As of now, we have zero evidence that the chemical reactions that created life on earth have occurred in a similar fashion anywhere else. There is no real evidence that this lake hosted life, its just interesting speculation. The religious minded could speculate the lake is the lost Eden of the Bible with equal evidence to support it.
Healthy skepticism is what drives all good science, but in this case we do in fact have reasons to believe that it is at least plausible for life to be common wherever in the universe the conditions are suitable. The more we learn about how life has evolved and how it is likely to have started, the more it looks like like is something that is certain to get started when the conditions are right; and the conditions may be right within a wide set of parameters.
Nice looking architectureÃ, but they're still sitting at open plan desks. Guess we know how much Google really values their precious "Googlers". Talk is cheap, but real estate is fucking expensive.
However, they added a nice feature, if you can stand looking at the glossy pictures: padded cells. Any way, talk isn't the only cheap commodity - drawing up glossy plans like this doesn't mean they are going to build, I think.
I know how to make an all-inclusive list of all you passport numbers: generate a complete list of all combinations of characters, that form valid passport numbers in the relevant countries. They didn't say the list had to be limited to only yours, did they?
We also produce half of the inventions that make life better and longer. Perhaps we would all be better off if the rest of the world was more like us, not the other way around.
I think both those claims are highly contentious. At the very least, you have to tell us what those inventions are and how they make our lives better and longer, because I and many others are not convinced. I'm not saying that America has done nothing good, only that I think you need a bit of a reality check. It is quite likely that many of the things you imagine are American inventions, are in fact from somewhere else - only, the company that monetised it, was American. Take Oracle: they got rich on producing a relational database system - invented by Edgar F. Codd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Codd), an Englishman - and have since acquired a large number of startups for their technologies, many of which originated outside of the US. Also, you should keep in mind that many of the things you, as an American, think of as making life better, are in fact not seen that way in other countries.
As for being more like the US: thank you for the invitation, but no thanks. Not only are Americans objectively speaking the most wasteful on the planet (you guys use more energy per capita than any other nation), but we have all watched American politics, news, movies, court cases etc etc for decades, and I think most agree that this isn't what they want. And of course, a question worth considering is: why should America not learn from the rest of the world? Sure, many Americans have admirable qualities, but be a bit modest; it's not like you have no reasons to be.
If you consider all possible scenarios, you realize it's possible for a perverted heterosexual (presumably male, though it'd be sexist to assume so) to go into the bathroom of the opposite gender by pretending to be transgender.
If a "pervert", as you call it, would go to such lengths, why would they not just dress up as a woman and do the same? I think your argument is dubious. And anyway, what is the (sexual) attraction of using the bathroom as the opposite gender? It is hardly the kind of environment to inspire lust; not in my, at least. No, the real reason for gender specific bathrooms is the fact that many of either gender would feel awkward about using a unisex facility, simply because it is something they are not used to, and since it is just a small thing, nobody bothers to change it.
I think we should be more critical about what we call developers. This is not to belittle the many, very competent, non-professional coders, but saying that everybody who downloads a toolset and writes code is a developer is a bit like calling everybody who has bought an electric powersaw a carpenter; there is just more to being a professional developer than writing code, and there is a big difference between writing short pieces of ad-hoc code from time to time and writing large, maintainable applications as part of a development team.
There is hardly any need to do that, since he is doing it so well. Seriously, hearing him in a public speech, saying '...no president in history has been as badly as me...' had me in stitches. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - and this is supposedly the leader of the free world? What did he expect - that people would line the streets, waving palm-fronds and singing 'hosannah' wherever he went? Compare to other political leaders - Obama was reviled in obscene ways by the right-wing outlets in America, and took it with dignity. It happens to everybody in exposed postions, especially when they are politicians who pursue controversial policies, and you simply have to be tough enough to take it on the chin. But this guy is simply a whimp.
I understand the necessity of stopping terrorists - I doubt anyone would disagree - but it is only firefighting, I think. As we see more and more, they just find other ways - they recruit disenfranchised Americans, they find ways into American infrastructure via the internet etc; both of which are easy targets, I'm sad to say, particularly in America.
