the misery of poverty is a breeding ground for ideologies which are anatagonistic to the idea offfreedom, as well as undirected threats to your freedom, such as petty crime
such that free men working to combat poverty strengthens the cause of freedom for all. common police work is one such way to stop the threats to your freedom that poverty creates. but another way to diminish this threat to your freedom is lift people out of poverty. wouldn't you call this effort as necessary to the protection of your freedom as policework?
you are not a free man if you think the need to fight for freedom is a form of slavery itself. the young fellows drafted into military service in world war ii could have framed their service as a form of compulsory slavery too. except what they were being compulsed into doing was to fight nazism and imperial japan, REAL threats to freedom, REAL forces of enslavement
so the real double-think here is from you: framing the need to fight for freedom and against enslavement as a form of slavery. this is not morally or intellectually honest of you. its just a complaint that you don't want to be bothered with maintaining your own freedom ro the freedom of your children at all. lazy
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
there are more forces than arms necessary in the fight for liberty. jefferson's quote above is directly applicable to nonviolent means of fighting for freedom as well. so you do not believe community service is an effort necessary to the maintenance of freedom. ok. put your alternative words forth, and let your ideas be defeated in open debate as the inferior ideas they are, and let you serve as the manure jefferson refers to
community service is an excellent idea for the maintenance of freedom. it is just that somep eople, such as you, believe no effort is required at all to maintain freedom, you're just lazy. hisotry teaches us you work to maintain freedom, or you lose it. community service is the domestic side of that effort, from domestic threats to freedom, as certainly as force of arms serves as deterrents to foreign ideological threats to freedom
land of the free. where freemen understand that freedom is protected by banding together, and fighting off threats to freedom. threats that exist abroad, in battle with evil ideologies that are antagonistic to freedom, or domestically, in poor areas of the country where freedom is threatened by economic misery
you are not free if you are poor. the battle for maintaining freedom is a domestic and a foreign battle. if you think it is only a foreign battle, you do not truly understand the nature of freedom
i would modulate your comments by saying it depends upon the situation. a draft for vietnam, for example, was incredibly stupid. you had kids dying for the sake of geopolitics. vietnam didn't threaten us. communism DID threaten us, but i hardly see the war in vietnam as a high stakes battle in the cold war. vietnam went communist anyways eventually, so there you go on the pointlessness of the military involvement, nevermind the draft
however, a draft for something like world war ii made sense, since the threat pretty much was dire to the united states. a europe consolidated under nazism or the far east consolidated under imperial japan were direct and real existential threats to the usa. such that the unmotivated, inexperienced cannon fodder of draftees was still a necessary element of that war
you could fight vietnam without a draft (to the extent military involvement was helpful or even necessary), but you couldn't fight world war ii with a volunteer-only army. its simply a matter of understanding the scale and seriousness of the nature of the conflict
story summary: obama and team put up website communicating their efforts
take home message, pro obama: all the good i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
take home message, anti obama: all the bad i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
its just a communication tool folks. last i checked, communicating what you actually intend to do is never a bad thing
for those of you who don't like obama, think of it as your enemy telegraphing his punches, allowing you to prepare your rebutal, or providing a convenient record for you to accuse him of not doing what he promised to do. see? its good all around
as well as many others, have fought important wars with drafted soldiers
"Mandatory community service? Great, let's send a bunch of unmotivated kids to do stupid work. Hell, that kind of shit would have been a nightmare for me at that age when I had massive social anxiety and was extremely uncomfortable in such situations."
so you have a problem with the fighting forces of world war i and world war ii? where we gave 18 year olds guns and made them serve on the front lines of mayhem and death? i'm just saying, you'd better have a problem with the idea of a military draft, for the sake of intellectual honesty
although, i've heard stories of many countries with mandatory military service as nothing more than a chance to learn smoking and peel potatoes. so mandatory civil service might prove stupid... or really good, can't tell
but i do like the idea of paying off part of your student loans this way. because it serves as a carrot and a stick. if your civil service effort is poor, you would be punished by having to still pay your loans in full, for example. this at least provides motivation
the problem with a lot of the posts here is the identification that since its happening between consenting adults, no wrong is being done, no one is being harmed
this is absolutely false
the problem with prostitution is it increases disease rates and it increases slavery-like exploitation. this hurts everyone. to pretend that prostitution doesn't have this downside is just ignorance
the solution to this is not to make prosititution illegal, but the solution is ALSO not to just let it function free and clear of government involvement and regulation
you need: 1. frequent inspection by healthcare workers, std screening, and immunizations 2. legal aid 3. emotional and psychological counseling 3. overseeing by financial investigators 4. licensing
much as with the current crisis in the financial world, there exists a sort of idiotic group amongst us that thinks that no regulation is not only ok, but for some reason, the ideal. no, some things in life are not self-regulating, or are only self-regulating to a point, and then you need active effort by government institutions to keep things running smoothly. does anyone honestly believe otherwise?
