if the woman had zero intent to do wrong, then she can be guilty guilty guilty!... and deserve no punishment. according yo your supposition that intent equates to level punishment, right?
meanwhile, the scammers had every intent to do wrong, therefore they deserve real punishment, according to your supposition
therefore, in your scenario, the woman get sno punishment, the scammers get real punishment, and all the res tis pointless verbiage. ok, the woman is guilty, she's reposnible, she's an albatross, whatever. doesn't matter what you clal her. the point is she doesn't get punished, in your eyes, and the scammers do, which is all that is important. the rest is verbiage
"Certainly, what the scammer did was morally and legally wrong and what this woman did was not. But that is orthogonal to the fact that it is this woman's fault that she got ripped off. (And it is also the scammer's fault for ripping her off.)"
work out your logical contradictions here
then get back to us
if someone does something morally and legally wrong, they are at fault. beginning and end of story. the use of the word "orthogonal" then is just bloviating and meaningless
there is a difference between stupid and evil. stupid often enables evil, but you always punish evil, never the stupid. when you punish the stupid instead of the evil, you have become stupid or evil yourself, because you have helped enable evil by allowing them to get off for their crimes while you focus your fury on the stupid
the stupid, by definition of being stupid, have a diminished capacity in the crime in question. when you are in the business of assigning blame, you must always begin and end with the concept of intent. to consider any other concept waters down the rightful punishment those with bad intent deserve, and share their punishment with the victims and innocent bystands... who are just orthogonal to a crime;-)
1. man falls asleep at wheel of truck, smashes into bus full of kids, kills 10. feels awful about it
2. man carefully watches bus route for weeks, carefully plotting and calculating exactly when to smash into bus to kill children. he kills 2 children. he feels bad he didn't kill more
#2 is absolutely many times more criminal than #1, even though he killed far less children. because of a magic concept which all legal codes understand: intent
any legal code in the world has a difference of understanding between manslaughter and murder, with the punishment for murder being far worse than manslaughter. the magic difference? intent
do you know what intent is? you apparently do not, it currently does not inform your opinions
if you leave a stack of $20s out, you are thoughtless. you have no intent. therefore, you have committed no crime. meanwhile, if you walk into an open door and take the stack of $20s, you have a clear intent to commit a transgressive act and relieve someone else of something valuable which is not yours. you, and you alone, are culpable for what you have done
the magic concept?
intent
intent underlies all readings of morality in all cultures, for clear and obvious reasons of logical and philosophical coherence on the question of right and wrong
yes, for most of us here on slashdot, this is incredibly brain dead, but in general, there is a problem with you if you blame the victim for a crime, no matter how foolish or stupid they acted
whether a rape victim for wearing revealing clothes, or a guy walking in a dangerous neighborhood at night, yes: you can attack the victim, but if you want to actually claim any moral highground (which many of you seem to assume with a withering condescending tone as you blame the victim), the person who bears 100% responsibility and accountability for a crime is the criminal themselves, and only the criminal, and no one else
using knowledge and care to avoid crime is of course an important aspect of any behavior, but just because someone fails to do this, for any reason, does not mean they share blame for being victimized: a transgression is a transgression is a transgression. no one ASKS to be victimized in such a horrible way
if you walk by the front door of a house, and the house is wide open, and no one is home, and in plain site is a stack of 20 dollar bills, you are 100% responsible and culpable if you take that stack of $20s. the person who left them there like that is, yes, pretty stupid. but they deserve zero blame. the criminal, ALWAYS the criminal is responsible for the trangressions that the criminal freely chooses to commit
any other opinion on the issue is, frankly, not morally or philosophically coherent
although, for some you then, by all means, heckle the woman who gave away $$00K, since some of you honeslty and openly claim no moral high ground
while the internet gets raves for creating communities out of tiny exotic subcultures that without the internet would have no place to meet or find commonalities, it is interesting that it also unites psychologically damaged people with common ailments
ailments that without the internet would serve to socially isolate the person, but now serve to create online communities of shared, and reinforcing, and therefore enabling psychological breaks with reality
psychological diseases like paranoia that are amplified by the internet. very interesting
i don't ever play the aztecs, and i don't ever build obelisks;-)
i usuing play mali, and if my capital city is particularly high in production early, after a few warriors/ workers and a settler, i'll start stonehenge
