I am apparently the only one to play this game; although there does seem to be other players about. It is very basic in terms of graphics, but I can't think of any other game as packed with features. Lots of maps, lots of character races, stats etc etc. It is not the easiest games to get going in, but I find it grows on you. It is free, BTW and networked, of course:
paves the way for an outright ban on violent video games
You've got that entirely wrong - what's the matter with you people? It is a "violent games ban", ie a violent ban on games - any game. If you are seen to play a game or otherwise enjoying yourself in an inoffensive way, a 2.5 m (this being a metric country) tall Schwarzenegger-shaped bloke will jump out from behind a bush, yelling "I'll rip your *&~#&£$&-ing head off, swine. Vot you zink your doing?".
Carbon dating isn't all used for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are
From the article about rocks, however:
They sent samples for chemical analysis to scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who dated the rocks by measuring isotopes of the rare earth elements neodymium and samarium, which decay over time at a known rate.
Why do I care about such an almost trivial inaccuracy? Well, because this kind of misunderstanding finds its way into things like the attacks on evolution by the religious fringe, or the attacks on climate science by the energy industry, where it abused to "prove" just about anything.
Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games
Wasn't that the problem in the first place, that this was someone with only half a clue?
This is so often the case, that people only understand enough to get scared or decide that they don't like it; I suspect we all do it, sometimes - I know I do. The thing is - that kind of people are also valuable members of society, and in a democracy we have to try to find a compromise that accomodates the interests of at least a majority of people.
To me it seems that the importance of games is hugely overstated. A computer game is only entertainment, and the problem I see is not about whether some games should be banned, but how we get people away from passive entertainment and into active participation in physical activity.
I think, at the end of the day, that what we have here is a combination of some journalist overstating the case and a scientist who has found something that is genuine, but not nearly as sensational as the article claims. A bit like when Einstein tried to explain that space-time is curved, and the newspapers translating it to "If you have a big enough telescope, you can see the back of your own head".
As for what money can buy - your arguments are not wrong, but I think you simply don't know what drives many scientists and much of science too: not money or fame, not even discovery of great answers, but the struggle itself to find answers. It's a bit like a journey; what do you like about going on a journey? To me it is the journey itself, the things you see and experience which you didn't expect. I don't go on holidays so I can come home and show the photos to everybody; and that is what drives a scientist, I think.
is there another product I can entrust to keep the 'my computer's doing weird things' calls to a minimum?
Linux?
More to the point, what I do is absurdly enough a bit simpler: Run linux at the actual HW, install something like VMware or VirtualBox, install Windows and other essential SW in a virtual machine, configure, and then immediately make a snapshot. Whenever the Windows systems screws up because of malware, restore the snapshot. Keep essential data on a filesystem shared from the linux system or something similar.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You are talking a lot of sense - yes, I did say SENSE; it seems to me that most people hardly read as far as the end of sentences nowadays, and might have thought I was going to say something else.
As a non-American it is a deep mystery to me that America doesn't have a universal health-care service. I believe on average in Europe we only spend about half per patient p.a., and I can only speculate about why; but it seems obvious to me that the biggest factor is that in America big pharma is far better able to run rings around the system. Why else would it cost so much? I mean, as opposed to over here, it looks as if your insurance companies don't take care of several of the most expensive kinds of patients, like those with chronic illnesses - as far as I can see, it ought to work out as cheaper per actual patient.
What does the average American pay for health insurance per month? For comparison, I think I pay about £50 per month, for which I get free health care no matter what the circumstances; and I earn a pretty hefty salary, so I don't think it is bad.
If you don't drink (Johnny Walker/White Horse/Jack Daniels) you're not a REAL American
Jolly Wanker, you say? I thought that was more of a waste product from the chemical industry. Of course, seen from that angle, perhaps it makes sense, "Don't throw pearls to pigs" and all that.
Why would you assume that the first thing anybody with a good idea would do, is to go and make money from it? Things like altruism and curiosity for its own sake are arguably some of the traits that make humans "human"; and there are many things that are much more interesting and satisfying than money.