so it goes with financial markets, so it goes with prostitution. to think otherwise is a sort of willful ignorance of the lessons of history, especially recent history
1. inject them with a lethal toxin or virus that gives them 48 hours to live. you possess the antidote, but you won't give it to them until the programming is done. you may find this code to be slapdash and hurried
2. reprogram their genetic makeup so that they slowly devolve into an insect. revertion to homo sapiens status only occurs if the programming is done. their coding effort will be highly hierarchical, with independent nodes functioning in close cooperation, like a hivemind
3. surgically insert a biomechanical morphine injector directly into their spine. press the button, and give them rapturous pleasure. get them addicted, then demand they get no more fixes until the programming is done. code produced from this approach will be alternately pure genius, and pure garbage
combine #1,#2,#3. be the perfect bad guy. code will resemble naked lunch
i'm no exercise physiologist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but i would think injury comes from tendons that are too tight
that is, if your tendon is tight, and you quickly snap it with a sudden muscle exertion, you damage them. meanwhile, if you have loose tendons, due to stretching beforehand, sudden snap muscle exertions would tend tonot damage the tendons as much
so i'm confused about your statement about loose tendons causing injury. i don't think injury is from "things" sloshing around, loose, but instead from "things" being yanked beyond their point of elasticity
again, just a layman's conception, so i stand to be corrected. or perhaps supported with a more scientifically sound articulation of what is exactly going on with the tendons and the potential for injury during sports exertions, and what role stretching beforehand plays with your potential for injury
if you are trying to build muscle, then the whole point of exercise is to weaken your muscles. muscles are built by overexerting them, forcing the body to build them back up stronger
if however you are at a track meet, then you aren't just exercising, you are performing. in which case, you don't want your muscles weakened beforehand at all, you want maximum force from them
but then there is the issue of injury. i thought the point of stretching was to loosen the tendons, so as to limit injury from where your tendons are quickly snapped from a tightened state. and if you are at a track meet, you are placing yourself in a position where you can injure yourself easily by demanding maximum performance from your muscles
so the findings are interesting, but their application isn't so straightforward as the story summary suggest
there exists people who also talk about "crotchfruit" with derision when talking about children, and act confused as to why anyone would choose to have kids
well, people like that, and you who speak of pair bond formation in a mystified manner, are genuine oddballs
fact is, a society that doesn't form stable mating pairs and doesn't raise children is a dying society. all other observations on the subject matter fall secondary to this undeniable fact. being in a relationship with the opposite sex often sucks, and having children certainly sucks, but there is simply no other way to contribute to your society in the most fundamental, biological of ways
you don't have to form a pair bond with a member of the opposite sex, and you don't have to have children. both those choices are perfectly ok for you to take, and i have no problem with that choice
but don't pretend that singlehood or childlessness is somehow the default choice for human existence, and don't act mystified as to what drives people to do these things. pairing up and having children is called keeping humanity and civilization alive, and its pretty hardwired into our psychology and biology, for obvious reasons: keep homo sapiens alive
it plays its powerchord through its inbuilt speaker. i don't know what an inbuilt speaker is, but maybe they meant inbred. in which case, it should prove popular with the AC/DC fanbase
i saw someone else write what you just wrote before you, and they wrote it better;-P
all joking aside, someone else having figured something out before you did is not an automatic reason not to have a debate. at the very least, its a mind exercise that trains the mind to make the next leap into the unknown
no one has answered every question, and for those questions that remain open in our time, those of us who will answer them authoritatively will have trained their minds by reliving debates which are already settled and closed
no one approaches a subject matter cold and can speak authoritatively on it. those who can speak authoritatively on any subject meanwhile have spent years debating and wrestling with issues that previous great minds have closed the book on. you have to inhabit a subject matter in order to know what you are talking about. and you inhabit a subject matter by reliving, for yourself, all of the closed debates
the LHC has captured the public's imagination, calling the elusive particle in question the "god particle" is obviously just a flowery turn of phrase
unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon your point of view, it has apparently devolved/ evolved into a powerful public relations gimmick
personally, i feel that you want the general public engaged in science, any way you can, even if that involves purposeful misconceptions or blowing things out of proportion. sometimes you need cheap gimmicks to captures people's attentions, and really, what's wrong with that? who cares how you get them in the door, as long as they get in the door
get the general public interested and engaged in scientific questions which aren't even remotely tangentially related to their lives, because for every 10 people who get the wrong idea, and start making bets on silly things like proving the existence of god, as if that could ever be actually settled with a science experiment, there is an eleventh person, perhaps a 13 year old kid, who's imagination is sparked by wonder at the larger concepts in play
sometimes its hard to tell the difference between a misconceived turn of the phrase and a genuine attempt at drawing a larger and deeper inference and connection in a subject matter. who am i, or any of us, to throw cold water on the idea of a god particle? isn't discovering the deeper mechanisms of how our natural world works poetically or literally akin to touching the mind of god, whatever the poetic idea of the "the mind of god" might mean to you, atheist, or religious?