And I think it is naive and simplistic to think that terrorism is merely about "killing Americans because they hate freedom". True, some terrorists are religious fanatics, who want to bring about the end of the world and the final judgement, but I think most of the high-ranking ones are simply crime-bosses who have found it to be a lucrative business, and a large proportion of their cannon-fodder are disenfranchised, young people, whose journey into radicalisation should be understood as a form of self-destructive behaviour similar to self-harming, suicide and drug-addiction. The only way to stop the terrorism problem from getting more out of hand is by fixing the problems in our society, that produce vulnerable, young people: the inequality, the lack of real hope, the absense of opportunities if you are born into the wrong place. When you grow up knowing from your earliest years, that you are worthless - born a loser - no matter how hard you try, it is very, very hard to break out, and it is very hard not to come to hate those well-fed bastards, with their smug opions, whose life looks so easy by comparison - especially when you are told all the time that you are lose because you are lazy and stupid. I know - I made that journey.
What governments invest in and what private businesses invest in are usually two different categories of research - as far as I know, that is the way it has always been. Private companies typically invest in monetising research results, or do research on things that can be made into a saleable product - that is after all the primary purpose of most businesses. But where does that research come from? Normally from government funded sources - certainly this is the case outside the US, where most universities are publicly funded. The point to take home is that the fundamental research, which to the un-initiated can seems like mere daydreaming and waste of time and money, is crucially important for the high-tech businesses of tomorrow, who are going to monetise the results that flow from fundamental research.
Just look back at the decades of research into how inherited traits are actually transmitted - it started around 1830 with Gregor Mendel, and it was not until the late 20th century that we got so close that businesses could smell the money, but now DNA research is one of the most important, fastest growing industries. So that's 170 years of curiosity driven, fundamental research and 20 years of private businesses investing in the same. Public funding of research is what drives this kind of research - because companies in general only think about the next fiscal year and the bottom line.
Nice how you entirely ignored the largest threat the GP stated, as did the article and summary. The varroa mite is the primary cause of death in hives right now
Glad you liked it. I didn't ignore it, I just didn't choose to pick that one out, because I think it is obvious that varroa wouldn't have been a problem, if people didn't ship the bloody things around the globe. I don't know if people in general know this, but it has for decades been common practice to buy queens and have them sent in a small packet by mail - I doubt there is a specialist vet at either end of the transaction, checking out the health of each of those queens, so that is just one, very efficient way of spreading varroa.
There is no threat to honeybees (which in the US aren't even native). Queens can be bred in bulk (there are tricks to make a hive produce lots of queens), and starting a new hive only takes a queen and a handful of workers. Beekeepers can order them by mail.
Not quite true - farming practices and the beekeeping practices that are common in the US, are major threats. Pestices are not all that discerning - if they kill harmful insects, then they probably also kill the beneficial ones, and systemic pesticides like the neo-nicotinoids are absorbed into the crop plants and secreted in the nectar. Non-systemic pesticides are less likely to find their way into bees. But possibly the worst threat comes from the fact that beekeepers rely on a narrow monoculture, created by exactly the practices you described, plus of course the way in which American beekeepers in particular transport their hives from all over the US to California, where they can then exchange diseases.
Amanita muscaria is a more obscure hallucinogen, but it's cousin amanita phalloides is known as the death cap and one of the world's most lethal.
Indeed, but you would be hard pressed to mistake them for each other, I think. The first one is bright red, normally with white 'dots' all over, very recognisable - you don't need to eat it to see something psychedelic - whereas the second one is a dull, brownish-green colour and looks a bit like something you might find in the supermarket.
To be honest, they might have thought the suspect was just a buffoon. You can't go round arresting every loony you find. But what you can do is pay such people a visit (you can even use social workers for that if the police has a capacity problem) and/or interview them at the police station, have a mental assessment done, and see who they're connected with.
I'm sure they would have done that and more, if they had the resources. Regrettably, they don't. Remember, we have been in the grip of the Conservative goverment's austerity policies for what almost feels like a lifetime, because of the financial crisis, which in turn was caused by the drive towards privatisation and deregulation over the last few decades. I know there are people who don't want to admit that this is the way it is, but I think most of us realise that this is true. I'm not really a huge fan of government doing everything for us and and spending loads on police, military and public services, and I agree that we need to get as much out of our money as possible, but we can't let blind ideology overrule rational decision making, when it comes to crucial functions in our society.
Well, now is the time to improve procedures instead of outlawing encryption and introducing Internet censorship.