That aside, the purpose of game theory as such is to predict the behaviour of systems, so it isn't so surprising that they achieve some success. The big problem, as far as I can see, is to create a model that is realistic enough, pretty much like when you predict the weather, although the method is different. And then you have to know which questions to ask, since the answer may well be something like "42".
Prediction is not actually that difficult in itself; you do it every day when you say things like "Tomorrow I will go to a meeting" - and sure enough, next day you do go to a meeting. This is trivial, of course, but that is all there is to it; the rest is down to how many data you have and whether you are able to take it all into account.
And that, funny enough, is why using a techique like Tarot or I Ching can sometimes be amazingly effective. When you lay out Tarot cards, it is of course entirely random, but that is exactly why it works; because when you try to think about the consequences of some important problem, you are likely focusing too strongly on only a part of the available data, and trying to interpret the random set of images you've laid out breaks you out of the box you have created for yourself - it is, in effect, a form of brainstorming.
I'm not sure what algebra 2 entails, not being American, but that may well have been the case. However, I think it is probably more a question of inadequate teaching; looking back to my own school days, I can remember several subjects that I found unbelievably boring: mathematics, history, geography, religion,... Now I find most of them very engaging, and what made the difference for me is that it has become relevant. I even went on to study maths at university, and I can tell you first hand that algebra can be incredibly interesting.
The fact that you have a successful career in programming indicates to me that you would probably enjoy the higher mathematics as much as I did.
I suspect a major part of the reason is simply that the more you play computer games, the less time, motivation and energy you have for learning things that are perceived as boring. Unfortunately this can lead to a vicious circle - when you have difficult learning something, you tend to push aways as "boring", which will make it even harder to learn.
Most salt sold in the U.S. is also iodized, because the food produced in America tends to lack that essential mineral. It's the reason why the low/no-salt craze has been leading to an increased incidence of goiters.
So if you want to buy your meat reared on a farm and fed on grass in a healthy field and keep cooking it and everything else with no salt, you are going to get very ill from a very preventable thyroid problem caused by iodine deficiency.
Ironically, iodine deficiency is also the most easily prevented cause of mental retardation.
I am not aware of any research showing that the native Americans generally suffered more from goitre, but even if that was the case, there is nothing to stop people from using salt on their food, as far as I can see. I am not arguing that we should never, ever use salt, only that each of us should be allowed to control the use of it. As it is now, people are unaware just how much salt they consume every day and how much that actually harms their health. This adds up to lack of choice in two ways:
- People are not being allowed genuine choice in the matter, because the low-salt products are not easily available and are presented as less attractive - eg. the standard product is prominently placed and wrapped in a colourful package, whereas the healthy alternative is in a sterile looking box at the back of the bottom-shelf.
- People can't make an informed choice, because they can't easily see salt content in an understandable format and they don't know how much is too much. What they need is something like "This product contains a high level of salt - if you eat it all, you consume x% of what is good for you in day".
Your knowledge and your willingness to use it to deny us all the opportunity to make incorrect choices make you a hero to a benighted world.
Blah blah. What sad rhetoric - it would seem that you are one of the "You are either for or against me" -crowd. So, if somebody doesn't agree fully with your views, they are out and out evil representatives of whatever, is that is?
If you buy food with salt in, you can't take it out - if you buy food with no salt, you can easily add some; where do you have the most choice?
At the store, when you're deciding what to buy. Or at the door to the restaurant, when you're deciding to enter.
What nonsense is this? You know full well - or ought to know - that the availability of food with low salt content is very limited both in terms of quantity, variety, quality and general availability. Can I go to McDonald's and ask for a BigMac without salt? Well, I suppose I can always ask, but can they deliver? I have never seen that option advertised in any of their "family restaurants".
I don't know if this constitutes "extensive, culinary experience": In my all too many years of life, I have travelled to most of the world and enjoyed the local food of India, Africa, China and Europe. I cook and bake most of the food I eat; I grew up with a tradition of oversalting food - hard-salted fish and bacon as stiff as a plank of teak - and I have learned to like food with little to no salt. So can you.