so let the god particle be particle physics' new public relations ambassador. and for those of you who are so literal as to be mediocre: don't poo poo the god particle. milk it for all it is worth. beacuse that 13 year old kid might be the next niels bohr
just make all of the clones of michael crichton you create female so they can't breed. of course, this approach ignores the possibility of spontaneous hermaphroditism or parthenogenic reproduction in a given population of unmonitored feral michael crichtons on say a large remote tropical island
to admire the works of man while being wary of what he decides to do with them. being an engineer/ scientist doesn't automatically make you responsible about what you decide to do with what you create
besides, shoehorning into one character the tragic duality of man's ability to create great things, and then do terrible things with them, is a valid use of dramatic license for a fictional work. no one really confuses that with a coherent criticism of scientists or engineers in general
look at it this way: if crichton or any author went out and created engineer and science characters in their fictional works that were the paragons of virtue, this might satisfy your criticisms, but it would also be a boring snoozefest and no one would read it
1. it's really not nice to criticize someone on their death announcement. your social skills suck
2. if you are a well-respected writer, perhaps you would have the authority to judge. but as a random asshole on the internet, your authority to judge his work is zero. oh of course, you are entitled to your opinion, but i am also entitled to ascribe a value to your opinion. the value of your opinion is somewhat below the "gee i should share my thoughts on slashdot" threshold you thought it enjoyed when you decided to post your retarded opinion
we don't care what you think, asshole, because you shit on a well-respected author on the announcement of his death. did i forget to mention that makes you an asshole? have a nice day, asshole
Yes, but again, you'd be adding a whole layer of complexity there: regulation of transgenes. I'd be suprised if we currently knew how to do that with plants. It would not be an issue with microbes. And any way of collecting the weeped diesel would require much more complex systems than a vat, which is what would be needed with my system.
attaching the expression of genes to only certain parts of an animal or under certain times/ environmental changes is old hat. the guys who won the nobel prize this year for chemistry discovered how to manipulate the expression of green fluorescent protein:
why is this a big deal? because after their discovery, thousands of genetic researchers around the globe have attached that gene to specific biological pathways, to see how and when and where and why the pathway is expressed, simply by watching an organism fluoresce. for example, neuroscientists wondering at the genes for axon growth and formation will attach the gfp protein code to a certain gene he suspects of involvement, and confirm that gene's involvement in axon growth by seeing green fluoresence whenever an axon grows
in fact, it would be HARDER to have a gene expressed globally, all over an organism, then it would be to attach the gene expression to only certian areas, or certain times, or under certain environmental changes
The biggest problems I could see would be making a line rather than a dead end. The plant that digests its own cellulose would likely be unable to reproduce: the fungal genes would be digesting the nutrients intended for the plant embryo (I think, I'm not a plant biologist, this is speculative.) And that's if it were viable at all, a plant embryo with the fungal genes might die because the cellulose of the seed was being used to make diesel rather than growing the plant to where it could make more cellulose. You point out that many of our crops are not able to naturally reproduce, but I'm pretty sure that corn does, and any efficient way of doing your plan I would think would have to as well.