Encryption is not going to be outlawed - it is fundamentally important to trade over the internet - nor are we about to introduce censorship. But I think we have far too long shied away from tackling hate speech head on for fear that we may seem racist, somehow. There has been a sort of policy of letting people in and packing them away in some corner with the instruction to 'Go and get yourselves integrated, as long as you don't try to mingle with Real British People' - how could that ever work? We, as a society, need to be more genuinely welcoming; but it is problem that sticks very deep in British society, and it is one that the especially Tories have never really understood. Government and politicians very often make all the right noises and are generally kind-hearted and well-meaning, but they have this facile approach to how to "just" solve problems without doing too much.
And to be honest - I don't think you really understand the issues either, not if you imagine it is just a question of improving procedures. That is a bit like trying to handle a cholera epidemic by advicing people to be more careful and wash their hands.
I never use voicemail - it is one of the (mis-)features I always turn off if at all possible; and if not, I simply ignore it and let it fill up. Why? Because I have to actually call a service number to access voice mail messages and then work with an awkward interface; I may even have to pay call time to do so. There are much better alternatives now: instant messaging. My favourite (that is, the first one I tried and found reasonably useful) is WeChat; I know all the criticisms, so don't bother - the point is, there are several like it, that allow you to chat in real time, send pictures and voice messages and even make a call (optionally with video); if you don't check your messages they just hang around until you have time. And you can control who is allowed to contact you. I can't see why I would want voicemail for. The same goes for SMS, in many ways; I think I have only used SMS something like 3 times in the last year.
This concept is drilled into us day in, day out. It's accepted as a universal truth with absolutely no vetting, which has always made me suspicious of the claim. Why is diversity important in science? By it's very nature, WHO is doing the science should be irrelevant. A test result won't change depending on my gender or melanin levels, or at least it won't if the science is done right.
That is exactly the point: gender, race etc should not matter - but as things stand, it clearly does, since people with certain characteristics find it much harder to make a career in science. There is no good reason why women, blacks, gays,... should not be as good scientists as the current majority of white men in science, why is it so much harder for those groups to get in and work their way to the top? I think it is obvious (but recognising that this is an opnion rather than a fact) that it would be beneficial to society and science, if there were more, highly educated physicists, engineers, chemists, mathematicians etc, so keeping large segments of the population out of science careers is clearly not something society benefits from.
One may muse over how women or people from a diverse set of backgrounds could bring a different perspective to science; I don't buy into that, but the sheer number of difficult challenges in science across the board means that we can hardly afford to not bring as many people as possible, from any background into science.
Science is facing a raft of politically-motivated studies, rigged or suppressed medical trials, false or irreproducible results are rampant. But the big problem is "lack of diversity"??
Lack of diversity is an important issue in science, which is acknowledged by most prominent scientists, there's no denying that; but there are more serious problems, such as the fact that science is under pressure from political, business and religious interest groups, who don't like certain scientific results. Science must be free to follow the truth wherever it leads, otherwise it becomes worse than worthless - it becomes harmful.
Of all the places SJW types should stay the hell out of, aside from politics, its science.
I don't know who you call "SJW types" - but in my opinion, science should be guided by ethical standards - but standards that have less to do with politics and religion than with the search for knowledge and understanding. It seems to me that such standards must by logical necessity also seek to address any bias or discrimination based on gender, skin colour and other things that have nothing to do with science.
Apropos super capacitors - one of the problems with capacitors lies in having to keep the opposite charges apart, which is exactly what the membrane surrounding the mitochondria does, and very well. According to this: http://bionumbers.hms.harvard...., the field strength across that membrane is some 30 MV/m (that's Mega-Volt, yes) - IOW, a lot.
What the CIA and MI6 did not consider is that China would flood the West with trusted Communists that would enter the US and UK educations systems, learn and take everything back to China.
Hmm, that reads like a 60es spy thriller. Are you saying that "the immensely powerful inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party, known only to a few, highly classified individuals" etc, somehow have brainwashed the enormous numbers of Chinese students going abroad, to be fanatically devoted to extreme Maoism and interested only in subverting the legitimate government of rich people over American consumers? Without anybody ever noticing? Wow. But with that amount of power, why haven't they simply wiped the rest of the world clean of the stain of evil things like capitalism, and presumably democracy? Sorry, perhaps I shouldn't be sarcastic, but I think it is far fetched; and looking at your opening comments, you have already given a better explanation: the US attracted talent in the past by offering them better opportunities, better conditions etc. than both USSR and China did. Now the situation is the opposite, and while an overseas education is still considered better, most of the students do want to come back to China. While they are in the West for their studies, many do a PhD, and part of that is doing groundbreaking research, sponsored by a hi-tech company, during which time they learn a lot, none of which involves spying; but they do take that back to China - how could it be otherwise?