this is actually more often than not, since as mali i already have mining and mysticism to start, so i probably have a mine or two already going in hills nearby, which means my production is usually pretty good if my population is up
both for reasons of its greater chance of being left alone and untouched, in regards to the original inhabitants and later tomb raiders, and also for its greater chance of surviving physically, intact and inert for millenia
has no victims. it happens between consenting adults
pedophilia involves children, who are incapable of informed consent. as such, they are being victimized
to prosecute pedophiles goes beyond the question of bigotry. pedophilia involves criminal physical transgression, not an act of intolerance. for example, not renting to a black person, that is intolerance. punching a black person in the face, that is assault. for both acts, the root cause may be racism, but the wrongful acts are different. likewise with pedophilia as compared to homosexuality
yes, pedophiles are probably born with their orientation like homosexuals, but because their sexual fixation involves a sexual attraction which can never be consummated without committing a criminal physical transgression, being born a pedophile is more like being born with sickle cell anemia or downs syndrome: a permanently disabling trait
just because you are born with a condition doesn't mean it is automatically ok. sometimes, that condition is fatal. and wanting to have sex with children is pretty much the same sort of death sentence: you will never be able to fulfill your sexual desires without committing a heinous crime, and so, you are permanently naturally and tragically damaged
the involvement of a child in a sexual act is impossible, for they can never participate in sex with adult freely, for they lack the faculties yet to be able to coherently choose sexual relations with an adult. there is no way around this. there is no way you can have sex with a child and not damage their self-esteem and how they view themselves, since that is still being psychologically formed. to be a pedophile is an innate sentence of sexual death, much like downs syndrome is a sentence of death for your intellectual life, or sickle cell anemia is a sentence of physical infirmary. life isn't fair, and there are no accomodations possible in any coherent and logical morality that allows pedophiles to get what they want. the victimization of children is something that cannot be condoned, under any sense of right and wrong
if i were a pedophile, i'd probably have myself castrated, and inject estrogen. even this wouldn't save me, as i know that pedophiles that are castrated still have desires to have sex with children, but it helps. so even with the castration and estrogen injections, i'd probably wall myself off from society, bercome like a monk, lest i ever be around a child in a moment of weakness. is this debilitating? absolutely. but if you have a sense of morality, you understand you have an obligation to do no harm to your fellow human beings. having sex with a child is a form of harm. you cannot commit that crime against a human being still in psychological formation, and consider yourself a good person
or consider yourself a bad person, commit your transgressions, and await the punishment you deserve from a society that wishes to protect its children, an absolutely unquestionably valid instinct, for moral, as well as simple biological reasons: the adult that does protect its children and allows them to be psychologically damaged, decreases their own potential to pass on their traits to future generations, and so fades form the earth. it is a moral, as well as evolutionary, imperative to protect your children from pedophiles
i myself, if i had a child, and they were victimized by a pedophile, god help me, i don't know if i could accept society's punishments, i would desire the death of that pedophile at my own hands. that perhaps goes beyond valid morality, but such is the strength of the parental instinct
when i play the aztecs, i can usually get my obelisk built before my starting worker even finishes his first few roads, nevermind that i haven't even discovered agriculture yet. of course, this is because the aztecs have mysticism as a starting tech, and assumes i'm not cranking out warriors to combat barbarian threats so...
the idea of ip law is to reward those who innovate. the supposition being, that were there no legal protection, innovators would see the fruits of their intellectual pursuits go to established financial entities instead of themselves
and it is therefore the greatest irony that ip law is now used to suppress true innovation and protect entrenched financial entities. only the rich can afford the legal bully pulpit that ip law enables
ip law needs to disappear
but at best, we can ignore it, and route around it, like the damage it is
basing that on nothing but the similarity of your story with the fate of various japanese civilians over the years, and the fact that if they could have been caught by soviet patrols, that means they weren't in "the pacific", since that could mean easter island, but they were close by the russian mainland, which could also mean they were close to the north korean coastline
north korea likes to capture foreign nationals, and just keep them, quietly. uggh
'However I do agree we need to make the telcom industry feed us some heavy doses of fiber with all those extra funds we been giving them for decades for it and less on silicone for their mistresses, thereby making the "tubes" a bit more regular in the flow and less top heavy.'