a plant that can't reproduce has benefits, not detractions. it is not a mistake that the majority of our food crops in this world can't reproduce on their own. they are completely dependent upon man to reproduce: mankind controls their spread, allowing for efficient management of agriculture, rather than fighting constant wars of reclamation against the crop you planted last year, or spreading uncontrolled across the countryside
furthermore, you could have the plant's diesel production pathway exist only in certain parts of the plant, or expressed only at certain times during the year. attaching the diesel making genes to genes that express only in certain parts of the plant, or express only at certain times of the year
for example: you could have a plant that constantly weeps diesel at the tips of stalks where the specific gene is expressed as cellulose cells keep growing into the region, so you get manageable predefined rivulets falling conveniently into specific collection points. imagine a mat under a tree collecting run off. or, program all of the plant's cells express the gene in october. so you let the plants grow for six months, and during that time it expresses no diesel whatsover. then october comes, the gene that many plants possess to stay attuned to the seasons gets triggered, and all of the plants spontaneously decompose on their own into a pool of plant diesel slime at the same time. then mop it all up
or forget all of this, and go with what nature gave us: a fungus that makes diesel inside trees. naturally amp up the production of diesel via genetically engineering, or tried and true horticultural methods that we have used to have giant apples and corn ears, and collect the diesel like we collect maple syrup: stick a tap in and let it drain off. you could have orchards of trees, where instead of dates or pears, you get diesel leaking into buckets
your liver produces glucose from glycogen stores that your muscles can burn. your body has an entire organ system, your adipose tissue, whose sole purpose is to produce a partly oxidized hydrocarbon (your fat) to store energy that is later consumed in times of food scarcity
going further, there are plants that manufacture oils that are then later consumed by the plant's offspring: its called a seed
this is not a radical or broken concept on my part, the production of something that the creature consumes itself
of course, a plant that produces cellulose support tissue that is degraded by its own cells is a horrible mutant that wouldn't make it 6 days in the wild and would look like a stunted deformed pile of oozing plant diesel pus. who cares? if it makes diesel. in fact, all of the major food crops we produce in this world are horribly bloated mutants that can't even reproduce on their own, nevermind survive in the wild. so creating an abomination which digests itself is not really that odd when considering the abominations we have produced without even the benefit of genetic engineering throughout the history of human agriculture
furthermore, your pointing to want to put it in a bacterial vat for degradation is completely missing the point of the excitement over this find: the point is to have LESS steps in your product of biodiesel. we can already put raw cellulose in bioreactors and produce new and exciting chemicals via bioengineered bacteria. that's not exiciting. its also extra effort and more steps in the production pipeline that wastes energy. if you could simply put one damn genetically engineered plant into the sun, and the damn thing weeps diesel, you have something clearly superior to the bioreactor model you have to feed with cellulose you need to chop up and masticate: energy expenses
so in modding me troll you compound your lack of imagination and lack of basic biology education with a lack of getting the whole damn point of the excitement over this find
2. put them in a plant that expresses the diesel in an easily harvested format 3. profit. MAJOR profit. and just financial profit a. geopolitical: you don't fund wahabbi islam via saudi arabia, blowhards in venezuela, or neoimperialism in russia. b. environmental: you don't add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you simply recycle it. c. economic: a stable agricultral source of fuel is a lot better for a healthy economy than undependable one you need to mine
please, someone, go win your nobel prize for chemistry, biology, AND peace, and isolate those genes. and then someone else: make your first trillion, turn this genetically engineered plant into a major company
you need to find george senior responsible, but also colin powell. he was most influential about saying "stop" outside the gates of baghdad after rolling largely unmolested throught the desert
i think colin powell did that because of his experience in vietnam
and i think political operatives under george senior backed colin powell, by imagining that the american people would not take kindly in the polls to hundreds of american body bags flying home
but bush senior lost the election anyway, and he seemed to try to save face with that ill-thought out action in somalia late in his administration (of "black hawk down" fame)... which he also absurdly aborted at the slightest sign of casualties
well, what george senior, colin powell, and the american people have learned after 9/11 is that there is no such thing as backing down when fighting the kind of avarice we face in the middle east. that there will be body bags involved, no matter what we choose to do, so we might as well choose to do the most fruitful thing, roll up our sleeves, and get into the fight
you could say leaving iraq in 1991 was a demonstration of american spinelessness (in the eyes of al qaeda types, not in my eyes) that emboldened them to think something like 9/11 would make the usa back down. but the first and biggest demonstration of american spinelessness (again, according to al qaeda types, not according to me) that emboldened american enemies in the middle east was under another republican administration too. this time, that republican mythic figure, reagan: leaving lebanon after the 1983 beirut barracks bombing
1983 beirut, more than anything else, taught al qaeda types (erroneously) that attacking americans would make them retreat. 9/11 is the fruit of reagan's and bush's decisions to back down in the face of hostilities in the middle east. lack of resolve in 1983 and 1991 taught al qaeda types that americans back down from confrontation
its funny then to see republicans constantly blathering about democratic lack of resolve, when the greatest failures of resolve in the eyes of our enemies in the middle east has been under republican administrations
clinton gets a sort of free pass on the question. the (relatively speaking, to the question of middle east resolve) tangential and inconsequential 1998 african embassy bombings were responded with a few missiles into empty encampments in the afghan desert and a deserted aspirin factory in sudan. the first world trade center bombing in 1993 was a dud. so clinton wasn't tested, so his failures, or not, in maintaining resolve aren't as manifest in emboldening al qaeda types
although one could say the greatest failure, in policy, not of weak resolve, was under carter, when we let the iranian revoution birth a hostile theocracy, which funded hezbollah and so much other evils in the middle east. a theocracy that is about to get nukes
and if the idea of a theocracy, any theocracy, pro- or anti-american, with nuclear weapons doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, i don't know what is wrong with you
Slashdot Mirror
the misery of poverty is a breeding ground for ideologies which are anatagonistic to the idea offfreedom, as well as undirected threats to your freedom, such as petty crime
such that free men working to combat poverty strengthens the cause of freedom for all. common police work is one such way to stop the threats to your freedom that poverty creates. but another way to diminish this threat to your freedom is lift people out of poverty. wouldn't you call this effort as necessary to the protection of your freedom as policework?