It's an essential part of baking, cheese making, and a variety other parts of the culinary world AS A CHEMICAL.
Are you suggesting that capsicain, hydrolyzed proteins etc etc are not chemicals or don't have a noticable effect as chemicals? I am not suggesting that from now on no food should ever contain any salt at all; but it is an unfortunate fact, that it is nearly impossible to find any industrially produced food item that isn't oversalted. If you depend on buying bread, cheese, ready-meals, cakes, etc etc, then you are comsuming dangerous levels of salt. The industry is not at all keen on telling you this, and quite contrary to what you claim, in most cases the salt, along with a host of other chemicals, is only present in those concentrations because they want to mask poor quality.
You are trying to make out that it is a question of either we accept general oversalting, or we live with food that tasts of nothing at all. That is simply disingenuous.
... America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership...
Hmm, yeah, right. Here's a few thoughts:
I think the US abandoned moral leadership a long time ago in search of profit; let's talk no more about that.
Technology: There is no doubt that it would be a good idea to strive for the best you can achieve in the areas of science. It has become modern in recent years to replace the word "science" with "technology" and "research" with "engineering"; because technology and engineering sound like something that can make you money, whereas science ans research tend to make people think too much for themselves and become unruly. It seems perfectly possibly for people to work with technology and not question the irrational dogmas of religion and establishment, but it is hard to believe in the myth of the infallible truth of the Bible, when you are a scientist schooled in critical thought.
The snag here, of course, is that techology and engineering won't go very far without heavy investments in science and research.
Responsibility: Who do you owe your responsibility to? Big money? Religious tradition? The nations of the world? Or perhaps yourself? It is not for me to tell others how to live their lives, but isn't it worth considering, that while the rest of the world can continue progressing with or without America's participation, no single nation can achieve a lot on its own. The Romans became great by assimilating the knowledge of the Greeks, Egyptians and others, European nations built on the achievements of the Arabs as well as the Romans, America harvested the best scientists and knowledge of Europe and Russia after WWII, and now the Chinese are doing the same.
Talking about responsibility, leadership and morality like he does, sounds overly pompous. It is still not unachievable for America to assume the leadership, given that the right decisions are made; and keeping in mind that leadership isn't quite the same as "being first" - it also implies that you have followers. As far as I can see, America is at the moment engaged in a game of blaming others for everything and not wanting to play; if you want to be leaders, you can't afford to sulk.
To be realistic - and fair - we are never going to see an American president coming out clearly and strongly against the interests of major industries; at least not until American society and its constitution are fundamentally altered - as in a violent revolution. I can't quite see how that is going to happen, but of course, you never know.
Much as I like Obama for his intelligence and what still looks a lot like sincerity, idealism and honesty, when I heard him talk about changing things, I could see that he had set himself up for a major challenge. Like it or not, America is not governed "by the people, for the people", and the president only has the power allowed him by the noble classes that everybody in America assures me don't exist (the fact that you can enter "nobility" in America by becoming immensely rich is not an argument against this - that has always been the way throughout history). Change will only occur as and when they want it.
'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers...
It may sound quite funny, and I am sure most scientists can see the humour; in fact, they probably made those titles for that reason. That is not to say that the research undertaken is not valid or serves a useful purpose; all branches of science are littered with humour - just take concepts like quarks and their names, QCD, "The eight-fold path" etc; the many scientific names in biology that translate into something witty (or sometimes insulting).
I suspect when people make fun of this kind of things, it is often because they don't understand what science and research are about. They use it to argue that "we shouldn't waste money on studying..." - as if we could a priori determine which subjects are going to give us the answers we need when we need them to solve an urgent problem. My favourite, stupid comment is one about why we waste state-funding on researching whether "cows' burping and farting changes climate" - considering that methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and the fact that almost all methane occurring in our atmosphere is of a biological origin, it is actually a very relevant thing to study whether an average ruminant such as the cow produces it in sufficient quantities to have an effect.
To an objective, scientific researcher there can be no preconceived opinions; isn't that the very thing the so-called climate-skeptics are blaming climate researchers for - that they are prejudiced against alternative explanations for global warming?