In the West, since the advent of neo-everything in politics - neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism, neo-fundamentalism etc - governments have been outsourcing a lot of things that used to be government funded, and scientific research in particular is now almost invariably business oriented, non basic research, in which the universities place PhD students in hi-tech companies; and because universities are facing substantial cuts to public funding (and have been for many years) they have to actively try to attract paying students from overseas. Thus, we have a direct link from regressive policies originating in the US, to the current situation where a lot of hi-tech research is effectively being exported to China, all of this being above board and perfectly legal. Personally, I don't mind - what goes around, comes around. What we get in return is a good relationship with a China, who can see the benefit of nurturing a good understanding with us, and our next generation will perhaps go to China and take some of their advances back to us - if we manage to make our countries worth returning to. I think it is something be optimistic about - wouldn't it be nice if we competed on which country is the nicest to live in, rather than who has the biggest bomb?
With all due respect, the monkey-filled rectum scenario is at least as plausible as the submitted story.
Let's examine that claim. On one hand, we have a hypothesis, proposed by a person or a team, who have an established reputation as being scientists, and whose hypothesis ties into existing theories, although the hypothesis itself is largely speculative.They are trying to do what all, good scientists do, namely make falsifiable predictions, and their colleagues can therefore scrutinise their reasoning and try find relevant data. That difference may not impress you, but to a scientist it is important.
it could have been caused by monkeys flying out of my ass.................... just sayin
I would say, when a bunch of cosmologists come up with a potential explanation - even an extraordinary one - there is at least a chance they are able to argue for a causal connection and a theory, whereas your lame put-down clearly isn't even meant to meet the same standards.
Slashdot Mirror
The smell ought to do it by now.
Oh sure, hire a girl with no experience to invent COBOL
If it was a guy, they'd have wanted him to have five years experience in inventing COBOL
Ah, classical castration anxiety, I believe.
As of now, we have zero evidence that the chemical reactions that created life on earth have occurred in a similar fashion anywhere else. There is no real evidence that this lake hosted life, its just interesting speculation. The religious minded could speculate the lake is the lost Eden of the Bible with equal evidence to support it.
Healthy skepticism is what drives all good science, but in this case we do in fact have reasons to believe that it is at least plausible for life to be common wherever in the universe the conditions are suitable. The more we learn about how life has evolved and how it is likely to have started, the more it looks like like is something that is certain to get started when the conditions are right; and the conditions may be right within a wide set of parameters.
Nice looking architectureÃ, but they're still sitting at open plan desks. Guess we know how much Google really values their precious "Googlers". Talk is cheap, but real estate is fucking expensive.
However, they added a nice feature, if you can stand looking at the glossy pictures: padded cells. Any way, talk isn't the only cheap commodity - drawing up glossy plans like this doesn't mean they are going to build, I think.
How will they know if you're telling the truth?
I know how to make an all-inclusive list of all you passport numbers: generate a complete list of all combinations of characters, that form valid passport numbers in the relevant countries. They didn't say the list had to be limited to only yours, did they?
We also produce half of the inventions that make life better and longer. Perhaps we would all be better off if the rest of the world was more like us, not the other way around.
I think both those claims are highly contentious. At the very least, you have to tell us what those inventions are and how they make our lives better and longer, because I and many others are not convinced. I'm not saying that America has done nothing good, only that I think you need a bit of a reality check. It is quite likely that many of the things you imagine are American inventions, are in fact from somewhere else - only, the company that monetised it, was American. Take Oracle: they got rich on producing a relational database system - invented by Edgar F. Codd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Codd), an Englishman - and have since acquired a large number of startups for their technologies, many of which originated outside of the US. Also, you should keep in mind that many of the things you, as an American, think of as making life better, are in fact not seen that way in other countries.
As for being more like the US: thank you for the invitation, but no thanks. Not only are Americans objectively speaking the most wasteful on the planet (you guys use more energy per capita than any other nation), but we have all watched American politics, news, movies, court cases etc etc for decades, and I think most agree that this isn't what they want. And of course, a question worth considering is: why should America not learn from the rest of the world? Sure, many Americans have admirable qualities, but be a bit modest; it's not like you have no reasons to be.