best idiomatic sentence i've seen on slashdot, ever. you shoehorned two idiomatic expressions in there, in parallel, without sounding verbose, and increasing the humor and potency of what you were trying to say
i can't decide, is the 40Gbps spike was related to fighting between criminal organizations. so its mollifying that this tool is so far only being used at such screaming proportions as turned on its creators:
The Arbor Networks researchers said a 40-gigabit attack took place this year when two rival criminal cybergangs began quarreling over control of an online Ponzi scheme. "This was, initially, criminal-on-criminal crime though obviously the greatest damage was inflicted on the infrastructure used by the criminals," the network operator wrote in a note on the attack.
its notable that a lot of this potential is just sitting around, waiting for a chance to be used. if china goes to war with taiwan, or as when russia declared war on georgia, you will see/ saw these countries get DDosed off the face of the earth. that's the really worry: using DDos as a tool of war. the usa can sit around and wait until DDos used against vital government and civilian systems, or get ahead of the curve now
also notable: reflective amplification. that's the methodology employed. i'm not really sure, but i think that's where you dupe completely unrelated systems into responding to forged packets. someone wiser than me on these issues: is that the general drift?
show a modern chemical advance that was made in someone's garage in the past 20 years, not 100 years ago
let's put it this way: astronomy is interesting, even if all you are doing is looking up at night. but you aren't going to making fundamental advances in astronomy doing that. at one time, that's all you had to do, but now, you need time scheduled on a satellite or a large array of radio telescopes to make any fundamental discoveries in astronomy
if you understand why that is true, you will be intellectually honest and admit the same is true nowadays in chemistry too. that doesn't mean the hobbyist chemist can't have fun, its also lots of fun to look up in the night sky. but you won't be winning a nobel in the modern age as a hobbyist chemist or a hobbyist astronomer. just have lots of fun, and perhaps pave the way for you to win your nobel when you finally get your hands on some expensive equipment
regulations matter, they make things more difficult. without regulations, there might be {X} number of hobbyists. with regulations, there will be {X}/3 number of hobbyists. with draconian regulations, there will be {X}/27 number of hobbyists. regulations matter for the casual hobbyist
the existence of commited maniacs does not tell us anything about the casual hobbyist. i don't want more regulation any more than you do, but i know that your argument against regulations is wrong. this argument "someone somewhere will do it anyways regardless of the regulations" is not a valid argument, because regulations very much destroy the casual hobbyist
1. the hobbyist chemist can indeed do many important and useful things, like make soap. but he can't do basic science research. that's all i'm refuting. i'm not saying hobbyist chemistry can't be rewarding, i'm just saying its not a valid avenue for basic science research, which the story summary suggested
2. 'Yet games like Portal and Crayon Physics help change the direction of the industry.' i'm sure those are great games. so are games like arkanoid, and tetris, which at one time were blockbusters. but today, they would not rank with modern blockbusters, like halo, or WoW: financial juggernauts that require huge studios of 3D modelers and artists and programmers
there will ALWAYS be a place for hobbyist gamers and hobbyist chemists. its just that hobbyist chemists will not be doing fundamental research anymore, and hobbyist gamers will not be releasing financial blockbusters. thats all i am saying. you are extending my argument beyond what i said, into conclusions i did not make
the radioactive boyscout is dying, he's got kaposi's sarcoma all over his face, and he is still trying to steal fire detectors. he's an obsessed maniac, a danger to himself and others, and soon he will be prematurely dead from the effects of radiation
in other words, if you are defending the hobbyist scientist against 9/11 fearmongering, the radioactive boyscout is the LAST person you want to mention
because the radioactive boyscout is the very worst example of the hobbyist scientist: very much a danger to himself and others, and obsessed to the point of lawless behavior
do NOT mention the radioactive boyscout, unless you wish to enforce draconian measures
and then, with some lab equipment that, while expensive, is not out of the realm of a committed hobbyist, you can play with your genes
the chemicals involved are not weird or tricky either
something like the chemical edta? its a food additive
simple bases, simple acids
meanwhile, in chemical research, to do cutting edge research, you need exotic chemicals. well, you don't NEED exotic chemicals, but then, whatever research you are doing, is not cutting edge, its ground already covered and scoured
Slashdot Mirror
if the woman had zero intent to do wrong, then she can be guilty guilty guilty!... and deserve no punishment. according yo your supposition that intent equates to level punishment, right?
meanwhile, the scammers had every intent to do wrong, therefore they deserve real punishment, according to your supposition
therefore, in your scenario, the woman get sno punishment, the scammers get real punishment, and all the res tis pointless verbiage. ok, the woman is guilty, she's reposnible, she's an albatross, whatever. doesn't matter what you clal her. the point is she doesn't get punished, in your eyes, and the scammers do, which is all that is important. the rest is verbiage
"Certainly, what the scammer did was morally and legally wrong and what this woman did was not. But that is orthogonal to the fact that it is this woman's fault that she got ripped off. (And it is also the scammer's fault for ripping her off.)"