Having just considered the merits in terms of bodily charm and general coolness of T'Pol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tpol) I have come to the conclusion that James T Kirk loses out on several significant points.
I think people on slashdot are deliberately misunderstanding this legislation (and what looks like a majority of other things too, come to that) - because it is so much easier to just be contrary than to actually try to gain some insight. So let me try to explain things in elementary terms:
The food industry adds a number of chemicals to their products because this allows them to use low quality ingredients in something that should have been made from top of the range produce. Thus you have emulsifiers that make crap flour behave like it was worth using for bread, you have colours and flavours that make soy beans look and taste like meat, you have several kinds of glue that will allow you to stick scraps of meat waste together so it looks like a steak etc etc. The end result is that you can buy a ready-meal that is "full of flavour..."; well, so is dog shit - that doesn't mean that it is good for you.
So why the interest in salt? Salt is the biggest known contributor to hypertension, which is one of the biggest contributors to cardio-vasculatory disease, stroke and a host of other things. People's actual health apart, this is something that costs money for society in one way or another. The more people are ill, the higher the cost for those that pay for healthcare, which at the end of the day ends up as higher expenses for you, whether it is through higher taxes or higher insurance premiums.
On top of that, those very same people are normally not able to work; ie they don't pay tax, and they don't contribute to productivity. Which means that there are fewer people, overall, to pay for things. Which means... here it comes: those who do work have to pay more.
Salt is used by the industry to hide taste (or sometimes the lack of taste) just like all the other additives; if they used good quality ingredients and didn't produce in such a way that things had to appear "fresh" for weeks, they wouldn't need to add anything, but of course that would hurt profits. As far as I can see, what this boils down to is that the food industry's profit margins depend on cheating their customers and hurting their health, thereby in effect stealing money from the rest of us.
Finally, the arguments you hear all the time about the taste of food and people's personal choice are bogus. If you buy food with salt in, you can't take it out - if you buy food with no salt, you can easily add some; where do you have the most choice? As for the taste - try just one time to buy, say, a piece of really high quality meat, reared on a real farm (not in a factory), fed on grass outside in a healthy field - and cook it with no salt. It tastes brilliant. You only need to add salt in any substantial quantity to hide the fact that you are eating crap.
Inventors are fond of pointing out that "obvious" patents are never said to be obvious before the patent application is filed.
That is as may be, but the geostationary satelite is not patented; it has been known for a very long time that there are orbits around the centre of mass of any planet which will allow an object in free fall to stay over the same point of the surface (although in exotic cases that orbit may be underground). I don't think the idea of using geostationary satelites for radio communication came much later than the invention of radio, possibly even predating our ability to put them up there.
Being European, I clearly don't know what "quip" and "rant" are; my impression was that a rant was when you keep going on and on about something, just to let off steam, which I didn't.
However, on a side note: I see your reply was rated "Troll" which I think is nonsense; to me it looks like a very valid response.
The railroads have added value to society, by making it easier to travel; without the ability to easily get from one end of the nation to the other, it wouldn't be able to hang together as one - this is why China, Russia and the US and Canada are big and it also explains why Europe consisted of a huge number of tiny nations for so long: after the Roman roads fell into disrepair, it was too hard to get from place to place.
But what will a jetpack contribute to society? It's only an expensive toy.
Seeing how this is college, I'm dumbfounded by the "nannying" going on here.
One of the purposes of a university is to teach students. The teaching part is important; otherwise you could just sit in the library, but teaching is (or ought to be) an interation between the teacher and students, where the teacher can respond to questions and clarify points is necessary; teaching is something the class takes part in. You can argue that the students are old enough to decide whether they want to listen; but if they don't want to take part, they can go somewhere else and play games. If the majority of a large class are not interested in taking part and just waste their time, they not only contribute to making the room cramped, they also produce an culture of "don't listen to the grey man down there" - both of which hurt everybody's ability to learn.
