but that's what they're currently saying.
Hopefully this will be more accurate than their emails saying that they didn't expect any problems with the transition.
I guess I should say there are spoilers here for anyone who hasn't seen Insurrection and actually wants to, but I won't recomend it.
It made sense. It was entertaining.
It made sense and was entertaining only in the way that Armageddon made sense and was entertaining. It made sense because it did not require anyone to think. The good guys were beautiful suburban white people. The bad guys were ugly, puss ridden freaks, so it was easy to keep track of who was who. Then, there was twenty minutes of running away from baddies through caves. Who didn't see that they were going to have to go back for that kiddie's pocket baby-seal and get trapped by a cave-in at least five minutes before it happened? For me, it was entertaining in the same way as Armageddon, which is to say it was not.
And then there's the lame transporter save. If they could save Picard from the thing before it blew up, why not the baddie, too? If they neglect to save him when all they have to do is beam up two people instead of just one, isn't that just murder? If not, its at least sloppy writing.
As for First Contact, I thought there were some great moments of real internal conflict where data is being tempted. And they made Troi tolerable. All you had to do was get her drunk. Who knew?
I do agree that the (only) cool thing in Insurrection was Data going nuts at the begining. That was fun, and unexpected.
> Can't be as bad as Insurrection.
Famous last words!
Hmm I tend to concur. Remember once saying, "it can't be as bad as Star Trek V!" At least 5 had one funny line: "What does God need with a Starship?" There was nothing funny about Insurrection (OK, DATA going nuts was actually really cool, but otherwise it was excessively lame).
And with respect to another crappy odd-numbered trek, I found it interesting that, in an interview on John Stewart's short lived late-night talk show immediately prior to the release of Generations and Tank Girl, Malcom McDowell would only allow Stewart to talk about Tank Girl, not "the other movie."
We can only hope that the odd-even thing continues to play out.
There are few pseudo-sciences as well entrenched as Astrology. Every once in a while somebody tries to rationalize the effects of Astrology as an actual gravitational effect of the planetary alignments that has a slight but important effect on world affairs and on individual people's destiny. The problem with this is, that there are so many other variations in the Earth's gravitational field that no such effect could get through the background noise. As a geophysicist, I've used measurements of the variations in the local gravitational field to model underground structures, ranging in size from the Rio Grande Rift in New Mexico, to small landfills and service tunnels on the campus of UT Dallas. We never correct for planetary gravity. In fact, when doing gravity measurements in the field, you have to make sure to park the truck a few yards away from where you take your measurement, because an SUV has enough mass to mess up your reading. The mass of Mars, or even Jupiter is very large, but so far away that the SUV a few feet away has several orders of magnitude more influence.
Astrology doesn't work through any physical medium.
I agree! We should outlaw anything we disagree with anywhere around the globe! China killed as many people in the Cultural Revolution as Germany did in the holocaust. We should outlaw sales of the Little Red Book! That Maoist shit is all about hate and oppression. And while we're at it, let's ban American memorabilia, since we annihilated the Indians. The Koran, Talmud, and Bible all have passages promoting slavery, and oppression of women. Let's outlaw them too.
And yes. The US would be bombing France for stating that French companies were not bound by US law. You should see all the dead Frenchmen that were piled up after the French said "screw you" to the Helms-Burton Act. America just likes to bomb people.
Well, This Economist article argues that manned spaceflight is a boondoggle. The basic idea is that there's never been any benefit from putting men where machines are better suited to go. I tend to disagree, but its important to remember that the shuttle is now a 30 year old piece of technology. They're the DeHaviland Comet (the first jet airliner) of space vehicles. Its time to make a 777 to replace those guys, venerable though they are. They just aren't efficient, and they don't make as much sense as they used to. If privatization is the way to go, then that would be OK by me.
As for the loss of US prestige and vision, well, we aren't making Hoover Dams any more either. We found out that they were destroying the environment and Glenn Canyon was the last such dam. Those building projects were from an era gone past, but despite the fact that that era was past, America had not run out of tricks. As Lake Powell, the lake which has drowned Glenn Canyon, was filling with water, marking the last gasp of the big government construction projects, we were putting men on the moon for the first time. And even as we were reaching the pinnacle of our space flight technology between 1969 and 1980, when the Shuttle program was really getting going, other men were working quietly behind the scenes trying out this silly little idea to create a nationwide network of computers.
If the US does drop the manned space program, would that not put more impetus into the X-prize? NASA's monopoly on American space resources might be due for phasing out. Let NASA go to an oversight role. Let real people get out there and take risks on the final frontier.