you are not a free man if you think the need to fight for freedom is a form of slavery itself. the young fellows drafted into military service in world war ii could have framed their service as a form of compulsory slavery too. except what they were being compulsed into doing was to fight nazism and imperial japan, REAL threats to freedom, REAL forces of enslavement
so the real double-think here is from you: framing the need to fight for freedom and against enslavement as a form of slavery. this is not morally or intellectually honest of you. its just a complaint that you don't want to be bothered with maintaining your own freedom ro the freedom of your children at all. lazy
there are more forces than arms necessary in the fight for liberty. jefferson's quote above is directly applicable to nonviolent means of fighting for freedom as well. so you do not believe community service is an effort necessary to the maintenance of freedom. ok. put your alternative words forth, and let your ideas be defeated in open debate as the inferior ideas they are, and let you serve as the manure jefferson refers to
community service is an excellent idea for the maintenance of freedom. it is just that somep eople, such as you, believe no effort is required at all to maintain freedom, you're just lazy. hisotry teaches us you work to maintain freedom, or you lose it. community service is the domestic side of that effort, from domestic threats to freedom, as certainly as force of arms serves as deterrents to foreign ideological threats to freedom
land of the free. where freemen understand that freedom is protected by banding together, and fighting off threats to freedom. threats that exist abroad, in battle with evil ideologies that are antagonistic to freedom, or domestically, in poor areas of the country where freedom is threatened by economic misery
you are not free if you are poor. the battle for maintaining freedom is a domestic and a foreign battle. if you think it is only a foreign battle, you do not truly understand the nature of freedom
i would modulate your comments by saying it depends upon the situation. a draft for vietnam, for example, was incredibly stupid. you had kids dying for the sake of geopolitics. vietnam didn't threaten us. communism DID threaten us, but i hardly see the war in vietnam as a high stakes battle in the cold war. vietnam went communist anyways eventually, so there you go on the pointlessness of the military involvement, nevermind the draft
however, a draft for something like world war ii made sense, since the threat pretty much was dire to the united states. a europe consolidated under nazism or the far east consolidated under imperial japan were direct and real existential threats to the usa. such that the unmotivated, inexperienced cannon fodder of draftees was still a necessary element of that war
you could fight vietnam without a draft (to the extent military involvement was helpful or even necessary), but you couldn't fight world war ii with a volunteer-only army. its simply a matter of understanding the scale and seriousness of the nature of the conflict
story summary: obama and team put up website communicating their efforts
take home message, pro obama: all the good i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
take home message, anti obama: all the bad i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
its just a communication tool folks. last i checked, communicating what you actually intend to do is never a bad thing
for those of you who don't like obama, think of it as your enemy telegraphing his punches, allowing you to prepare your rebutal, or providing a convenient record for you to accuse him of not doing what he promised to do. see? its good all around
as well as many others, have fought important wars with drafted soldiers
"Mandatory community service? Great, let's send a bunch of unmotivated kids to do stupid work. Hell, that kind of shit would have been a nightmare for me at that age when I had massive social anxiety and was extremely uncomfortable in such situations."
so you have a problem with the fighting forces of world war i and world war ii? where we gave 18 year olds guns and made them serve on the front lines of mayhem and death? i'm just saying, you'd better have a problem with the idea of a military draft, for the sake of intellectual honesty
although, i've heard stories of many countries with mandatory military service as nothing more than a chance to learn smoking and peel potatoes. so mandatory civil service might prove stupid... or really good, can't tell
but i do like the idea of paying off part of your student loans this way. because it serves as a carrot and a stick. if your civil service effort is poor, you would be punished by having to still pay your loans in full, for example. this at least provides motivation
however, it should be highly regulated
the problem with a lot of the posts here is the identification that since its happening between consenting adults, no wrong is being done, no one is being harmed
this is absolutely false
the problem with prostitution is it increases disease rates and it increases slavery-like exploitation. this hurts everyone. to pretend that prostitution doesn't have this downside is just ignorance
the solution to this is not to make prosititution illegal, but the solution is ALSO not to just let it function free and clear of government involvement and regulation
you need:
1. frequent inspection by healthcare workers, std screening, and immunizations
2. legal aid
3. emotional and psychological counseling
3. overseeing by financial investigators
4. licensing
much as with the current crisis in the financial world, there exists a sort of idiotic group amongst us that thinks that no regulation is not only ok, but for some reason, the ideal. no, some things in life are not self-regulating, or are only self-regulating to a point, and then you need active effort by government institutions to keep things running smoothly. does anyone honestly believe otherwise?