Slashdot Mirror
I am apparently the only one to play this game; although there does seem to be other players about. It is very basic in terms of graphics, but I can't think of any other game as packed with features. Lots of maps, lots of character races, stats etc etc. It is not the easiest games to get going in, but I find it grows on you. It is free, BTW and networked, of course:
http://crossfire.real-time.com/
It is the only game I have kept coming back to over the years.
paves the way for an outright ban on violent video games
You've got that entirely wrong - what's the matter with you people? It is a "violent games ban", ie a violent ban on games - any game. If you are seen to play a game or otherwise enjoying yourself in an inoffensive way, a 2.5 m (this being a metric country) tall Schwarzenegger-shaped bloke will jump out from behind a bush, yelling "I'll rip your *&~#&£$&-ing head off, swine. Vot you zink your doing?".
Nope, it is "Going equipped to commit a crime".
Carbon dating isn't all used for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are
From the article about rocks, however:
They sent samples for chemical analysis to scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who dated the rocks by measuring isotopes of the rare earth elements neodymium and samarium, which decay over time at a known rate.
Why do I care about such an almost trivial inaccuracy? Well, because this kind of misunderstanding finds its way into things like the attacks on evolution by the religious fringe, or the attacks on climate science by the energy industry, where it abused to "prove" just about anything.
Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games
Wasn't that the problem in the first place, that this was someone with only half a clue?
This is so often the case, that people only understand enough to get scared or decide that they don't like it; I suspect we all do it, sometimes - I know I do. The thing is - that kind of people are also valuable members of society, and in a democracy we have to try to find a compromise that accomodates the interests of at least a majority of people.
To me it seems that the importance of games is hugely overstated. A computer game is only entertainment, and the problem I see is not about whether some games should be banned, but how we get people away from passive entertainment and into active participation in physical activity.
I think, at the end of the day, that what we have here is a combination of some journalist overstating the case and a scientist who has found something that is genuine, but not nearly as sensational as the article claims. A bit like when Einstein tried to explain that space-time is curved, and the newspapers translating it to "If you have a big enough telescope, you can see the back of your own head".
As for what money can buy - your arguments are not wrong, but I think you simply don't know what drives many scientists and much of science too: not money or fame, not even discovery of great answers, but the struggle itself to find answers. It's a bit like a journey; what do you like about going on a journey? To me it is the journey itself, the things you see and experience which you didn't expect. I don't go on holidays so I can come home and show the photos to everybody; and that is what drives a scientist, I think.
is there another product I can entrust to keep the 'my computer's doing weird things' calls to a minimum?
Linux?
More to the point, what I do is absurdly enough a bit simpler: Run linux at the actual HW, install something like VMware or VirtualBox, install Windows and other essential SW in a virtual machine, configure, and then immediately make a snapshot. Whenever the Windows systems screws up because of malware, restore the snapshot. Keep essential data on a filesystem shared from the linux system or something similar.
You are talking a lot of sense - yes, I did say SENSE; it seems to me that most people hardly read as far as the end of sentences nowadays, and might have thought I was going to say something else.
As a non-American it is a deep mystery to me that America doesn't have a universal health-care service. I believe on average in Europe we only spend about half per patient p.a., and I can only speculate about why; but it seems obvious to me that the biggest factor is that in America big pharma is far better able to run rings around the system. Why else would it cost so much? I mean, as opposed to over here, it looks as if your insurance companies don't take care of several of the most expensive kinds of patients, like those with chronic illnesses - as far as I can see, it ought to work out as cheaper per actual patient.
What does the average American pay for health insurance per month? For comparison, I think I pay about £50 per month, for which I get free health care no matter what the circumstances; and I earn a pretty hefty salary, so I don't think it is bad.
What is the use of a virtual purveyor of stolen goods, any way? Or are we talking about ebay?
If you don't drink (Johnny Walker/White Horse/Jack Daniels) you're not a REAL American
Jolly Wanker, you say? I thought that was more of a waste product from the chemical industry. Of course, seen from that angle, perhaps it makes sense, "Don't throw pearls to pigs" and all that.
Why would you assume that the first thing anybody with a good idea would do, is to go and make money from it? Things like altruism and curiosity for its own sake are arguably some of the traits that make humans "human"; and there are many things that are much more interesting and satisfying than money.