work out your logical contradictions here
then get back to us
if someone does something morally and legally wrong, they are at fault. beginning and end of story. the use of the word "orthogonal" then is just bloviating and meaningless
there is a difference between stupid and evil. stupid often enables evil, but you always punish evil, never the stupid. when you punish the stupid instead of the evil, you have become stupid or evil yourself, because you have helped enable evil by allowing them to get off for their crimes while you focus your fury on the stupid
the stupid, by definition of being stupid, have a diminished capacity in the crime in question. when you are in the business of assigning blame, you must always begin and end with the concept of intent. to consider any other concept waters down the rightful punishment those with bad intent deserve, and share their punishment with the victims and innocent bystands... who are just orthogonal to a crime ;-)
you never know what you are going to get
the vast majority of legal codes in all world societies throughout all time periods of human history understands the difference in those concepts
you don't
you think intent is a "strawman"
you fail. hard
which is worse?:
1. man falls asleep at wheel of truck, smashes into bus full of kids, kills 10. feels awful about it
2. man carefully watches bus route for weeks, carefully plotting and calculating exactly when to smash into bus to kill children. he kills 2 children. he feels bad he didn't kill more
#2 is absolutely many times more criminal than #1, even though he killed far less children. because of a magic concept which all legal codes understand: intent
any legal code in the world has a difference of understanding between manslaughter and murder, with the punishment for murder being far worse than manslaughter. the magic difference? intent
do you know what intent is? you apparently do not, it currently does not inform your opinions
if you leave a stack of $20s out, you are thoughtless. you have no intent. therefore, you have committed no crime. meanwhile, if you walk into an open door and take the stack of $20s, you have a clear intent to commit a transgressive act and relieve someone else of something valuable which is not yours. you, and you alone, are culpable for what you have done
the magic concept?
intent
intent underlies all readings of morality in all cultures, for clear and obvious reasons of logical and philosophical coherence on the question of right and wrong
yes, for most of us here on slashdot, this is incredibly brain dead, but in general, there is a problem with you if you blame the victim for a crime, no matter how foolish or stupid they acted
whether a rape victim for wearing revealing clothes, or a guy walking in a dangerous neighborhood at night, yes: you can attack the victim, but if you want to actually claim any moral highground (which many of you seem to assume with a withering condescending tone as you blame the victim), the person who bears 100% responsibility and accountability for a crime is the criminal themselves, and only the criminal, and no one else
using knowledge and care to avoid crime is of course an important aspect of any behavior, but just because someone fails to do this, for any reason, does not mean they share blame for being victimized: a transgression is a transgression is a transgression. no one ASKS to be victimized in such a horrible way
if you walk by the front door of a house, and the house is wide open, and no one is home, and in plain site is a stack of 20 dollar bills, you are 100% responsible and culpable if you take that stack of $20s. the person who left them there like that is, yes, pretty stupid. but they deserve zero blame. the criminal, ALWAYS the criminal is responsible for the trangressions that the criminal freely chooses to commit
any other opinion on the issue is, frankly, not morally or philosophically coherent
although, for some you then, by all means, heckle the woman who gave away $$00K, since some of you honeslty and openly claim no moral high ground
while the internet gets raves for creating communities out of tiny exotic subcultures that without the internet would have no place to meet or find commonalities, it is interesting that it also unites psychologically damaged people with common ailments
ailments that without the internet would serve to socially isolate the person, but now serve to create online communities of shared, and reinforcing, and therefore enabling psychological breaks with reality
psychological diseases like paranoia that are amplified by the internet. very interesting
were you actually some sort of authority, rather than an anonymous coward with an assumed sense of patronizing and condescending authority
the bush administration
oh, you said fictional
that is unexplained, i usually say something like "probably a stray cosmic ray"
for the technically inclined, this usually elicits a laugh
for the technically uninclined this usually elicits a stony face of seriousness
try this comment sometime, its win win. its a good litmus test for the level of technical acumen you are dealing with in someone
however, these guys can actually say this sort of thing with a straight face: "probably a stray gamma ray"
i don't ever play the aztecs, and i don't ever build obelisks ;-)
i usuing play mali, and if my capital city is particularly high in production early, after a few warriors/ workers and a settler, i'll start stonehenge
this is actually more often than not, since as mali i already have mining and mysticism to start, so i probably have a mine or two already going in hills nearby, which means my production is usually pretty good if my population is up
sounds more probable