If you consider all possible scenarios, you realize it's possible for a perverted heterosexual (presumably male, though it'd be sexist to assume so) to go into the bathroom of the opposite gender by pretending to be transgender.
If a "pervert", as you call it, would go to such lengths, why would they not just dress up as a woman and do the same? I think your argument is dubious. And anyway, what is the (sexual) attraction of using the bathroom as the opposite gender? It is hardly the kind of environment to inspire lust; not in my, at least. No, the real reason for gender specific bathrooms is the fact that many of either gender would feel awkward about using a unisex facility, simply because it is something they are not used to, and since it is just a small thing, nobody bothers to change it.
You forgot "The top [x] [subject] ...."
I think we should be more critical about what we call developers. This is not to belittle the many, very competent, non-professional coders, but saying that everybody who downloads a toolset and writes code is a developer is a bit like calling everybody who has bought an electric powersaw a carpenter; there is just more to being a professional developer than writing code, and there is a big difference between writing short pieces of ad-hoc code from time to time and writing large, maintainable applications as part of a development team.
how can we spin this to make trump look bad?
There is hardly any need to do that, since he is doing it so well. Seriously, hearing him in a public speech, saying '...no president in history has been as badly as me...' had me in stitches. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - and this is supposedly the leader of the free world? What did he expect - that people would line the streets, waving palm-fronds and singing 'hosannah' wherever he went? Compare to other political leaders - Obama was reviled in obscene ways by the right-wing outlets in America, and took it with dignity. It happens to everybody in exposed postions, especially when they are politicians who pursue controversial policies, and you simply have to be tough enough to take it on the chin. But this guy is simply a whimp.
I understand the necessity of stopping terrorists - I doubt anyone would disagree - but it is only firefighting, I think. As we see more and more, they just find other ways - they recruit disenfranchised Americans, they find ways into American infrastructure via the internet etc; both of which are easy targets, I'm sad to say, particularly in America.
And I think it is naive and simplistic to think that terrorism is merely about "killing Americans because they hate freedom". True, some terrorists are religious fanatics, who want to bring about the end of the world and the final judgement, but I think most of the high-ranking ones are simply crime-bosses who have found it to be a lucrative business, and a large proportion of their cannon-fodder are disenfranchised, young people, whose journey into radicalisation should be understood as a form of self-destructive behaviour similar to self-harming, suicide and drug-addiction. The only way to stop the terrorism problem from getting more out of hand is by fixing the problems in our society, that produce vulnerable, young people: the inequality, the lack of real hope, the absense of opportunities if you are born into the wrong place. When you grow up knowing from your earliest years, that you are worthless - born a loser - no matter how hard you try, it is very, very hard to break out, and it is very hard not to come to hate those well-fed bastards, with their smug opions, whose life looks so easy by comparison - especially when you are told all the time that you are lose because you are lazy and stupid. I know - I made that journey.
What governments invest in and what private businesses invest in are usually two different categories of research - as far as I know, that is the way it has always been. Private companies typically invest in monetising research results, or do research on things that can be made into a saleable product - that is after all the primary purpose of most businesses. But where does that research come from? Normally from government funded sources - certainly this is the case outside the US, where most universities are publicly funded. The point to take home is that the fundamental research, which to the un-initiated can seems like mere daydreaming and waste of time and money, is crucially important for the high-tech businesses of tomorrow, who are going to monetise the results that flow from fundamental research.
Just look back at the decades of research into how inherited traits are actually transmitted - it started around 1830 with Gregor Mendel, and it was not until the late 20th century that we got so close that businesses could smell the money, but now DNA research is one of the most important, fastest growing industries. So that's 170 years of curiosity driven, fundamental research and 20 years of private businesses investing in the same. Public funding of research is what drives this kind of research - because companies in general only think about the next fiscal year and the bottom line.
Nice how you entirely ignored the largest threat the GP stated, as did the article and summary. The varroa mite is the primary cause of death in hives right now
Glad you liked it. I didn't ignore it, I just didn't choose to pick that one out, because I think it is obvious that varroa wouldn't have been a problem, if people didn't ship the bloody things around the globe. I don't know if people in general know this, but it has for decades been common practice to buy queens and have them sent in a small packet by mail - I doubt there is a specialist vet at either end of the transaction, checking out the health of each of those queens, so that is just one, very efficient way of spreading varroa.