That aside, the purpose of game theory as such is to predict the behaviour of systems, so it isn't so surprising that they achieve some success. The big problem, as far as I can see, is to create a model that is realistic enough, pretty much like when you predict the weather, although the method is different. And then you have to know which questions to ask, since the answer may well be something like "42".
Prediction is not actually that difficult in itself; you do it every day when you say things like "Tomorrow I will go to a meeting" - and sure enough, next day you do go to a meeting. This is trivial, of course, but that is all there is to it; the rest is down to how many data you have and whether you are able to take it all into account.
And that, funny enough, is why using a techique like Tarot or I Ching can sometimes be amazingly effective. When you lay out Tarot cards, it is of course entirely random, but that is exactly why it works; because when you try to think about the consequences of some important problem, you are likely focusing too strongly on only a part of the available data, and trying to interpret the random set of images you've laid out breaks you out of the box you have created for yourself - it is, in effect, a form of brainstorming.
Because, really, seriously, it *was* boring.
I'm not sure what algebra 2 entails, not being American, but that may well have been the case. However, I think it is probably more a question of inadequate teaching; looking back to my own school days, I can remember several subjects that I found unbelievably boring: mathematics, history, geography, religion, ... Now I find most of them very engaging, and what made the difference for me is that it has become relevant. I even went on to study maths at university, and I can tell you first hand that algebra can be incredibly interesting.
The fact that you have a successful career in programming indicates to me that you would probably enjoy the higher mathematics as much as I did.
I suspect a major part of the reason is simply that the more you play computer games, the less time, motivation and energy you have for learning things that are perceived as boring. Unfortunately this can lead to a vicious circle - when you have difficult learning something, you tend to push aways as "boring", which will make it even harder to learn.
Most salt sold in the U.S. is also iodized, because the food produced in America tends to lack that essential mineral. It's the reason why the low/no-salt craze has been leading to an increased incidence of goiters.
So if you want to buy your meat reared on a farm and fed on grass in a healthy field and keep cooking it and everything else with no salt, you are going to get very ill from a very preventable thyroid problem caused by iodine deficiency.
Ironically, iodine deficiency is also the most easily prevented cause of mental retardation.
I am not aware of any research showing that the native Americans generally suffered more from goitre, but even if that was the case, there is nothing to stop people from using salt on their food, as far as I can see. I am not arguing that we should never, ever use salt, only that each of us should be allowed to control the use of it. As it is now, people are unaware just how much salt they consume every day and how much that actually harms their health. This adds up to lack of choice in two ways:
- People are not being allowed genuine choice in the matter, because the low-salt products are not easily available and are presented as less attractive - eg. the standard product is prominently placed and wrapped in a colourful package, whereas the healthy alternative is in a sterile looking box at the back of the bottom-shelf.
- People can't make an informed choice, because they can't easily see salt content in an understandable format and they don't know how much is too much. What they need is something like "This product contains a high level of salt - if you eat it all, you consume x% of what is good for you in day".
Your knowledge and your willingness to use it to deny us all the opportunity to make incorrect choices make you a hero to a benighted world.
Blah blah. What sad rhetoric - it would seem that you are one of the "You are either for or against me" -crowd. So, if somebody doesn't agree fully with your views, they are out and out evil representatives of whatever, is that is?
If you buy food with salt in, you can't take it out - if you buy food with no salt, you can easily add some; where do you have the most choice?
At the store, when you're deciding what to buy. Or at the door to the restaurant, when you're deciding to enter.
What nonsense is this? You know full well - or ought to know - that the availability of food with low salt content is very limited both in terms of quantity, variety, quality and general availability. Can I go to McDonald's and ask for a BigMac without salt? Well, I suppose I can always ask, but can they deliver? I have never seen that option advertised in any of their "family restaurants".
... no extensive culinary experience ...
I don't know if this constitutes "extensive, culinary experience": In my all too many years of life, I have travelled to most of the world and enjoyed the local food of India, Africa, China and Europe. I cook and bake most of the food I eat; I grew up with a tradition of oversalting food - hard-salted fish and bacon as stiff as a plank of teak - and I have learned to like food with little to no salt. So can you.