both for reasons of its greater chance of being left alone and untouched, in regards to the original inhabitants and later tomb raiders, and also for its greater chance of surviving physically, intact and inert for millenia
has no victims. it happens between consenting adults
pedophilia involves children, who are incapable of informed consent. as such, they are being victimized
to prosecute pedophiles goes beyond the question of bigotry. pedophilia involves criminal physical transgression, not an act of intolerance. for example, not renting to a black person, that is intolerance. punching a black person in the face, that is assault. for both acts, the root cause may be racism, but the wrongful acts are different. likewise with pedophilia as compared to homosexuality
yes, pedophiles are probably born with their orientation like homosexuals, but because their sexual fixation involves a sexual attraction which can never be consummated without committing a criminal physical transgression, being born a pedophile is more like being born with sickle cell anemia or downs syndrome: a permanently disabling trait
just because you are born with a condition doesn't mean it is automatically ok. sometimes, that condition is fatal. and wanting to have sex with children is pretty much the same sort of death sentence: you will never be able to fulfill your sexual desires without committing a heinous crime, and so, you are permanently naturally and tragically damaged
the involvement of a child in a sexual act is impossible, for they can never participate in sex with adult freely, for they lack the faculties yet to be able to coherently choose sexual relations with an adult. there is no way around this. there is no way you can have sex with a child and not damage their self-esteem and how they view themselves, since that is still being psychologically formed. to be a pedophile is an innate sentence of sexual death, much like downs syndrome is a sentence of death for your intellectual life, or sickle cell anemia is a sentence of physical infirmary. life isn't fair, and there are no accomodations possible in any coherent and logical morality that allows pedophiles to get what they want. the victimization of children is something that cannot be condoned, under any sense of right and wrong
if i were a pedophile, i'd probably have myself castrated, and inject estrogen. even this wouldn't save me, as i know that pedophiles that are castrated still have desires to have sex with children, but it helps. so even with the castration and estrogen injections, i'd probably wall myself off from society, bercome like a monk, lest i ever be around a child in a moment of weakness. is this debilitating? absolutely. but if you have a sense of morality, you understand you have an obligation to do no harm to your fellow human beings. having sex with a child is a form of harm. you cannot commit that crime against a human being still in psychological formation, and consider yourself a good person
or consider yourself a bad person, commit your transgressions, and await the punishment you deserve from a society that wishes to protect its children, an absolutely unquestionably valid instinct, for moral, as well as simple biological reasons: the adult that does protect its children and allows them to be psychologically damaged, decreases their own potential to pass on their traits to future generations, and so fades form the earth. it is a moral, as well as evolutionary, imperative to protect your children from pedophiles
i myself, if i had a child, and they were victimized by a pedophile, god help me, i don't know if i could accept society's punishments, i would desire the death of that pedophile at my own hands. that perhaps goes beyond valid morality, but such is the strength of the parental instinct
when i play the aztecs, i can usually get my obelisk built before my starting worker even finishes his first few roads, nevermind that i haven't even discovered agriculture yet. of course, this is because the aztecs have mysticism as a starting tech, and assumes i'm not cranking out warriors to combat barbarian threats so...
wait, we're talking reality?
sorry
every pimply faced 13 year old has the same global reach and publishing potentiality of bertelsmann and time warner circa 1988
if microsoft did this, the story summary would be:
MICROSOFT RAPES YOUR PRIVACY FOR THE GOVERNMENT
but google did it, so the slashdot story summary is:
Google Can Predict the Flu
massive slashdot bias, alive and well
the idea of ip law is to reward those who innovate. the supposition being, that were there no legal protection, innovators would see the fruits of their intellectual pursuits go to established financial entities instead of themselves
and it is therefore the greatest irony that ip law is now used to suppress true innovation and protect entrenched financial entities. only the rich can afford the legal bully pulpit that ip law enables
ip law needs to disappear
but at best, we can ignore it, and route around it, like the damage it is
death to ip law
basing that on nothing but the similarity of your story with the fate of various japanese civilians over the years, and the fact that if they could have been caught by soviet patrols, that means they weren't in "the pacific", since that could mean easter island, but they were close by the russian mainland, which could also mean they were close to the north korean coastline
north korea likes to capture foreign nationals, and just keep them, quietly. uggh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese
'However I do agree we need to make the telcom industry feed us some heavy doses of fiber with all those extra funds we been giving them for decades for it and less on silicone for their mistresses, thereby making the "tubes" a bit more regular in the flow and less top heavy.'