It may turn out that this is a bad idea, but the reason will be a technical one, not because of lost pride or enterprising spirit. I think America still has plenty of both.
nice try, but it takes CFCs 50 years to get to the upper atmosphear where it can cause the damage to O3.
My guess is that what you read somewhere said, chemicals can take as long as 50 years to reach the ozone layer, but on balance they get there "It can take days or even years for some chemicals to reach the stratosphere." (this quoted from this article at ENN.)
Also, not all CFCs take so long to break down. To quote the ENN article again, "Ozone depleting chemicals such as CFCs, halons and other substances commonly found in coolants, foaming agents, fire extinguishers and solvents linger in the atmosphere for different periods of time."
perhaps the hole had been growing for the last 400 years.
Actually, the hole did appear after we began measurements in Antarctica. This does not preclude some cyclical natural phenomenon, but there's good evidence that anthropogenic effects are at least a major part of the problem.
Indeed, the evidence is much more clear than anthropogenic global warming.
I myself, tend to believe more of the crackpot pseudoscience than the greedy bastard pseudoscience, thank you very much!
If you believe pseudoscience, you're part of the problem. You see, it is likely that the changeover from CFC based systems to other systems did cost on the order of a billion dollars (that isn't that much, just 1 B2 bomber). Now if, in fact, we did not need to do so, that billion dollar hit to the economy could have been taken in an environmental area that was needed. So getting environmental science wrong is not helpful. The emotional environmentalists have done more to harm the environment than any single chemical manufacturer. My own case in point is the nuclear debate. Emotional environmentalists have pushed FUD tactics regarding nuclear power for some time. This has caused industrial nations to increase use of oil, coal, and hydro-electric systems, each of which have terrible environmental disadvantages of their own. Geologically, coal tends to be a trap for naturally occuring radiogenic compounds, and your average coal plant spews out more radioactive gasses than all the nuclear spills of all western reactors combined (clearly Chernobyl is a case apart), not to mention the tons and tons of CO2 that get tossed into the atmosphere. Hydro dams destroy habitat by the hundreds of square miles.
here are evidences[sic] that we are destroying nature, look at the rivers!
The US is hardly the worst polluter of riparian environments in the world. The clean water act has actually been very effective at cleaning the rivers. I heard a story by an entymologist I know at Clemson university who specializes in cadis flies and other aquatic insects as indicators of stream health. He'd developed standards of measurements for defining stream pollution throughout the southeastern US. He traveled to China to do some work there, and had to travel several hundred miles inland before he found environments that were healthy enough to even show up on his scale.
US citizens are not even one 20th of the world population but they manage to produce half the pollution.
This depend highly on how polution is defined. We are the largest producer of CO2, which was not considered a pollutant until fairly recently. In other respects, we've greatly reduced our environmental destruction. At the turn of the century, South Carolina was largely devoid of trees. Through conservation and forestry, that state has now recovered large tracts of forest land. Clearly this land is not as healthy as old-growth forest yet, but such things take time, and its doing better than one might think.
Also, it is the third world, the developing countries, that continue to use CFC depleting chemicals. For more details check out this article at ENN.
Now, I do believe that CFC reductions are largely responsible for the halting of growth in the ozone layer. It is true that ozone depletors remain active for quite some time. However, ozone is continuously being produced by incident radiation, and even if depletors are present in the atmosphere, ozone levels will quickly reach equilibrium once the amount of depleting agents stabilizes. We can expect a slow recovery, but we should expect to see stabilization quickly. This is precisely what is being reported.
I do pay for my own programming on PBS. And those jack-holes still put their damned logo on things. Typically its just the translucent kind. And even when I pay them to play Doctor Who, they only play thirty-year-old re-runs and play them at midnight on Friday. Jerks.
Seriously, I think they're feeling the hurt from Discovery, TLC, etc. so they want people to know they're watching Nova rather than Extreme Machines or something.
Yeah, TNT is really bad about putting a little animation in to advertise that they're gonna show "Spawn" or whatever next weekend. They're actually designed to get attention. Of course, something that gets your attention during a TV show that isn't the TV show would best be termed a "distraction" which is damned annoying.
Yeah, over-hyping a mediocre movie is a recipe for hatred, a lesson that Waterworld illustrated perfectly.
But honestly, I thought Jedi sucked, and I hadn't seen any trailers, mostly because the plot wasn't as strong, and the ewoks were lame. I'd have thought it was fine, but it was being compared to the first two. Although the ewoks really were the poisoned pill.
EP1 had the same problem. I wouldn't have liked it if it had been the first movie, and I'd never have seen the trailer. It was devoid of ideas and full of empty gimmicks. Marketing is a distant second to craft.