It's an essential part of baking, cheese making, and a variety other parts of the culinary world AS A CHEMICAL.
Are you suggesting that capsicain, hydrolyzed proteins etc etc are not chemicals or don't have a noticable effect as chemicals? I am not suggesting that from now on no food should ever contain any salt at all; but it is an unfortunate fact, that it is nearly impossible to find any industrially produced food item that isn't oversalted. If you depend on buying bread, cheese, ready-meals, cakes, etc etc, then you are comsuming dangerous levels of salt. The industry is not at all keen on telling you this, and quite contrary to what you claim, in most cases the salt, along with a host of other chemicals, is only present in those concentrations because they want to mask poor quality.
You are trying to make out that it is a question of either we accept general oversalting, or we live with food that tasts of nothing at all. That is simply disingenuous.
... America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership ...
Hmm, yeah, right. Here's a few thoughts:
I think the US abandoned moral leadership a long time ago in search of profit; let's talk no more about that.
Technology: There is no doubt that it would be a good idea to strive for the best you can achieve in the areas of science. It has become modern in recent years to replace the word "science" with "technology" and "research" with "engineering"; because technology and engineering sound like something that can make you money, whereas science ans research tend to make people think too much for themselves and become unruly. It seems perfectly possibly for people to work with technology and not question the irrational dogmas of religion and establishment, but it is hard to believe in the myth of the infallible truth of the Bible, when you are a scientist schooled in critical thought.
The snag here, of course, is that techology and engineering won't go very far without heavy investments in science and research.
Responsibility: Who do you owe your responsibility to? Big money? Religious tradition? The nations of the world? Or perhaps yourself? It is not for me to tell others how to live their lives, but isn't it worth considering, that while the rest of the world can continue progressing with or without America's participation, no single nation can achieve a lot on its own. The Romans became great by assimilating the knowledge of the Greeks, Egyptians and others, European nations built on the achievements of the Arabs as well as the Romans, America harvested the best scientists and knowledge of Europe and Russia after WWII, and now the Chinese are doing the same.
Talking about responsibility, leadership and morality like he does, sounds overly pompous. It is still not unachievable for America to assume the leadership, given that the right decisions are made; and keeping in mind that leadership isn't quite the same as "being first" - it also implies that you have followers. As far as I can see, America is at the moment engaged in a game of blaming others for everything and not wanting to play; if you want to be leaders, you can't afford to sulk.
To be realistic - and fair - we are never going to see an American president coming out clearly and strongly against the interests of major industries; at least not until American society and its constitution are fundamentally altered - as in a violent revolution. I can't quite see how that is going to happen, but of course, you never know.
Much as I like Obama for his intelligence and what still looks a lot like sincerity, idealism and honesty, when I heard him talk about changing things, I could see that he had set himself up for a major challenge. Like it or not, America is not governed "by the people, for the people", and the president only has the power allowed him by the noble classes that everybody in America assures me don't exist (the fact that you can enter "nobility" in America by becoming immensely rich is not an argument against this - that has always been the way throughout history). Change will only occur as and when they want it.
'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers...
It may sound quite funny, and I am sure most scientists can see the humour; in fact, they probably made those titles for that reason. That is not to say that the research undertaken is not valid or serves a useful purpose; all branches of science are littered with humour - just take concepts like quarks and their names, QCD, "The eight-fold path" etc; the many scientific names in biology that translate into something witty (or sometimes insulting).
I suspect when people make fun of this kind of things, it is often because they don't understand what science and research are about. They use it to argue that "we shouldn't waste money on studying ..." - as if we could a priori determine which subjects are going to give us the answers we need when we need them to solve an urgent problem. My favourite, stupid comment is one about why we waste state-funding on researching whether "cows' burping and farting changes climate" - considering that methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and the fact that almost all methane occurring in our atmosphere is of a biological origin, it is actually a very relevant thing to study whether an average ruminant such as the cow produces it in sufficient quantities to have an effect.