best idiomatic sentence i've seen on slashdot, ever. you shoehorned two idiomatic expressions in there, in parallel, without sounding verbose, and increasing the humor and potency of what you were trying to say
pure awesome win
i can't decide, is the 40Gbps spike was related to fighting between criminal organizations. so its mollifying that this tool is so far only being used at such screaming proportions as turned on its creators:
the new york times had a good summary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/technology/internet/10attacks.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
its notable that a lot of this potential is just sitting around, waiting for a chance to be used. if china goes to war with taiwan, or as when russia declared war on georgia, you will see/ saw these countries get DDosed off the face of the earth. that's the really worry: using DDos as a tool of war. the usa can sit around and wait until DDos used against vital government and civilian systems, or get ahead of the curve now
also notable: reflective amplification. that's the methodology employed. i'm not really sure, but i think that's where you dupe completely unrelated systems into responding to forged packets. someone wiser than me on these issues: is that the general drift?
show a modern chemical advance that was made in someone's garage in the past 20 years, not 100 years ago
let's put it this way: astronomy is interesting, even if all you are doing is looking up at night. but you aren't going to making fundamental advances in astronomy doing that. at one time, that's all you had to do, but now, you need time scheduled on a satellite or a large array of radio telescopes to make any fundamental discoveries in astronomy
if you understand why that is true, you will be intellectually honest and admit the same is true nowadays in chemistry too. that doesn't mean the hobbyist chemist can't have fun, its also lots of fun to look up in the night sky. but you won't be winning a nobel in the modern age as a hobbyist chemist or a hobbyist astronomer. just have lots of fun, and perhaps pave the way for you to win your nobel when you finally get your hands on some expensive equipment
regulations matter, they make things more difficult. without regulations, there might be {X} number of hobbyists. with regulations, there will be {X}/3 number of hobbyists. with draconian regulations, there will be {X}/27 number of hobbyists. regulations matter for the casual hobbyist
the existence of commited maniacs does not tell us anything about the casual hobbyist. i don't want more regulation any more than you do, but i know that your argument against regulations is wrong. this argument "someone somewhere will do it anyways regardless of the regulations" is not a valid argument, because regulations very much destroy the casual hobbyist
1. the hobbyist chemist can indeed do many important and useful things, like make soap. but he can't do basic science research. that's all i'm refuting. i'm not saying hobbyist chemistry can't be rewarding, i'm just saying its not a valid avenue for basic science research, which the story summary suggested
2. 'Yet games like Portal and Crayon Physics help change the direction of the industry.' i'm sure those are great games. so are games like arkanoid, and tetris, which at one time were blockbusters. but today, they would not rank with modern blockbusters, like halo, or WoW: financial juggernauts that require huge studios of 3D modelers and artists and programmers
there will ALWAYS be a place for hobbyist gamers and hobbyist chemists. its just that hobbyist chemists will not be doing fundamental research anymore, and hobbyist gamers will not be releasing financial blockbusters. thats all i am saying. you are extending my argument beyond what i said, into conclusions i did not make
i think you've used the completely wrong example
the radioactive boyscout is dying, he's got kaposi's sarcoma all over his face, and he is still trying to steal fire detectors. he's an obsessed maniac, a danger to himself and others, and soon he will be prematurely dead from the effects of radiation
this is a sobering picture form last year when he was arrested
in other words, if you are defending the hobbyist scientist against 9/11 fearmongering, the radioactive boyscout is the LAST person you want to mention
because the radioactive boyscout is the very worst example of the hobbyist scientist: very much a danger to himself and others, and obsessed to the point of lawless behavior
do NOT mention the radioactive boyscout, unless you wish to enforce draconian measures
you need cells
you can pick them out of your cheek
and then, with some lab equipment that, while expensive, is not out of the realm of a committed hobbyist, you can play with your genes
the chemicals involved are not weird or tricky either
something like the chemical edta? its a food additive
simple bases, simple acids
meanwhile, in chemical research, to do cutting edge research, you need exotic chemicals. well, you don't NEED exotic chemicals, but then, whatever research you are doing, is not cutting edge, its ground already covered and scoured