so it goes with financial markets, so it goes with prostitution. to think otherwise is a sort of willful ignorance of the lessons of history, especially recent history
as a biomedical researcher, you can:
1. inject them with a lethal toxin or virus that gives them 48 hours to live. you possess the antidote, but you won't give it to them until the programming is done. you may find this code to be slapdash and hurried
2. reprogram their genetic makeup so that they slowly devolve into an insect. revertion to homo sapiens status only occurs if the programming is done. their coding effort will be highly hierarchical, with independent nodes functioning in close cooperation, like a hivemind
3. surgically insert a biomechanical morphine injector directly into their spine. press the button, and give them rapturous pleasure. get them addicted, then demand they get no more fixes until the programming is done. code produced from this approach will be alternately pure genius, and pure garbage
combine #1,#2,#3. be the perfect bad guy. code will resemble naked lunch
i'm no exercise physiologist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but i would think injury comes from tendons that are too tight
that is, if your tendon is tight, and you quickly snap it with a sudden muscle exertion, you damage them. meanwhile, if you have loose tendons, due to stretching beforehand, sudden snap muscle exertions would tend tonot damage the tendons as much
so i'm confused about your statement about loose tendons causing injury. i don't think injury is from "things" sloshing around, loose, but instead from "things" being yanked beyond their point of elasticity
again, just a layman's conception, so i stand to be corrected. or perhaps supported with a more scientifically sound articulation of what is exactly going on with the tendons and the potential for injury during sports exertions, and what role stretching beforehand plays with your potential for injury
if you are trying to build muscle, then the whole point of exercise is to weaken your muscles. muscles are built by overexerting them, forcing the body to build them back up stronger
if however you are at a track meet, then you aren't just exercising, you are performing. in which case, you don't want your muscles weakened beforehand at all, you want maximum force from them
but then there is the issue of injury. i thought the point of stretching was to loosen the tendons, so as to limit injury from where your tendons are quickly snapped from a tightened state. and if you are at a track meet, you are placing yourself in a position where you can injure yourself easily by demanding maximum performance from your muscles
so the findings are interesting, but their application isn't so straightforward as the story summary suggest
there exists people who also talk about "crotchfruit" with derision when talking about children, and act confused as to why anyone would choose to have kids
well, people like that, and you who speak of pair bond formation in a mystified manner, are genuine oddballs
fact is, a society that doesn't form stable mating pairs and doesn't raise children is a dying society. all other observations on the subject matter fall secondary to this undeniable fact. being in a relationship with the opposite sex often sucks, and having children certainly sucks, but there is simply no other way to contribute to your society in the most fundamental, biological of ways
you don't have to form a pair bond with a member of the opposite sex, and you don't have to have children. both those choices are perfectly ok for you to take, and i have no problem with that choice
but don't pretend that singlehood or childlessness is somehow the default choice for human existence, and don't act mystified as to what drives people to do these things. pairing up and having children is called keeping humanity and civilization alive, and its pretty hardwired into our psychology and biology, for obvious reasons: keep homo sapiens alive
it plays its powerchord through its inbuilt speaker. i don't know what an inbuilt speaker is, but maybe they meant inbred. in which case, it should prove popular with the AC/DC fanbase
i saw someone else write what you just wrote before you, and they wrote it better ;-P
all joking aside, someone else having figured something out before you did is not an automatic reason not to have a debate. at the very least, its a mind exercise that trains the mind to make the next leap into the unknown
no one has answered every question, and for those questions that remain open in our time, those of us who will answer them authoritatively will have trained their minds by reliving debates which are already settled and closed
no one approaches a subject matter cold and can speak authoritatively on it. those who can speak authoritatively on any subject meanwhile have spent years debating and wrestling with issues that previous great minds have closed the book on. you have to inhabit a subject matter in order to know what you are talking about. and you inhabit a subject matter by reliving, for yourself, all of the closed debates
the LHC has captured the public's imagination, calling the elusive particle in question the "god particle" is obviously just a flowery turn of phrase
unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon your point of view, it has apparently devolved/ evolved into a powerful public relations gimmick
personally, i feel that you want the general public engaged in science, any way you can, even if that involves purposeful misconceptions or blowing things out of proportion. sometimes you need cheap gimmicks to captures people's attentions, and really, what's wrong with that? who cares how you get them in the door, as long as they get in the door
get the general public interested and engaged in scientific questions which aren't even remotely tangentially related to their lives, because for every 10 people who get the wrong idea, and start making bets on silly things like proving the existence of god, as if that could ever be actually settled with a science experiment, there is an eleventh person, perhaps a 13 year old kid, who's imagination is sparked by wonder at the larger concepts in play
sometimes its hard to tell the difference between a misconceived turn of the phrase and a genuine attempt at drawing a larger and deeper inference and connection in a subject matter. who am i, or any of us, to throw cold water on the idea of a god particle? isn't discovering the deeper mechanisms of how our natural world works poetically or literally akin to touching the mind of god, whatever the poetic idea of the "the mind of god" might mean to you, atheist, or religious?