To an objective, scientific researcher there can be no preconceived opinions; isn't that the very thing the so-called climate-skeptics are blaming climate researchers for - that they are prejudiced against alternative explanations for global warming?
Everybody's favourite actor, ...
Having just considered the merits in terms of bodily charm and general coolness of T'Pol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tpol) I have come to the conclusion that James T Kirk loses out on several significant points.
I think people on slashdot are deliberately misunderstanding this legislation (and what looks like a majority of other things too, come to that) - because it is so much easier to just be contrary than to actually try to gain some insight. So let me try to explain things in elementary terms:
The food industry adds a number of chemicals to their products because this allows them to use low quality ingredients in something that should have been made from top of the range produce. Thus you have emulsifiers that make crap flour behave like it was worth using for bread, you have colours and flavours that make soy beans look and taste like meat, you have several kinds of glue that will allow you to stick scraps of meat waste together so it looks like a steak etc etc. The end result is that you can buy a ready-meal that is "full of flavour ..."; well, so is dog shit - that doesn't mean that it is good for you.
So why the interest in salt? Salt is the biggest known contributor to hypertension, which is one of the biggest contributors to cardio-vasculatory disease, stroke and a host of other things. People's actual health apart, this is something that costs money for society in one way or another. The more people are ill, the higher the cost for those that pay for healthcare, which at the end of the day ends up as higher expenses for you, whether it is through higher taxes or higher insurance premiums.
On top of that, those very same people are normally not able to work; ie they don't pay tax, and they don't contribute to productivity. Which means that there are fewer people, overall, to pay for things. Which means ... here it comes: those who do work have to pay more.
Salt is used by the industry to hide taste (or sometimes the lack of taste) just like all the other additives; if they used good quality ingredients and didn't produce in such a way that things had to appear "fresh" for weeks, they wouldn't need to add anything, but of course that would hurt profits. As far as I can see, what this boils down to is that the food industry's profit margins depend on cheating their customers and hurting their health, thereby in effect stealing money from the rest of us.
Finally, the arguments you hear all the time about the taste of food and people's personal choice are bogus. If you buy food with salt in, you can't take it out - if you buy food with no salt, you can easily add some; where do you have the most choice? As for the taste - try just one time to buy, say, a piece of really high quality meat, reared on a real farm (not in a factory), fed on grass outside in a healthy field - and cook it with no salt. It tastes brilliant. You only need to add salt in any substantial quantity to hide the fact that you are eating crap.
Inventors are fond of pointing out that "obvious" patents are never said to be obvious before the patent application is filed.
That is as may be, but the geostationary satelite is not patented; it has been known for a very long time that there are orbits around the centre of mass of any planet which will allow an object in free fall to stay over the same point of the surface (although in exotic cases that orbit may be underground). I don't think the idea of using geostationary satelites for radio communication came much later than the invention of radio, possibly even predating our ability to put them up there.
Being European, I clearly don't know what "quip" and "rant" are; my impression was that a rant was when you keep going on and on about something, just to let off steam, which I didn't.
However, on a side note: I see your reply was rated "Troll" which I think is nonsense; to me it looks like a very valid response.
The railroads have added value to society, by making it easier to travel; without the ability to easily get from one end of the nation to the other, it wouldn't be able to hang together as one - this is why China, Russia and the US and Canada are big and it also explains why Europe consisted of a huge number of tiny nations for so long: after the Roman roads fell into disrepair, it was too hard to get from place to place.
But what will a jetpack contribute to society? It's only an expensive toy.
Seeing how this is college, I'm dumbfounded by the "nannying" going on here.
One of the purposes of a university is to teach students. The teaching part is important; otherwise you could just sit in the library, but teaching is (or ought to be) an interation between the teacher and students, where the teacher can respond to questions and clarify points is necessary; teaching is something the class takes part in. You can argue that the students are old enough to decide whether they want to listen; but if they don't want to take part, they can go somewhere else and play games. If the majority of a large class are not interested in taking part and just waste their time, they not only contribute to making the room cramped, they also produce an culture of "don't listen to the grey man down there" - both of which hurt everybody's ability to learn.