There is no threat to honeybees (which in the US aren't even native). Queens can be bred in bulk (there are tricks to make a hive produce lots of queens), and starting a new hive only takes a queen and a handful of workers. Beekeepers can order them by mail.
Not quite true - farming practices and the beekeeping practices that are common in the US, are major threats. Pestices are not all that discerning - if they kill harmful insects, then they probably also kill the beneficial ones, and systemic pesticides like the neo-nicotinoids are absorbed into the crop plants and secreted in the nectar. Non-systemic pesticides are less likely to find their way into bees. But possibly the worst threat comes from the fact that beekeepers rely on a narrow monoculture, created by exactly the practices you described, plus of course the way in which American beekeepers in particular transport their hives from all over the US to California, where they can then exchange diseases.
Amanita muscaria is a more obscure hallucinogen, but it's cousin amanita phalloides is known as the death cap and one of the world's most lethal.
Indeed, but you would be hard pressed to mistake them for each other, I think. The first one is bright red, normally with white 'dots' all over, very recognisable - you don't need to eat it to see something psychedelic - whereas the second one is a dull, brownish-green colour and looks a bit like something you might find in the supermarket.
To be honest, they might have thought the suspect was just a buffoon. You can't go round arresting every loony you find. But what you can do is pay such people a visit (you can even use social workers for that if the police has a capacity problem) and/or interview them at the police station, have a mental assessment done, and see who they're connected with.
I'm sure they would have done that and more, if they had the resources. Regrettably, they don't. Remember, we have been in the grip of the Conservative goverment's austerity policies for what almost feels like a lifetime, because of the financial crisis, which in turn was caused by the drive towards privatisation and deregulation over the last few decades. I know there are people who don't want to admit that this is the way it is, but I think most of us realise that this is true. I'm not really a huge fan of government doing everything for us and and spending loads on police, military and public services, and I agree that we need to get as much out of our money as possible, but we can't let blind ideology overrule rational decision making, when it comes to crucial functions in our society.
Well, now is the time to improve procedures instead of outlawing encryption and introducing Internet censorship.
Encryption is not going to be outlawed - it is fundamentally important to trade over the internet - nor are we about to introduce censorship. But I think we have far too long shied away from tackling hate speech head on for fear that we may seem racist, somehow. There has been a sort of policy of letting people in and packing them away in some corner with the instruction to 'Go and get yourselves integrated, as long as you don't try to mingle with Real British People' - how could that ever work? We, as a society, need to be more genuinely welcoming; but it is problem that sticks very deep in British society, and it is one that the especially Tories have never really understood. Government and politicians very often make all the right noises and are generally kind-hearted and well-meaning, but they have this facile approach to how to "just" solve problems without doing too much.
And to be honest - I don't think you really understand the issues either, not if you imagine it is just a question of improving procedures. That is a bit like trying to handle a cholera epidemic by advicing people to be more careful and wash their hands.
Shut up!
You're referring to the famed "freedom of speech", am I right?
do you really want to get 1,000 text messages a month from these idiots?
I won't, as long as I can control who I allow to send messages - which I can, at least for now, unlike with voice mail.
I never use voicemail - it is one of the (mis-)features I always turn off if at all possible; and if not, I simply ignore it and let it fill up. Why? Because I have to actually call a service number to access voice mail messages and then work with an awkward interface; I may even have to pay call time to do so. There are much better alternatives now: instant messaging. My favourite (that is, the first one I tried and found reasonably useful) is WeChat; I know all the criticisms, so don't bother - the point is, there are several like it, that allow you to chat in real time, send pictures and voice messages and even make a call (optionally with video); if you don't check your messages they just hang around until you have time. And you can control who is allowed to contact you. I can't see why I would want voicemail for. The same goes for SMS, in many ways; I think I have only used SMS something like 3 times in the last year.
"The hoi polloi" is like saying "the La Brea tar pits" or "The big Rio Grande river".
IOW a high-brow version of stuttering?
Why is diversity important?
This concept is drilled into us day in, day out. It's accepted as a universal truth with absolutely no vetting, which has always made me suspicious of the claim. Why is diversity important in science? By it's very nature, WHO is doing the science should be irrelevant. A test result won't change depending on my gender or melanin levels, or at least it won't if the science is done right.