so let the god particle be particle physics' new public relations ambassador. and for those of you who are so literal as to be mediocre: don't poo poo the god particle. milk it for all it is worth. beacuse that 13 year old kid might be the next niels bohr
just make all of the clones of michael crichton you create female so they can't breed. of course, this approach ignores the possibility of spontaneous hermaphroditism or parthenogenic reproduction in a given population of unmonitored feral michael crichtons on say a large remote tropical island
to admire the works of man while being wary of what he decides to do with them. being an engineer/ scientist doesn't automatically make you responsible about what you decide to do with what you create
besides, shoehorning into one character the tragic duality of man's ability to create great things, and then do terrible things with them, is a valid use of dramatic license for a fictional work. no one really confuses that with a coherent criticism of scientists or engineers in general
look at it this way: if crichton or any author went out and created engineer and science characters in their fictional works that were the paragons of virtue, this might satisfy your criticisms, but it would also be a boring snoozefest and no one would read it
1. it's really not nice to criticize someone on their death announcement. your social skills suck
2. if you are a well-respected writer, perhaps you would have the authority to judge. but as a random asshole on the internet, your authority to judge his work is zero. oh of course, you are entitled to your opinion, but i am also entitled to ascribe a value to your opinion. the value of your opinion is somewhat below the "gee i should share my thoughts on slashdot" threshold you thought it enjoyed when you decided to post your retarded opinion
we don't care what you think, asshole, because you shit on a well-respected author on the announcement of his death. did i forget to mention that makes you an asshole? have a nice day, asshole
you must be arguing out of stubbornness at this point
so the entire rationale for the usefulness of the green flourescent protein (indicating specific gene expression) is false?
"In vertebrate cell biology, some good global promoters are known, while fewer tissue-specific promoters are known."
you mean like, the gene for lactase (in the small intestine) or the gene for myoglobin (in muscles)? ;-P
attaching the expression of genes to only certain parts of an animal or under certain times/ environmental changes is old hat. the guys who won the nobel prize this year for chemistry discovered how to manipulate the expression of green fluorescent protein:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2008/index.html
why is this a big deal? because after their discovery, thousands of genetic researchers around the globe have attached that gene to specific biological pathways, to see how and when and where and why the pathway is expressed, simply by watching an organism fluoresce. for example, neuroscientists wondering at the genes for axon growth and formation will attach the gfp protein code to a certain gene he suspects of involvement, and confirm that gene's involvement in axon growth by seeing green fluoresence whenever an axon grows
in fact, it would be HARDER to have a gene expressed globally, all over an organism, then it would be to attach the gene expression to only certian areas, or certain times, or under certain environmental changes
a plant that can't reproduce has benefits, not detractions. it is not a mistake that the majority of our food crops in this world can't reproduce on their own. they are completely dependent upon man to reproduce: mankind controls their spread, allowing for efficient management of agriculture, rather than fighting constant wars of reclamation against the crop you planted last year, or spreading uncontrolled across the countryside
furthermore, you could have the plant's diesel production pathway exist only in certain parts of the plant, or expressed only at certain times during the year. attaching the diesel making genes to genes that express only in certain parts of the plant, or express only at certain times of the year
for example: you could have a plant that constantly weeps diesel at the tips of stalks where the specific gene is expressed as cellulose cells keep growing into the region, so you get manageable predefined rivulets falling conveniently into specific collection points. imagine a mat under a tree collecting run off. or, program all of the plant's cells express the gene in october. so you let the plants grow for six months, and during that time it expresses no diesel whatsover. then october comes, the gene that many plants possess to stay attuned to the seasons gets triggered, and all of the plants spontaneously decompose on their own into a pool of plant diesel slime at the same time. then mop it all up
or forget all of this, and go with what nature gave us: a fungus that makes diesel inside trees. naturally amp up the production of diesel via genetically engineering, or tried and true horticultural methods that we have used to have giant apples and corn ears, and collect the diesel like we collect maple syrup: stick a tap in and let it drain off. you could have orchards of trees, where instead of dates or pears, you get diesel leaking into buckets
your liver produces glucose from glycogen stores that your muscles can burn. your body has an entire organ system, your adipose tissue, whose sole purpose is to produce a partly oxidized hydrocarbon (your fat) to store energy that is later consumed in times of food scarcity
going further, there are plants that manufacture oils that are then later consumed by the plant's offspring: its called a seed