That is exactly the point: gender, race etc should not matter - but as things stand, it clearly does, since people with certain characteristics find it much harder to make a career in science. There is no good reason why women, blacks, gays, ... should not be as good scientists as the current majority of white men in science, why is it so much harder for those groups to get in and work their way to the top? I think it is obvious (but recognising that this is an opnion rather than a fact) that it would be beneficial to society and science, if there were more, highly educated physicists, engineers, chemists, mathematicians etc, so keeping large segments of the population out of science careers is clearly not something society benefits from.
One may muse over how women or people from a diverse set of backgrounds could bring a different perspective to science; I don't buy into that, but the sheer number of difficult challenges in science across the board means that we can hardly afford to not bring as many people as possible, from any background into science.
Science is facing a raft of politically-motivated studies, rigged or suppressed medical trials, false or irreproducible results are rampant. But the big problem is "lack of diversity"??
Lack of diversity is an important issue in science, which is acknowledged by most prominent scientists, there's no denying that; but there are more serious problems, such as the fact that science is under pressure from political, business and religious interest groups, who don't like certain scientific results. Science must be free to follow the truth wherever it leads, otherwise it becomes worse than worthless - it becomes harmful.
Of all the places SJW types should stay the hell out of, aside from politics, its science.
I don't know who you call "SJW types" - but in my opinion, science should be guided by ethical standards - but standards that have less to do with politics and religion than with the search for knowledge and understanding. It seems to me that such standards must by logical necessity also seek to address any bias or discrimination based on gender, skin colour and other things that have nothing to do with science.
Apropos super capacitors - one of the problems with capacitors lies in having to keep the opposite charges apart, which is exactly what the membrane surrounding the mitochondria does, and very well. According to this: http://bionumbers.hms.harvard...., the field strength across that membrane is some 30 MV/m (that's Mega-Volt, yes) - IOW, a lot.
What the CIA and MI6 did not consider is that China would flood the West with trusted Communists that would enter the US and UK educations systems, learn and take everything back to China.
Hmm, that reads like a 60es spy thriller. Are you saying that "the immensely powerful inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party, known only to a few, highly classified individuals" etc, somehow have brainwashed the enormous numbers of Chinese students going abroad, to be fanatically devoted to extreme Maoism and interested only in subverting the legitimate government of rich people over American consumers? Without anybody ever noticing? Wow. But with that amount of power, why haven't they simply wiped the rest of the world clean of the stain of evil things like capitalism, and presumably democracy? Sorry, perhaps I shouldn't be sarcastic, but I think it is far fetched; and looking at your opening comments, you have already given a better explanation: the US attracted talent in the past by offering them better opportunities, better conditions etc. than both USSR and China did. Now the situation is the opposite, and while an overseas education is still considered better, most of the students do want to come back to China. While they are in the West for their studies, many do a PhD, and part of that is doing groundbreaking research, sponsored by a hi-tech company, during which time they learn a lot, none of which involves spying; but they do take that back to China - how could it be otherwise?
In the West, since the advent of neo-everything in politics - neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism, neo-fundamentalism etc - governments have been outsourcing a lot of things that used to be government funded, and scientific research in particular is now almost invariably business oriented, non basic research, in which the universities place PhD students in hi-tech companies; and because universities are facing substantial cuts to public funding (and have been for many years) they have to actively try to attract paying students from overseas. Thus, we have a direct link from regressive policies originating in the US, to the current situation where a lot of hi-tech research is effectively being exported to China, all of this being above board and perfectly legal. Personally, I don't mind - what goes around, comes around. What we get in return is a good relationship with a China, who can see the benefit of nurturing a good understanding with us, and our next generation will perhaps go to China and take some of their advances back to us - if we manage to make our countries worth returning to. I think it is something be optimistic about - wouldn't it be nice if we competed on which country is the nicest to live in, rather than who has the biggest bomb?
With all due respect, the monkey-filled rectum scenario is at least as plausible as the submitted story.
Let's examine that claim. On one hand, we have a hypothesis, proposed by a person or a team, who have an established reputation as being scientists, and whose hypothesis ties into existing theories, although the hypothesis itself is largely speculative.They are trying to do what all, good scientists do, namely make falsifiable predictions, and their colleagues can therefore scrutinise their reasoning and try find relevant data. That difference may not impress you, but to a scientist it is important.
it could have been caused by monkeys flying out of my ass.................... just sayin
I would say, when a bunch of cosmologists come up with a potential explanation - even an extraordinary one - there is at least a chance they are able to argue for a causal connection and a theory, whereas your lame put-down clearly isn't even meant to meet the same standards.