this is not a radical or broken concept on my part, the production of something that the creature consumes itself
of course, a plant that produces cellulose support tissue that is degraded by its own cells is a horrible mutant that wouldn't make it 6 days in the wild and would look like a stunted deformed pile of oozing plant diesel pus. who cares? if it makes diesel. in fact, all of the major food crops we produce in this world are horribly bloated mutants that can't even reproduce on their own, nevermind survive in the wild. so creating an abomination which digests itself is not really that odd when considering the abominations we have produced without even the benefit of genetic engineering throughout the history of human agriculture
furthermore, your pointing to want to put it in a bacterial vat for degradation is completely missing the point of the excitement over this find: the point is to have LESS steps in your product of biodiesel. we can already put raw cellulose in bioreactors and produce new and exciting chemicals via bioengineered bacteria. that's not exiciting. its also extra effort and more steps in the production pipeline that wastes energy. if you could simply put one damn genetically engineered plant into the sun, and the damn thing weeps diesel, you have something clearly superior to the bioreactor model you have to feed with cellulose you need to chop up and masticate: energy expenses
so in modding me troll you compound your lack of imagination and lack of basic biology education with a lack of getting the whole damn point of the excitement over this find
the mentally handicapped (in your case, paranoid schizophrenia) get a free pass on voting and responsibility
focus on being able to tie your shoelaces and use the toilet without assistance and you are doing ok in my book
for small values of universe and large values of sahara
2. put them in a plant that expresses the diesel in an easily harvested format
3. profit. MAJOR profit. and just financial profit
a. geopolitical: you don't fund wahabbi islam via saudi arabia, blowhards in venezuela, or neoimperialism in russia.
b. environmental: you don't add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you simply recycle it.
c. economic: a stable agricultral source of fuel is a lot better for a healthy economy than undependable one you need to mine
please, someone, go win your nobel prize for chemistry, biology, AND peace, and isolate those genes. and then someone else: make your first trillion, turn this genetically engineered plant into a major company
you need to find george senior responsible, but also colin powell. he was most influential about saying "stop" outside the gates of baghdad after rolling largely unmolested throught the desert
i think colin powell did that because of his experience in vietnam
and i think political operatives under george senior backed colin powell, by imagining that the american people would not take kindly in the polls to hundreds of american body bags flying home
but bush senior lost the election anyway, and he seemed to try to save face with that ill-thought out action in somalia late in his administration (of "black hawk down" fame)... which he also absurdly aborted at the slightest sign of casualties
well, what george senior, colin powell, and the american people have learned after 9/11 is that there is no such thing as backing down when fighting the kind of avarice we face in the middle east. that there will be body bags involved, no matter what we choose to do, so we might as well choose to do the most fruitful thing, roll up our sleeves, and get into the fight
you could say leaving iraq in 1991 was a demonstration of american spinelessness (in the eyes of al qaeda types, not in my eyes) that emboldened them to think something like 9/11 would make the usa back down. but the first and biggest demonstration of american spinelessness (again, according to al qaeda types, not according to me) that emboldened american enemies in the middle east was under another republican administration too. this time, that republican mythic figure, reagan: leaving lebanon after the 1983 beirut barracks bombing
1983 beirut, more than anything else, taught al qaeda types (erroneously) that attacking americans would make them retreat. 9/11 is the fruit of reagan's and bush's decisions to back down in the face of hostilities in the middle east. lack of resolve in 1983 and 1991 taught al qaeda types that americans back down from confrontation
its funny then to see republicans constantly blathering about democratic lack of resolve, when the greatest failures of resolve in the eyes of our enemies in the middle east has been under republican administrations
clinton gets a sort of free pass on the question. the (relatively speaking, to the question of middle east resolve) tangential and inconsequential 1998 african embassy bombings were responded with a few missiles into empty encampments in the afghan desert and a deserted aspirin factory in sudan. the first world trade center bombing in 1993 was a dud. so clinton wasn't tested, so his failures, or not, in maintaining resolve aren't as manifest in emboldening al qaeda types
although one could say the greatest failure, in policy, not of weak resolve, was under carter, when we let the iranian revoution birth a hostile theocracy, which funded hezbollah and so much other evils in the middle east. a theocracy that is about to get nukes
and if the idea of a theocracy, any theocracy, pro- or anti-american, with nuclear weapons doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, i don't know what is wrong with you
after viewing where most pron actor and actresses' mouths go, i don't want to know anything about a "breath test"